My scan result, in diagram.

 

Neither my RE nor myself trust my wonky physiology one teeny-tiny bit, so I have more bloods Sunday just in case the trigger fails. But, I do have a honest-to-goodness transfer booked for Tuesday which is a distinct improvement on the last four weeks.

I’ve lost count, but suspect I’m probably something in the neighbourhood of six or seven scans and a similar number of venepunctures this cycle, complete with bonus drawn out tension of:

No response  → no response  → no response  → by the way that’s an impressive LH you have in your pocket (or are you just happy to see me?) → no response (cancellation talk begins)  → some response  → lead-flipping-follicle → weird bloods  → you might have ovulated kind of sort of but not well enough  → Um, you REALLY might have ovulated kind of sort of but not well enough → recall for scan and 25 mm monster follicle panting away on left ovary  → Thanks be to the g-d of your choice FINALLY a trigger shot (I have to say I told you so).

Heck, my file card for this attempt is halfway down it’s second page. 

Just as an aside, you know that you’ve had too many scans when your RE asks, pre-probe insertion, which side the lead follicle is and without a beat you say ‘Left’, correctly.

Now all I can do is hope that my P4 is (please, please, please) over 5 on Sunday.

I do have a ‘cancellation’ post prepared, just in case.

Protected: A revolutionary thought…

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Mushroom.

Mushrooms?

Have I, finally, gone completely bonkers?

Mushrooms don’t have much to do with the average infertile woman, surely?

Except of course that eerily similar to my fungal nemesis I often feel like I’ve been kept in the dark and fed bullsh!t.

Today is probably do-or-die as far as this cycle goes, and not only because I’m going to need iron supplements and a Healthy Diet to keep up with all these blood draws at this rate.

The reason?

It turns out that those delightful words that took me all day to hear ‘Well, you haven’t ovulated’ was not precisely the entirety of the story with regards to my last set of bloods two days ago (a.k.a the day that Geohde was Very Pissed Off that no arrangements to trigger a rather hopefully mature-looking follicle were made).

Well about that suspiciously mature looking ovarian resident, sitting there in the follicular equivalent of a full face warpaint of slap and a short skirt? Heck, compared to anything else I’ve had lately, it looked old enough for my spouse to buy it dinner, get it drunk and have his wicked way with it. But it might just have been playing dress up.

You see, at my blood test today I interrogated the current possessor of my file and discovered that I had already had a progesterone rise to an underwhelming three point something crap. They’re concerned (I gather from my conversation this morning) that this is as close to ‘ovulation’ as I shall get. Hence the decision to simply sit of it for two more days and see what happens.

If it:

• A: Goes up today, enough (please g-d), I was in the process of oh-so-cleverly releasing an ovum by stealth at the time of the last test, and a transfer will need to be pulled out of thin air at short notice,

Or, more likely given they chose to leave my veins unmolested for two days:

• B: Fails to go up, I’m cancelled. Three is not precisely a P4 compatible with transfer, whilst cleverly also being just enough to thoroughly fuck things up.

I’m putting my money on option ‘B’.

In an open plea to the Clinic Nurses who shall get my results in a few short hours, I make the following points:

• You know and I know that the results will, barring some sort of laboratory nuclear accident or natural disaster, be available by midday or so.
• Ergo, daft though I may be, I quickly work out that the news is not good if I fail to hear anything by that time.
• Furthermore, I also rapidly conclude that the delay is a direct result of waiting for official word from my RE about what to do with my crap bloods.
• I do not do well in an information vacuum imagining cancellation of my cycle for nine hours on a daily basis when I hear nothing back and finally chase down the results myself after 5pm.
• Just because the results require further input from my RE does NOT preclude you calling me in a timely fashion to tell me what they are, even if you plan to disclaim any and all responsibility for the absence of a decision about the result. I can’t fault you for that. Just tell me the numbers, please.
• Yes, I shall in all probability draw my own conclusion about the big ‘Cancellation’ word when you call, and this does technically make you the bearer of bad news. But..
• I’d rather work it out on my own at midday than wait another five hours imagining how the conversation will go since (as I point out above) I’ve already worked out that it’s not Good News some time ago.

In conclusion, all I ask is that you have mercy and do not treat me like a mushroom today.

Thank you.

BUVM

BUVM?

Or without the abbreviations…. 

Blog You Very Much….

After lovely Tracy so very kindly said so many nice things about this site in her BUVM entry, explaining just how she got her blogging start, I did several things, namely:

1. Blushed beet red, including my ears.
2. Wondered if I could work her entry into my resume somehow.
3. Read it again, and again, and again, because I’m probably horribly vain and susceptible to good press.
4. Considered printing it out and plastering fifty copies around my apartment so I could surround myself in the glow.
5. Shrunk my head back down to normal size and began to focus on thanking the rather clever blogger who motivated me to bitch about fertility treatment so loudly and freely.

The ironic thing is that the blogger who inspired my efforts is so, well, damn funny and witty and clever and plain twisted (in a complimentary way, of course) and honest and blunt that I think we all know who she is, without much of an introduction. Any early guesses?

She’s also one of the original infertility bloggers out there, and the first that I found. I’ve been greedily reading her site for years as she went through the rollercoaster that is:

• IVF,
• Poor response to IVF,
• An ectopic pregnancy and a miscarriage slotted into a few of those cycles, just to really string her along that this Might Work,
• The Big Donor Egg Talk,
• More one-last-go-IVF-with-her-own-eggs (cycle #4),
• Holy-Crap-Viable-Pregnancy, 
• Scary-Placenta-Praevia-then-HELLP-and-Premature-Delivery of her son,
• More sucky cycles in an attempt for #2,
• A donor egg cycle,
• And now her journey into being alittlepregnant again.

Surely you’ve got it by now?

Surely?

Julie, you wouldn’t have the faintest idea who the hell I am (and I doubt you’ll ever even see this post) but believe me when I say a massive thank you for showing that it is possible to go through hell and back, snarky sarcasm intact, and even actually have a real, live honest-to-goodness baby along the way.

I mean, crap, I’ve laughed, cried and done just about everything else I can think of in response to your articulate (and damn funny) posts. So, lost for further words oh-great-one, I say the following:

Protected: For sweet Christ’s sake, woman…

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Well, THAT was a close call.

I stand before you (or not before you, but in your computer screen) literally sagging at the knees with sheer relief.

Ha-hem….(pulling out a prepared card with names-to-be-grateful to)…

For this morning’s 19×22 mm follicle and well-behaved endometrium, I shall like to thank:

• My left ovary. The right one can get stuffed, since it’s had nothing to do with today’s result. Lazy thing.
• My probably-meant-something-in-retrospect honest-to-goodness POSITIVE ovulation predictor last night.
• My husband for dutifully shagging me twice in the last day, and probably once more today if the truth be told, just for good measure (shame about the male factor, really, but he insists. I think it makes him feel better). 
• Any and all of you who read my whiny complaints and helped badger my recalcitrant reproductive system into gear, since it worked you can all claim the credit.
• My left ovary, again, because I think that both my RE and I were very relieved to see that something was finally up in there. Shucks, she’s seen my business end far too many times in the last two weeks, and for such little result.
• My rather easily venepunctured arms for giving up rather a lot of blood, on cue, for the last fortnight even if I didn’t precisely like the numbers presented to me.
• That damn waitress in the Last Chance Saloon for taking mercy on me, for once.

