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October 20, 2003
Hi!
This will probably be the first of many entries this week since IVF is in full gear now! Thanks to everyone who posted on my board--please come back (hehehe!).
The Weekend
Last weekend was really nice. On Saturday, we went to MA to visit my sister and bil (who invited us up to celebrate my sister’s 35th birthday and then made plans to go golfing at the Cape. MEN). Anyway, Chris, Lisa (my sister) and I had a nice lunch at a tea room. I had the yummiest pressed sandwich made with chicken salad, apple cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, and cheddar cheese. Mmm mmm mmm. We also had decaf jasmine green tea, but it smelled like perfume and I couldn’t stomach it (for $7 a half pot I tried like heck!).
Afterwards, Lisa and I went shopping at our favorite store. It was a chain local to MA that closed down over the summer, but due to demanding customers they reopened one store! My sister was devastated when they closed (I thought someone had died when she told me) so we gleefully trotted over to their reopening where I spent oodles of money on clothes. I even found a sexy little outfit to wear to a wedding next month (of course I'll be a bloated cow then, but hey what can an IVF girl do?). Ah, it was a lovely time! I only wish they still sold housewares—I’m having the hardest time finding new bedding I like (another freak thing about me—I’m obsessed with bedding. I must have like 10 different ensembles for our bed alone. Never mind what I have for the other bedrooms in the house!).
For dinner (aka the birthday celebration for which bil had returned) we went to a local restaurant. It was quite yummy. The calamari was served with a spicy Thai sauce, the bread came with roasted garlic bulbs and unsweetened butter, and my meal was excellent. I had baked haddock with herbed butter and horseradish mashed potatoes and Mediterranean chutney (pepper and olives). Mmmm mmmm good. But dessert was the best part—Tahitian vanilla Crème Brule. So much for avoiding refined sugar and carbs. Bad, Jen, bad!!!
The Shot from Hades
After a month of my asking, the IVF nurse finally asked my RE about my dose of meds. I was concerned it wasn’t enough. And apparently either the RE agreed with me or the nurse was like “just give her what she wants so she’ll leave me alone” because they increased my dose to 3 Gonal-F and 1 Pergonal a night. This pleased me.
On Friday I started stims. I’d never used Gonal-F and Pergonal before (I’m usually a Follistim girl), but the nurse told me not to worry it’s the same. WRONG. Whereas Follistim has a cute little metal cap you pop off, Gonal-F and Pergonal are these glass bottles that you have to break almost in half. And it’s not easy to do. I swear it’s like popping the head off of a lawn gnome. You try that without losing a finger! So I couldn’t figure it out (and the instructions didn’t include how to open the bottles—very helpful thanks a whole you-know-what lot). Luckily, mil the nurse was home and she walked Chris through it over the phone. Of course the first bottle basically shattered, but he’s gotten much better since then. By now I was in a panic that we wouldn’t be able to do my shots and when he finally got all the amps opened I raced through mixing them (actually easier than Follistim) and ended up with a lot of air in the syringe. I was afraid to get rid of it all because some of the medicine was coming out with it…so I just swapped the needles (you mix with a huge IM needle and then swap it for a small sub-q one) and jabbed that sucker into my belly (mind you I’d already done my Lupron and was bleeding rather badly). OUCH. Here’s some advice—air is bad. I have the hugest bruise now and for over a day half of my belly was bigger than the other side. I did a nice job of disfiguring myself. It’s a good thing that BD’ing is unnecessary with IVF because I doubt any man would want a piece of me with such a messed up looking abdomen. ;) The subsequent shots have been fine so I think I’ll survive. And maybe my sex life will too.
U/S
This morning I had my 3 days of meds check. Luckily, Dr. Hottie was in today and he did the scan. I couldn’t really see the screen (rather upsetting), but when pressed (aka when I started to become a babbling idiot) he said that I have more follies than they could count, but they’re still very small. This is good news! I’m not progressing too quickly and there are A LOT of follies growing. With IVF #1 I was in tears after my first u/s because I only had 7 follies. But more than he can count (and I assume being a doctor—and a hot one at that—that he is capable of counting past at least 10!). I continued to babble and he touched my leg and said, “Don’t worry, you’re doing great.” And he looked me right in the eye. Sigh...he is so nice and so cute, and well you get the idea! Unless my blood work shows something amiss I’ll stay on the current dose and I return for my next monitoring session on Wednesday. Dr. Hottie told me that either Wednesday or Friday should show us how many follies I’ll probably end up with for E/R. Any one want to place bets?
So until then I’m just going to keep growing follies.
Jen
PS While I was in MA a radio commercial (no idea for what) kept being played. It was a redo of the Barry Manilow song "Can't Smile Without You," and I'd forgotten how much I loved that song when I was little. It makes me smile just thinking about it, but bil was appalled that Lisa and I have the same reaction to it! How can you not love Barry Manilow?!?
You know I can't smile without you
I can't smile without you
I can't laugh and I can't sing
I'm findin' it hard to do anything...
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