I’m now awaiting a phone call to confirm, hopefully, that I can actually catch the last bus out of Suckville (and at least get to transfer, if not pregnancy, since by my calculations I have very little chance at option ‘pregnancy’ without preceeding ‘transfer’). If this afternoon my bloods come back shite, I may have to scream in frustration and retract that speech. Either that or get really angry and force matters with a trigger shot into some unresisting flab.

I’m this (holding my fingers about 2mm apart) close to getting to transfer and I simply refuse to have it yanked away from me, again, by a now-you-see-it-whoops-not-any-more game of ovarian hide and seek. Do you hear me, left ovary?

And for my next trick….

I shall pull a LH of 17 and P4 of 2 out of my venous system.

Ta daa!

Impressed?

I don’t know whether to be mildly pleased that I still allegedly have a largely theoretical grasping-at-straws chance at transfer if my body actually gets it together before Christmas, or horrified that my baseline LH truly hovers around 20.

I think I’ll go for the horrified option since a glass-half-full strategy has never been my style. I mean, eek. It should be in rather more petite single digits.

Indulging in some misty-eyed reminiscence, to think that I was told by the first medical practitioner that I saw in regards to the very-irregular-periods-?connected-in-any-way-to-no-baby-business that there was no way I had PCOS and to just keep on shagging. I distinctly recall looking at the man like he’d caught the short bus to school, and with good reason.

Just think that if I’d listened to that rubbish I’d have missed out on all the fun times infertility treatment and a single disastrous pregnancy has brought me. That is not precisely a happy sentence, but I hope the point I was trying to make is clear even if the corrosive bitterness is getting to me. 

I’m glad that I did persist in obtaining an accurate diagnosis but all this time despite the evidence, I must admit to the odd twinge of ‘surely not’. After all:

• I’m not the typical PCOS body type, being such a weedy thing. Heck, I still remember a teacher in primary school commenting that she’d seen bigger legs under a seagull, thus setting me neatly up for a lifetime complex about my calves.
• My skin is not too bad these days (although truth be told you couldn’t see a square inch of skin for the plague of pustulant pimples back when I was a miserable adolescent not being invited to the cool parties), and
• As far as I know I’m not diabetic or officially insulin resistant (please, please don’t tell my RE that I’ve self-tested random BSL’s of nearly eleven on occasion, for sweet Christ’s sake. I don’t need any more problems dragged out from my biological closet).

Well, unfortunately, there is no real wiggle room having endured five blood draws in a row which have all slapped me in the face with numbers I’d prefer to ignore in my best head in the sand style. Who am I fooling, really? I don’t ovulate and I’ve never been the owner of a regular cycle in my life. I honestly thought that pregnant women in my obstetrics term must have been making up their 28 day cycles, because they all seem to have them and it’s so far removed from my experience.

I guess the modified adage that one shouldn’t judge an infertile book by its cover is a good one. I really, actually, seriously have a bit of a problem with the old PCOS.

Do you think that if I do something mature like pull a blanket over my head it will all go away?

Urgh.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of such an extended visit to Suckville, I’ll make my current miserable situation crystal clear. Odds of transfer are truly up to the indifferent waitress in the Last Chance Saloon when the nurses tell you they’re giving up on cycle tracking.

It’s like saying ‘cancelled until 2008 sometime’, but without the tears down the phone.

Neat trick.

If you know that damn waitresses’ number, can you give her a call for me? My very last scan before my RE officially gives up is tomorrow, and wouldn’t you know it I’ve got a positive ovulation predictor. I’d be more excited if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve had positive ovulation predictors before the last four scans this cycle too, and nothing over 12mm on either ovary each time.

At least (on the plus side) I’ve got five scans and five blood draws out of this ?cancellation, I think that does leave me financially ahead, if a little psychiatrically flattened. 

Here’s hoping. Off I go to spin that glitzy wheel of ovulation, again.

Agony Aunt, edition 7

Darling Google, after you’ve again gone to extensive trouble fishing some of these searches from the lonely backwaters of the Internet (and sending them to my site in my hour-of-need-of-distraction), I think I love you. Will you marry me? We’ll be very happy together, what with your eye for the unusual and my love of derisive commentary.

Ha-hem.

My current favourite weird comments gently guided to this site for my wise counsel are as follows:

1. Catch scabies from a rabbit.
2. Pregnancy diarrhoea blog.
3. Speculum fun.
4. Pregnant from toilet, impossible?
5. Is burping a symptom of pregnancy?
6. ‘Incontinence emergency’ symptoms.

Again, Google, thank you. Clearly you think that my assvice range knows no bounds, given you’ve seen fit to direct anything from scabies to incontinence my way. I’m deeply flattered.

Item #1 (Catch scabies from a rabbit)

Dear searcher with itchy finger web-spaces, I must ask if this is:

• A: An order for me to follow,
• B: A request for me to give it a good burl, or
• C: Are you asking if it’s even technically possible?

In alphabetical order, I reply:

• A: Get knotted.
• B: See item ‘A’ above.
• C: See below.

All I know is that I prefer to catch my scabies from interaction with human wildlife, not that I’ve ever actually had scabies, I hasten to add. But only because I have scrubbed my hands rather furiously after consultations (and imprudent handshakes) with patients who do have scabies.

After they’ve left the room, of course, I’m tactful. I can get to a sink so fast I’m a whirling blur with sufficient motivation (usually before the door has finished closing).

Anyway, coming back to your question, they have ointment for it at the chemist I do believe. I don’t have any reason to think that it would work any less on rabbit derived scabies than the human kind.

Do not suffer in silence! You can be cured.

Item #2 (Pregnancy diarrhoea blog)

Sorry, but this is an infertile diarrhoea blog. I’ll keep you posted if that status ever changes, don’t worry.

Item #3 (Speculum fun):

I certainly hope that you Googled this particular query with SafeSearch firmly ON, dear inquisitive one. Unless you’d rather have porn, of course, in which case sod off forthwith.

Here’s my best efforts to entertain you:

 

 How’d I do?

Item #4 (pregnant from toilet, impossible?)

Unless you happened to actually shag in the loo, yes it’s probably impossible. I suggest you count your dates, and sexual partners, more closely.

Besides, and you may consider this unfair, no toilet has ever been ordered by a court to pay for paternity.

Item #5 (Is burping a symptom of pregnancy?)

Only for the uncouth.

Item #6 (‘incontinence emergency’ symptoms):

Well, dear reader, I’m so glad you asked me that question.

Generally speaking, if one is having an incontinence emergency, the main symptom is the wee running right down your leg.

I suggest that you focus your efforts on looking for suspiciously damp trouser legs, seats, or carpets in your immediate vicinity and you’ll be sure to spot when the emergency happens. By the time you detect the smell, you’ve probably well and truly missed the big event.

As an interested aside, because I truly am curious, when is an episode of incontinence not an emergent situation on some level?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Protected: Anyone for a game of LH?

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Toiliquette

Not to cast aspersions on the hygienic standards of the health-challenged members of the general public at the hospital where I am to be gainfully employed shortly, but is it really necessary to have this handy instructional gem in the public bathroom?

 

What on earth do they think people will do if they didn’t have that helpful little sign? Piss in confusion all over the stall, omit using toilet paper entirely and shake my hand with their urine soaked one on the way out?

Honestly.

Actually, I think the following sign would get the message across better:

You can thank me for that one later, the next time you need to use a public stall.

Think I’ll use the staff amenities in future if the answer to the above speculation about requirement for signs-for-the-obvious in any way resembles a ‘yes’.

Oh my g-d, make it stop….

The cycle from hell continues, unabated.

Due to my teeny tiny problem with an elevated baseline LH that I may have referred to in passing, probably connected to some permutation of the words fuck-this-for-a-joke, ovulation predictors are a cruel, cruel tease. Who the hell knows if that almost-as-dark-as-control-line really means something except in retrospect when it’s totally useless.

Yet I still use them, because when the DO turn unequivocally positive, I know that I’ve probably succeeded in pulling an actual egg out of my arse ovary. That’s when the obsessional temperature-measuring takes over, of course.

Can I level with you?

The thing is, apart from the reason of prolonged tension waiting to find out if my cycle shall be binned after all, this cycle is totally doing my head in because I keep getting these patches of, well, discharge that suggest I’m suspiciously well oestrongenised. If you get what I mean. If you don’t, Google ‘spinnbarkeit’. Some of the links even come back here, amusingly enough.

Then after all the leaky-whatsit excitement (of course) I have yet another set of crap bloods or a totally shite scan and promptly come crashing down to earth in a thud of who-cares-if-the-wee-sticks-have-nearly-said-for-sweet-christ’s-sake-SHAG three days in a row? My ovaries are totally faking it for a screw, the tarts.

Ironically enough I’ve been so dispirited with the whole process that we haven’t bothered to shag. For about four days and counting, and now sod’s law is fully operational in that my vayjayjay is doin’ the ovulation tease again and my spouse is working nights.

I did offer to go to his work to screw, but since it’s not in a particularly safe area and I’d prefer to be pregnant with my husband’s baby, perhaps not.

Bollocks.

Given the adverse circumstances, I’m bound to ovulate tonight since the universe does really, really have it in for me.

Finally, yes, yes, YES  before you (quite reasonably) point out the obvious matter of this being an IVF Thaw cycle and the whole male-factor bizzo rendering a shag largely pointless anyway, I do actually realise that if I ovulate the main goal is to transfer embryos that I already have on ice (rather like expensive champagne). But please don’t tell me that you wouldn’t screw your optimistic brains out too, just in case, if you were in my shoes. If you could. 

If your husband wasn’t working nights in an unsavoury part of town, of course.

Protected: When no news is good news.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Suckville. Still.

Thank you all so much for the well wishes for my last farce exam. 

I talked till I was dry about all sorts of rubbish, mostly entirely unrelated to the patient I saw, to two very senior and imposing looking Professors. They both had reading glasses to look over the top of and everything.

I had no choice but to go for quantity over quality, especially when lacking ‘quality’ because, well, the patient kept asking how old I was and if I was married. Honestly. What part of ‘I’m here to do some rather serious final exams (implied NOT looking for a date right now)’ did he not get? It’s really not a flippin’ meet and greet. Besides, dude, you’re 56, and not to pick, but your self care leaves something to be desired. Like a bath.

Hospitals are sexy, sexy places.

My patient also asked if I had any children. Now there’s a conversation I want to have with an over-friendly stranger.

My response to a reproductive broadside whilst trying to forget Suckville and pass a damn exam? Breathe in, breathe out, and do NOT strangle the man with his own ECG leads, no matter how tempting it may seem.

Not to whine any more than usual, but. I need to or I shall explode.

Can I join you all on the last bus out of Suckville?

Today marks officially several days longer than my latest-ever Clomid induced ovulation. On the positive side, I’m nowhere near the mark of a spontaneous effort (although I will be in a week or two), but it’s not looking good. Especially when I throw the No Response scan and So-So bloods into the mix.

If you agitate it all furiously whilst running in circles at 37 degrees (as I have), you do just get a sopping mess, and not a miraculous success and I secretly hoped.

I now await without much in the way of anticipation the final lame blood draw AND in-my-face-ovarian-suckiness ultrasound I-could-sell-tickets-to-see-my-whatsit-it’s-happening-so-often-these-days examination to potentially finally bin this attempt at ovulation induction.

I await with even less anticipation the inevitable difficult conversation where I am presented with twin sucky-and-suckier options of either:

1. Cancel.
2. Covert to HRT and hope I don’t just bleed inconveniently again.

Option 1 is clearly a little on the depressing side.

Option 2, well. Enough said. I think I know how it would end, and I don’t fancy spending thousands of dollars to bleed for weeks again. My dear spouse would have to talk me down from a ledge.

Can I wrangle an option 3, actual egg action, and join you all on that damn bus?

Yours,

The woman leaving Suckville somehow. Soon.

Nearly Over.

This morning shall, hopefully, be known as the morning of my last exam ever. Unless things go horribly pear, in which case Monday shall be known as the day of my last exam ever, and today the penultimate terror-session.

It’s all a bit of a farce, really.

I don’t feel any more prepared than I did about two years ago, but let’s face it, I’ve already signed contracts for next year and got my shiny new badge.

Even though I’m totally packing myself, the bald facts of the matter with regard to medical student finals are that (almost) everyone passes. After all, we all have jobs already, and have done so for the last six months of the degree. No matter how dangerously green or incompetent we are, we’re probably better than having no doctor at all. If this worries you, forget I said it. Stay well come January instead. Actually, I recommend that you all stay well come January, even if you think I can’t be as bad as all that.

Did I mention my shiny new badge?

It’s a total ripper, you’d be jealous. The camera had both a disturbing amount of flustered red-face effect AND they’ve managed to stretch the picture horizontally so that I also look rather unattractively puffy. Red and puffy. Dr Bloat-Face, at your service for any irrelevant matters such as blood forms or fluid orders that your 3am heart desires. Or perhaps just call me Bloat-Face, since to top it all off, they’re gone and left the designation that I’ve worked so hard for for the last decade plus of my life right off the damn thing.

I’d go back to insist on one with the correct label, but I’m more worried that I’ll come off looking like a total twat doing that rather than dealing with the suspicious ‘Are you REALLY a doctor?’ questions now due to come my way. Hopefully the absence of my correct designation is not in actuality an oddly prescient move on the part of the badge makers.

Anyroad, I must go and study one last time. Wish me luck.

Worry early, worry often.

Whilst yesterday’s scan did suck rather impressively, I’m detecting a sustained pattern in my response to bad news that could have me gibbering in the corner permanently at the rate I’m going.

How on earth am I going to deal with IVF and two jobs next year if I don’t learn to modify my current finely tuned approach to bad news, which is to cry, yell, swear an extravagantly multi-syllabled combination of ‘p!ssf*cksh!t’ and then morosely contemplate my navel for approximately fourteen days?

Geez. I gotta work on the worry early AND often strategy.

With that in mind, I say the following pleasantries about my appointment yesterday:

1. I just LOVE it when women trying for their second or subsequent healthy IVF child bring their first into the clinic to play while they wait. Really I do. Nothing dries the tears of Bad Fertility News quicker than the babies of those more fortunate.
2. What a clever idea to get my scans done at work next year, so I can cycle after all. Total and absolute geniousity!

Of course what I really mean by the above (old habits die hard) is:

1. Fer fuck’s sake, does this look like an appropriate venue to play pattacake and encourage your first-fresh-cycle child to dribble on random strangers? It does? Oh. Be my guest and check the sign on the door, will you? It’s an IVF CLINIC forcryingout loud. Everyone else here but you (you smartarse) can’t have babies. Get your spouse to take the Rugrat outside while you wait, please.
2. There’s no way in hell the Radiology Department at work are ever going to see my flippin’ goods. What a cracked out concept…..

I’m working on it, promise.

Welcome to Suckville.

Population, moi.

Or am I actually in Shit City? I’ve been to so many bad destinations in the last two years that they’re all beginning to look awfully similar.

In the interests of my newly self-appointed Tour Guide duties, I state the following before you leave the bus from Somewhere Else to explore:

Please feel free to take a brochure detailing the limited facilities.

Grab a tour map.

Heck, be my guest and piss in the fountain if you need to go. The toilets are broken, it’s dry anyway and could probably do with the water.

Finally, fercrissakes, when you get the chance RUN. Far away. Anywhere but HERE.

In case the above title was not warning enough, I do apologise for the abundant negative tone. Complaints can be made out in writing, marked c/o my (rooted) reproductive system.

What follows is some scheduled self-flagellation…

This morning the Ultrasound Probe of Truth smoked out my ovaries for total failures they are. Complete lazy, useless, backasswards glands. Does Clomid mean nothing to them now they’ve had the Good Stuff (FSH)?

A reasonable person would have thought that the last six days since crap scan number one (for this cycle anyway) should have been devoted to, say, happy ongoing folliculogenesis and estradiol production, but no. Not my gonads. I think they’re out the back, smoking, and totally forgot that follicles should get bigger with time. Clearly it slipped their tiny minds.

Those hopeful three follicles at the last scan, you ask? I’ve been rather careless with them it would seem, or victim to a rather cruel now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t disappearing act. I fail to find this new ovarian coyness cute or amusing in the least, especially since my endometrium staunchly remains a determinedly hypo-oestrogenic wafer thin. Heck, even if I do by some miracle get it together hormonally enough to ovulate it’s not a picture that in any way spells Paint Thy Nursery.

Sigh.

Having just had another vein blown with an inexpert blood draw, I await a truly delicious phone call with the likely options of:

1. Cancellation.
2. Conversion to a HRT cycle delayed cancellation.

In conclusion, if the total shiteness of a cycle is inversely related to the probability of gestation (see cycle # Really Bad SA and Surprise Pregnancy back in December ’06 an example of this principle) I’m having Quin-flippin-tuplets.

Edited to add: Phone call says keep going another week in Suckville (sounds like option two will be the winner). Fun times strictly optional, worried angst mandatory.

Such a cosmic rod, Adrian.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Bet you ain’t seen one like Adrian’s before, eh?

Adrian, you old dog. 

Somewhere out there there’s a Skywalker looking for a missing lightsabre….etc etc.

No, I haven’t lost what little remains of my tiny mind.

‘Such a cosmic rod, Adrian’ was the title of a rather intriguing piece of junkmail, neatly slotted in amongst all my other junkmail genuine offers for five-dollars-off-for-a-friend’s-valid-email-address this morning.

Email spam filters being the killjoys that they are the actual contents of the message shall have to remain a mystery. I’m not game enough to manually open a mail that so blatantly refers to a ‘rod’, cosmic or not. Whilst I like a challenge, my virus checker is not the most robust.

Interestingly, and I am heading somewhere with this, ‘Such a cosmic rod, Adrian’ fitted in eerily well with some sleep fudged talk from my darling spouse overnight.

Eat your heart out at the smoothness of that segue, Nightmare Grade Seven English teacher, I’m not so bad after all  (although you were a total heartless b!tch with the red pen).

My devoted life partner decided to take a sleeping pill last night, thus providing me with something to giggle over as well as fodder to type about today. So kind of him, remind me to thank the man later (I believe a shag is universal).

Whilst most sleeping pills immediately convert the unwary consumer into the rather dull open-mouthed-breather-from-planet-snore, my beloved took one of the more amusing ones on the market.

I won’t directly name names (damn you Google, I don’t need any more vitamin V in the blue pill, either), but it ends in ‘derm’ and starts with ‘zolpi’ in case you’d like to play along at home.

This particular gem converts the consumer into a sleepy-but-chatty-amnestic who cheerfully spouts utter rubbish at random all night whilst confusedly stumbling around the house from time to time. One small point of caution, there’s a load of reports out there about naked sleepwalking down major roads and eating of the entire contents of one’s fridge whilst under the influence.

Make sure you have a spotter if you give it a go, safety first and humiliation last is always a good motto.

It’s rather terrific fun to watch and quite possibly do, but the bummer is that you never quite remember just what you said afterwards. Relying on the amused smirk of your co-sleeper the next morning is really the only barometer of how much entertainment value was obtained from the venture into pharmacological (legal, I hesitate to add) oblivion.

Last night apart from some rather dull 3am ramblings that we really must shag now to ensure the existence of the future generation (which sounds rather like something a horny husband would spout in a vain attempt to score a poorly-timed shag without pharmacological help), nothing further eventuated until six am.

Then he suddenly roused and hurriedly told me that there was a child in the, and I quote, ‘Pervert column of the New York Times’ who needed our help. He was actually rather insistent on the matter and only settled with reassurance that I would get a copy of the NYT forthwith and commence amused blogging rescue operations immediately.

So here I am. Smirking.

I’m wondering if the ‘pervert column’ is the financial, political, or possibly even the opinion pages. Having never read the NYT, I don’t know if they have an introductions section, or that would be where I’d stick my money.

In actual IF related on-topic discussion, I have the pleasure of another ultrasonic impaling in the morning. Here’s hoping it brings something worth motivating my long suffering RE to put pen to prescription pad long enough to write ‘Pr.egnyl 5000 IU’. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Do what I say, not what I do.

Please.

I’m slightly, justifiably, a little on the embarrassed side to admit to public drunkenness when I’ve so recently poked fun from my beautiful Glass Tower about what other people do when drunk. Get your stones ready, Ladies and Gentleman, but before you throw let me say that neither I nor any of my companions ended up in ICU.

Ha-hem. Drinking is bad for you, I promise….

The special occasion, not that it needed to score too high on a scale of ‘special’, was the end of my second to last exam as a student ever.

Hopefully it’s the last time that I have to pretend to take blood from a plastic arm carefully positioned on a bed on the opposite side of the room to the actor playing ‘patient’, because that’s just weird. So is extensively questioning an actor about his medical history, in exhaustive detail, as he writhes on the bed pretending his heart out (literally) to be screaming in searing agony as his imaginary aorta dissects into two rather fragile tubes prone to explosive bleeding. Give the man some morphine, ferchrissakes, stick a great big fat IV in and scan him, now. Honestly. That’ll teach him to pretend to have serious conditions so damn convincingly.

But I digress.

I needed a drink, and several of my almost-doctor colleagues and I got our scruffy selves to a local bar where we set about obliterating all memory of the previous few hours by enthusiastically getting our drink on. I can’t say that I was feeling my most witty, but as the beer progressively loosened the inhibitory circuits between my tongue and my speech centre, I apparently became rather hilarious. This bar was one of the more overt meat meet markets that I’ve had the pleasure of spending offensive amounts of money on alcohol in, for some time.

Goodness knows, according to the newspaper version of sex-and-fertility 101 (and given my due-to-ovulate-please-g-d-I-hope-soon status) I should have been up there waving my hips in my best hooker heels, with the rest of them but, no. I was the jealous old cow in old baggy jeans bitching viciously about anyone-and-everyone within eye-shot. I had a blast.

In my defence, what else can someone do but snort with derision at all the primped up women walking bent-backed and arse out like old mother Hubbard to keep their balance in five inch stilettos? Let alone the unavoidable observation that, miraculously, they’re all ‘tanned’ a deep, golden orange. I presume that it wasn’t intended to be a homage to Halloween, but after the fourth short-skirt-orange-arse-flash of the night pumpkins kept coming to mind for some strange reason.

Oddly, the men these women were risking serious podiatric damage for weren’t all that impressive, honestly. Unless you like fifty different variations on ‘drunk guy in a suit’. But I’m bitter since not even one of those desperate bastards threw me even a hopeful ‘Oy, beautiful’. Pricks, the lot of them. Believe me when I say that I think some of them were trying to hit on the damn furniture, and yet I got nada. Zip.

Not good for the newly thirty year old ego, all things considered.

It was probably a good thing that one of my friends casually mentioned she was considering throwing up in the plastic plants, abruptly ending out evening. I always like to leave before I’m kicked out. Classier all round, really.

Agony aunt, edition 6

It’s about that time again.

The time when the urge to respond with heavily veiled sarcasm at the confused searchers that Google continues to send my way rises enough for me to devote a whole post to the things That I Mutter To My Computer Screen when I read the following search terms:

1. Fu*k, I’m pregnant
2. Shag your aunt.
3. Spotty pill head.
4. Fu*k childbearing hips.
5. Artblog and IF.
6. What is it called when a zygote stays in?
7. +ve OPK 12 DPO.

Addressing item #1 (Fu*k, I’m pregnant):

Yes, it usually happens in that order if you’re not infertile.

From the tone of the search, however, I’m guessing that congratulations are not precisely in order? Um, how awkward because well, you see, I’M NOT PREGNANT.

Addressing item #2 (Shag your aunt):

May I decline?

Thanks awfully for the offer, though.

Nice of you to think of me, AND my aunt for that matter.

Now go away, please.

Addressing item #3 (Spotty pill head):

There’s no need to go calling me names. 

That’s just downright mean.

It’s not my fault that I have PCOS and like to inhale fertility drugs in large amounts, who gave you the right to poke fun at a poor infertile, spotty, pill consuming woman?

Addressing item #4 (Fu*k childbearing hips):

Rolling up my sleeves and trying to look more imposing than my usual small white nerdy physique allows…. 

Listen, buster.

Cece happens to be a friend of mine, and if you’re not her bloody husband, you better keep your hands to yourself, okay?

Anyhow, I won’t have you abusing her blog name with the f bomb on THIS site.

Begone with you, oh foul mouthed one.

Addressing item #5 (Artblog + Infertility):

Artblog, this one’s for you, I believe.

Addressing item #6 (What is it called when a zygote stays in?):

Well. 

That’s the longest winded way I’ve encountered to say ‘Pregnancy’ in some time. 

When they fall out (to anticipate your next question), dear searcher, it’s a miscarriage.

Is this a trick question?

In = pregnancy, out = miscarriage, mmm-kay?

Addressing item #7 (+ve OPK 12 DPO):

I’ve kinda addressed your search before, oh pee-sticky one. Let me save you the click on the hyperlink.

First of all, could you take a seat? Thank you.

You’re sure it’s 12 dpo?

Yes?

Quite sure?

Oh, well, then you’re just pregnant.

Congratulations etc etc.

Glad we cleared that one up for you.

That’s all folks,

 Mz G

The Proverbial.

In the gaping vacuum of real on-topic infertility related material, I hope that more Tales Of What Not To Do When Drunk will suffice to fill the gap.

Gleaned from work, of course. Who knew hospitals were such fun?

I hope that you’re sitting down comfortably….and sober. 

Tale #1 (the titular Proverbial Bear):

Rager that I am, my idea of an exciting night out tops off at about a racy three drinks and 9pm. Occasionally I will admit to perhaps four drinks, but it’s got to be a special occasion. Just because the day ends with a ‘y’ does not count, although many people seem to think that it does. I cannot compete with Mr Bear whom I had the pleasure to avoid the right hook of at work recently.

Mr Proverbial Bear had a real sore head. Self inflicted, of course. How, you ask? Let me set the scene….

Apparently after a good-going night on the turps, one can feel a little queasy in your mate’s car on the way home.

Whilst a breath or two of fresh air is sometimes helpful to settle the stomach, most of us would probably sensibly choose to roll down a window, giving the additional option of discreetly puking down the outside (if necessary). After all, it’s inconsiderate to leave vomit in a mate’s car.

Even taxi drivers usually vocally object.

Actually, especially taxi drivers vocally object, you only have to be stuck hosing out the back of a cab (at 3 am, hypothetically speaking of course) because the new twenty one year old overindulged and vomited all over your nice dress and the car seat to know that for a fact.

But I digress.

As for Mr Bear, well. He used his impeccable judgement to remove the only device standing between a temporarily uncoordinated body and rather rapid forward motion through the front windshield in the event of an accident (i.e. his seatbelt), lean forward, and open the goddamn car door to achieve his fresh air.

Probably not his finest moment, all things considered. The predictable happened.

He rolled out of the moving car and immediately scored himself a hot date with a backboard, neckbrace, blaring ambulance, ventilator, multiple IV’s, chest x-ray, CT scan, and last-but-not-least a trauma handshake (PR examination). You will be relieved to know that other than some minor frontal brain contusions, he was alright.

I quickly add that ‘alright’ is a relative term. To be more precise, he woke up promptly (with the hangover from hell), swinging at anyone within reach and this is often what passes for alright in these sort of  situations.

I’m sure the brain damage will really improve his judgement next time he thinks about leaning out of a moving car.

Tale #2:

There isn’t really much I can say about this patient other than after the age of, say, sixty please, please, please for the love of g-d DON’T climb ladders. Just say no.

Should you ignore my impassioned plea you will inevitably land on your head, and that’s usually lights out for good. The principle is somewhat like buttered toast, but with skulls. Skull down, every time.

You’re especially in trouble when the nurse is fishing bits of your brain out of your ear canal in ICU. Generally speaking, that’s an event not considered compatible with extended survival. All three patients I’ve seen it happen to (one ear, and two nasal brain ooze if details matter) died.

Yes, the sample size may be small, but you’ll just have to take my word on the matter. Trust me.

If you’ll just excuse me for a moment.

I have an exam tomorrow, and I think I may vomit from sheer terror.

But I don’t show it. Promise. Nerves of steel here, just look at how steady my six-coffees-today-already hands are. Would you let me take your blood or mess around near your spine performing a lumbar puncture?

Don’t answer that. Please. I think I may find a ‘no’, albeit reasonable, rather demoralising.

In regards to my scan, well, not much going on in ovarian-city, or uteropolis.

Interestingly it wasn’t my usual RE today, so I had the privilege of showing a complete stranger my goods within twenty seconds of meeting him. With my husband in the room. It always strikes me as slightly surreal to have my dear spouse calmly stand by and watch another man insert anything into my genitals. Shouldn’t he be viciously defending my honour, rather than eating a museli bar?

I’d quip that my RE was sick of me (and my perineum), but she has a cast iron alibi in the form of allegedly being overseas. If she’s not, and she’s that sick of me, I think that we’re both in trouble.

This RE was rather underwhelmed with matters, whereas my RE would have been downright chirpy. Mind you, the only time I’ve seen her not put a disturbingly positive spin on things was when we had PBWCLEW. Hard to be chirpy about that.

In case specifics matter, or more accurately because I’m obsessed with numbers, let me give details.

I have three follicles at 12 mm, and my lining is 6mm which, compared with past performances (i.e. nothing over 10mm, that time was a total picnic) on such a tiny dose of Clomid, is pretty good. I can’t really expect much else, since upping the Clomid to get things to grow any faster will probably lead to an impressive ovarian explosion of follicles.

I think I’ll split the difference between the two RE-approaches and be guardedly optimistic that I may eventually ovulate one of those suckers. Eventually.

In the meantime, I now have another scan Monday to look forward to.

Now if you’ll kindly excuse me, I have some serious panicking to do. It is the sharp end of the needle that goes into the patient, right?

Sir Spamalot.

What else can I say but thank you for all the lovely birthday wishes?

As for what I got up to with my ‘special day’, well, let’s just leave it at the general theme of a NOT pregnant newly NOT-twentysomething indulging in a large amount of booze. Complete with traditional drunken shag of spouse at ridiculous hour of the night. I don’t think that I dreamed up that bit, although the memory of the event is more than a little hazy this morning.

One plus in being married/partnered/having-an-understanding/whatever-you-like-to-call-it is never having to venture too far for one’s booty call, although come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that he started it.

Does that count as taking advantage of my inebriated state, or was he just relieved that the shop is open for business again after all that leaky business?

Shag status not-withstanding, thank you all for the birthday wishes. Really.

xx

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

I must thank some totally random internet spam for providing my inspiration today. Where would I be without you? A girl’s gotta get her p.orn, c.ialas, f.cking, v.iagra, h.uge c..ck and u.nderage t.eens up.skirt c.am p.ictures from SOMEWHERE, and g-d knows I love to completely breach my computer’s limited security program hitting all those tasty strange links. Not.

Below, I enclose a rather impressively verbal missive that hit my inbox recently:

Note the lack of introduction. No introduction. None.

This is not starting well Strange Computer.

G-d knows that you’re busy emailing so many people in desperate need of your product, and I don’t expect a formally addressed ‘Dear Geohde’, but a simple ‘Hi/Hello/To the householder/Oy YOU’ would have sufficed.

‘You may have androgens about remedy when you tenth try touching an antidepressant, simply if you are bustier than 24 festivities old.’

Glad we cleared that one up.  Believe me, Strange Computer, you’re right on, I have androgens.

I checked when I found out about the PCOS. Your eerie knowledge has my full attention.

Since I’ve never tenth-tried-touching an antidepressant and I AM rather busty AND my festivities form a number on the north side of twenty four, is there something I should be doing? Do tell…..

‘You can receive your hurdler drink by finely dysphoria any shoulder or ancestral hotel authourising homes for at least eight warehouses before you catfish to overdo to sleep.’

I’ve never liked catfish, Strange Computer. Dysphoria on the other hand, I am very good at. Where do I get my drink?

‘The ci.alis of the coached reflux is acidified in the liver.’

Aaaaah, NOW I spot the motivation. You’re thinking of my burning oesophagus, aren’t you? So kind, Strange Computer. What does Ci.alis do again?

For some strange reason the word ‘bo.ner’ just springs to my dirty mind, and that just doesn’t seem all that related to my reflux. I’m stumped, please explain?

‘Before jittery can tick transported it must speculate harmed fully into painful cases to slick fatty widows and glycerol. Intake of a ci.alis by the manmade mother or spacious flavour is intracranial for the proportionality of the child.’

Dangit, that Ci.alis is pretty good if it can intracranial-for-proportionality, those are some BIG words. I’m easily impressed by Big Words. Where do I click? Don’t tease me now, tell me!

Under a myocardium flow hood, stand bananas from clue into toilet professionals hurting a evolutionary sterile teething device.

Oh G-d. Clearly I’m too dumb to get it.

You’ve gone and referred to toilet activities AND thrown the ‘sterile’ insult around. There’s no need to get nasty, Strange Computer.

‘These fixtures may portray followed by ci.alis and tiredness. Burn the fat shows you forwards why it’s soft you must lose, biologically “weight” (which includes muscle, ci.alis and regulatory lean tissue) and enough goes on to forefront you ait how to do it.’

Let’s leave the minor matter of my weight aside, please. Tell me more about the clever, clever Ci.alis.

I’m just dying to click on a suspect link to get some, truly. Leaving my credit card numbers with a dodgy off-shore website is no problem for me. Do it all the time. Promise.

‘If it is firmly keratin for your embryotoxic dose, confide the missed suppression and exclude the infinitive at your trigeminal adeptly updated time.’

After your ci.alis and teir sessions, don’t ont your alkaloids by invoking up authoritive infections strange as “this is ridiculous, i cannot cooperate bplace this way”.’

Um, exposing my confusion here. Alkaloids? Authoritative infections? I just want my Ci.alis! You promised me!

‘Do spontaneously sleep the sensorimotor to onlyow that is distorted or irritated, or to a lethargy area that may validate rubbed by higrnational cheese (such as a waistband).

Do infrequently distill varied if you don’t hit your season or if you apart lost 1 lb.’

And there my new Electronic Friend abruptly ended his/her missive, with nary a ‘farewell’. Rude sod.

I never did get that Ci.alis, wonder if I’m missing out on something?

Um. Well.

I’m starting to get a rather suspiciously unpleasant premonition that Wednesday’s scan in hunt of follicles is going to pull a corpus luteum out of the hat instead. Nice. Well, not nice, but what else can I say?

Either that, or my thermometer really hates me.

Check this out (and marvel at my perverse ovarian talent):

I mean, shoot, that’s kinda funny, right?

CD 3-6 beautifully (if suspiciously early) in my pre-egg action range. It was all looking so damn good.

I’m just killing myself with laughter over here.

I’ve found the temperature leap from CD7 just hilarious.

Only four days of pre-ovulatory temperatures after those damn pessaries wore off, and then a rather suspicious increase of the mercury to numbers in the established range of I’ve-made-progesterone-myself .

Go figure.

For the record, to emphasise just how bloody strange this all is:

• It shouldn’t be possible to actually have an ovulatory LH surge whilst taking Clomid, it blocks the pituitary from seeing Oestrogen levels. The brain should think ‘Oh crap, no oestrogen, better release some more of that ole’ FSH, I suppose and get on with it’, not ‘Oh crap, no oestrogen’ and reach back from the recliner and pull the release lever for LH in error.
• There shouldn’t be anything to ‘ovulate’ in either of my reproductively-challenged gonads. I’ve allegedly (although I’m suspicious given the extensive bleeding palaver that’s gone on recently) been suppressed by HRT. Wouldn’t it be really funny if it turns out that I CAN grow follicles whilst suppressed, but not when left to my own devices? It’s not like it’s meant to be some kind of ovarian challenge to see which can do the most inappropriate action, ferchrissakes.
• My personal best ovulation unmedicated is CD35, my personal best medicated is CD 20. I’m not a mathematical genius by a long shot, but CD flippin’ six is a long, looong way off either of those numbers. Unless it isn’t really CD six because the progesterone really didn’t work.

My brain hurts.

My ovaries hate me.

I don’t suppose any of you have a clever, reassuring, interpretation for my thermometer’s rebellious actions?

(and for the record, due to Fun Zone being closed down for repairs whilst bleeding, no horizontal folk dancing was perpetrated at anything like the right time. Besides, even the toughest of embryos need endometrium to implant and make a pregnancy. )

An open letter.

Dear Man in ICU with severe Closed Head Injury,

I am beyond sorry to see you, through no fault of your own, thrust into this place.

Your family are dead right, it’s not fair. It’s not right. It pisses me off, too.

You shouldn’t be lying in a bed, every major (and several minor) bones creatively splinted, a pressure monitor grotesquly protruding from your swollen head at a bizzarely jaunty angle, and tubes coming out of every possible orifice you have available. You just shouldn’t.

The truck driver who hit you at high speed should have been paying more attention. Really. It must have been beyond awful to experience those last few milliseconds of conscious existance starting at a rapidly closing dirty great big truck grill. Who knows what you thought?

But he didn’t pay attention, and you know what? He’s fine. Thought you’d find that amusing.

You’ll never know what even hit you because, let’s face facts here. You’ve been clobbered so thoroughly that you now have cerebrospinal fluid escaping freely from you eardrums and nasal cavity, all courtesy of those nasty base of skull fractures that have inconveniently connected the space around your brain with the outside world. Not an ideal environment for the average brain, all things considered.

Speaking of your brain, well. There’s not really anything positive I can say about the words ‘severe closed head injury, Glasgow coma scale of three’ and ‘fixed, dilated pupils’, is there?

I am sorry, it shouldn’t end like this. It just shouldn’t. Fools who wrap their daft hotted-up cars around trees whilst blind drunk, I can handle. But you did nothing wrong.

Sometimes I almost feel physically sick when I see this sort of thing,

G

Go on, guess.

Before I launch enthusiastically into my Whinge Du Jour, thank you all so much for cross-pollinating so damn well. I literally couldn’t have done it without you, and I had a great time reading/discovering new blogs in the process.

Returning to the regularly scheduled programme….

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I bet you’ll NEVER guess what my uppity reproductive system has decided to unleash on me this time.

I’ll give you a teaser with the phrase ‘Halfway through ovulation induction thaw cycle and a little on the pissed off side. Actually, a lot on the pissed off side. ’

Still no idea?

How about I add the following clues?:

The Mystery Item is something my uterus is apparently Very Good at doing, completely unscheduled.

• The Mystery Item is something Very Bad for acceptably think endometrial linings.
• The Mystery Item is something that is going to Render Me Anaemic at this rate since it’s been happening three weeks out of four lately.
• The Mystery Item is really putting a crimp on my sex life.

Surely you’ve got it by now? Some more help, although I doubt you need it:

• The Mystery Item may result in cancellation of my last transfer for some time (damn upcoming work commitments), but
• At least this time I won’t have wasted two (only so-so, sadly) embryos due to the Mystery Item’s impeccably timed unwanted input output.

All of you who voted for:

• Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, piss, fu@k, bollocks and shite, she’s bleeding again, isn’t she? How is that even humanly possible?

You get the prize for putting one of the more obvious two + two = Geohde screwed (again) calculations together.  Congratulations on your sleuth-like powers of deduction, although they weren’t precisely required.

Why yes, now that you mention it, there is a teeny-tiny minor matter that I seem to have re-entered the world of artfully engineered rod shaped, compressed, side channeled (with string) cotton wool up the whatsit again.

Now can you figure out how to make it stop, please?

I’d be more than happy to take names of those brave enough to fess up to the nurses at my clinic. I’m not, I freely admit since I think they might either:

• A: Hang up, after all this many calls about bleeding start to sound like suspiciously like I’m pulling their collective chains. I mean, that would be just a hilarious joke to pull, right?
• B: Sigh, fetch a picture of my completely-rooted-ovaries-and-womb out of the file marked ‘Not Her Again’ (from one of my many scans), pin it on a dartboard, and do what comes naturally with sharp aerodynamic objects to relieve stress. Bonus points for labelling it ‘The annoying b!tch with the FUBAR-ed innards’.
• C: Sigh, and gleefully cancel my cycle.

I figure that I may as well wait to get to my scan for option ‘C’. After all, if I’m going to be stuck with a cancellation fee, I may as well milk a damn ultrasound out of it, no?

Anybody who guessed:

• Oh my g-d, she’s going to have a baaayyyyyyyyhhhhhbbbbbeeee.

Um, sorry about that. Not yet, it would seem.

A guest post, brought to you by the great blog x-pollination….

Yes, I’m greedy…TWO. Don’t look at me like that. There was an uneven amount of names in ’sans’. What else could a girl do? 

…………………………………… 

This is a cross-pollination post. Guess who I am in the comments section below. Click on THIS link to see the regular post by this blogger.

This post is entitled ‘the happiness quotient’.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a planner. I love having things in order, and organized to a T. More than that, I thrive off of having something to look forward to. It could be anything, but more often than not, I’m pining for an upcoming vacation – some time off of work and a few days away with my husband. We’re taking a quick trip December 6-10 and I.can’t.wait. It’s only 30 days away, and it seems like an eternity.

Why do I do this? There’s a lot of other exciting things going on in the next 30 days – a friend’s wedding, Thanksgiving, family visiting, my husband’s birthday. Not to mention the little daily things that consume my life – a night out with the girls, a jewelry party, a hair and dentist appointment. Even those little tedious daily “chores” need to be done – paying bills, feeding the dogs, cleaning the house, etc. My life is full, in more ways than one. I really am truly blessed.

More than anything I want to stop wishing my days away. Every day I learn something and I grow. I might not have been lying on a beach in Jamaica on a random Sunday in October, but my very ordinary life went on nonetheless. It takes each one of these ordinary days to make the extraordinary even more magical.

I want to see the happiness in my every day life. I want to giggle from watching my dogs chase squirrels. I want to cherish my husband’s bearhugs. I want to laugh when my mom calls me with a silly story. I want to see the happiness that is my life.
Maybe, just maybe, if I can do that, it will make this IF road a little more bearable.

Thanks for having me as a guest blogger, don’t forget to guess who I am below in the comments section, and then click the link for your regular poster.

A guest post, brought to you by the great blog x-pollination…

Please enjoy the words of my eloquent (and rather complimentary) Mystery Blogger….  

………………………..

i know you are here for the wit and wisdom that geohde has in spades. reading her blog is definitely one of the highlights of my day. since it’s cross pollination day,though, you’re stuck with me in the meantime. let’s try to muddle along as best we can, until tomorrow returns you to your regularly scheduled programming.

i’m in the 2ww for my 5th clomid and 4th IUI cycle right now. the clomid research seems to indicate that if clomid will work for you, it will be effective by the 6th cycle you try it. however, the odds are much better for the first 4 cycles of those six. after 12 cycles, no longer is there any benefit, but suddenly the risk of ovarian CA rears its ugly head. so, being in my 5th clomid cycle i’m not holding out much hope for success. it’s possible, i guess. i’m more biding time until i can figure out what we will do IVF-wise. it’s come to that. clomid + IUI failed and now it’s IVF …or…or…what? don’t know. i’m also trying NOT to be too gloomy about this or the next clomid cycle on the chance that thinking it won’t work will actually make it not work. it seems the reverse doesn’t hold true…thinking it will work has no bearing on whether or not it does, yet i feel like thinking the clomid + IUI will fail almost certainly means it will.

so, here i am, trying not to be too optimistic, nor too pessimistic, not sure how to go forward, not trying to dwell too much on the backward (failed cycles, m/c, chemical), not sure how i ended up here in the first place. sometimes not even sure i want kids after all. guess who i am, and then click here to see if you were right.

………………………………..

Play fair and have a stab at the identity of Mz Mystery Blogger in the comments section, THEN click on the link above if you’re wondering what I had to say today….

Dang, but I had fun organising this, even if I DID have to crank out the excel spreadsheet of doom and annoy you all far too much with incessant ‘Did it work?’ emails.

Revision #1

Watch me meld frantic study and blogging into one great steaming mess as I, once again, try to do too many things at once*.

I fully expect the outcome to be a confusing demonstration of the well known principle that one can only be jack of all trades if also master of none, but since when has that ever stopped me?

My topic of choice today is revision of some slightly less-often practised procedural skills.

Take for example male catheretisation.

Being a not-unattractive young woman seems to make potential victims come over all shy about showing me their meat and two veg. It seems that whilst girlness is an advantage in one’s pap smear experience, it’s a handicap for catheters. 

I haven’t had the chance to shove a smallish hose-pipe up a defenceless willy in about half a year now. I’m sure the male residents of my Temple Of Ill Health Employment next year would appreciate a tad more familiarity than I currently possess, therefore I should probably revise the finer points of technique.

Tube. Penis. To the hilt. Blow up balloon. Or something to that effect…..

In the absence of a real live volunteer, including emphatic refusal from my dear spouse, I think I’ll just type how it ideally goes:

step1:Make sure that you put on the protective gown. Really. Piddle on the fancy skirt is Not A Good Look for the rest of one’s day, especially in the cafeteria queue. Watching people’s noses wrinkle looking for the source of the smell that is eerily reminiscent of a urinal is, well, embarrassing.

step2: Please be clear with the ward gatekeepers nurses that you and the patient are busy. No interruptions. Now is not the time for the lady from television rental OR the kitchen staff sorting out menu options to just pop by. They always look so surprised when they whisk back the curtain briskly to see exposed p.enis, cleverly arranged for maximum exposure with sterile drapes.

step3: Always have lots of lubricant and local anaesthetic. Always. Use them properly. Do explain why it is that you feel the need to hold the glans of your victim’s wee-wee closed after you’ve shoved it in there. If it leaks straight back out, it doesn’t work, so don’t omit this step, explain. Have a little light ‘I am in no way holding your p.enis’ conversation ready to pass the required minute or two, or it gets awkward. Trust me, the weather is not a good option.

step4:Shove the damn catheter in up to it’s rubbery hilt. Try not to look at the face of your victim too much whilst you do it, it’s off-putting. Don’t wiggle the wee-wee around trying to get it to pass, he’ll just have an e.rection, and boy it gets difficult to explain THAT if the kitchen lady does choose that moment to interrupt.

step5: Remember to blow up the em-effing balloon, or the whole contraption will just fall back out and you’ll have to start again. Also, connect it to the bag securely or you’ll have pee-pee all over the bed. The nurses hate that.

And you’re done! Nothing to it……

*See pregnancy #1, Clomid cycles 1-6 and IVF 1 and 2 for proof that educational efforts and procreative efforts most emphatically do notgo together like syphilis and penicillin.

Batterrrr-up!

 

Below consitutes a great big fat list of hyperlinks to the bloggity goodness of all the lovely ladies who volunteered or I otherwise cajoled into participating in cross-pollinating ther blogs. In case you’d like to play along at home.

You will note that (although it’s not normally precisely my forté) I’ve done my best to be sensitive, and have generated ‘avec’ and ‘sans’ groups so those of you who prefer not to read about rugrats in-or-ex-utero do not have to.

You will also note that I’m not going to give the game away by saying who’s swapped with who. See if you can guess.

Yes, I suppose you can always cheat since everyone should link to the blog holding their own usual post, but it’s not like I’m handing out a prize for most correct or anything. Don’t look at me like that, no prizes.

Really.

Without further ado:

May I present to you the AVEC group?

Kami : http://infertilityadventure.blogspot.com/

Waiting Amy: http://amy-waitingforwhat.blogspot.com/

Mrs Spock: http://www.mrsspock.blogspot.com/

Lori: http://weebleswobblog.blogspot.com/

Mel: http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/

Topcat: http://topcatworld.blogspot.com/

Bea: http://infertilefantasies.blogspot.com/

May: http://problemuterus.blogspot.com/

Wordgirl: http://www.bloodsigns.blogspot.com/

Farah: http://www.fertilizeme.blogspot.com/

Now, please go wild for the ladies of SANS:

Kristen: http://stickybean.blogspot.com/

Jennifer: http://jenniferelaineg.blogspot.com/

Meghan: http://alittlesweetness.blogspot.com/

LeeBee: http://nothowiplannedit.blogspot.com/

Lisa: http://theiflongandwindingroad.blogspot.com/

Dayzofrain: http://learningagain.wordpress.com/

PJ: http://www.coming2terms.com/

Schatzi: http://sassysgottablog.blogspot.com/

Cece: http://child-bearing-hips.blogspot.com/

Tracy: http://orlifeisabedofroses.blogspot.com/

Katie: http://www.takingthestatisticalbullet.blogspot.com/

M: http://quietsanctuary.wordpress.com/

MLO: http://www.mloknitting.com/

Imogen: http://www.madwomanramblings.blogspot.com/

Geohde: http://missionimpossibleinfertile.wordpress.com/

Carrie: http://carriepreciouslittle.blogspot.com/

Alison: http://uncomplicate-me.blogspot.com/

Hope I didn’t miss any names…….

The ideal penis.

Oh g-d how Google shall punish me for this.

Before I get much further, let me explain the rather titillating choice of title. Actually, let me hurriedly profess that I am NOT about to express and, um, firm opinions about the above title.

I simply have a story from the files of med-school-is-weird, please believe me when I say that I truly do spend my days doing rather strange things.

With pictures.

I have photographic evidence of how it is that I actually learn how to poke fingers up bottoms, take blood, shove in urinary catheters and perforate various bodily orifices when short of actual human volunteers (as is so often the case).

Bet you didn’t know that there’s a whole industry out there busily producing real life prosthetic bums, complete with interchangeable prostate glands (for our guessing pleasure), did you?

Well, just behold one of my colleagues seamlessly demonstrating her eerie ability to differentiate ‘benign hypertrophy’ from ‘cancer’ with a nary but a skilled twist of her index finger.

Gloves? A mere technicality. I’m quite sure that she wouldn’t omit that step on a Real Patient. Probably. Not more than once, at any rate.

In case you’re a little confused as to which way Mr Fake A.nus’s legs would point, if he had any (of course), it’s to the right of the picture. Unfortunately Mr A.nus’s cute little plastic scrotum is obscured by forearm.

Now, may I present to you the titular subject? Without further ado, Mr Ideal P.enis……

Mr Ideal P.enis earned this rather enviable sounding moniker recently.

You see, unlike Mr Fake A.nus, Mr Ideal P.enis has another job to do. His role in our education is different. He patiently allows us to inexpertly shove tubes up his delicate urethra as many times as we like. Believe me, that’s a very generous gesture.

He does it with nary a scream, moan or inadvertent embarrassing erection. Entirely unlike the Real Thing, believe me.

As a colleague who-shall-not-be-named immortally pronounced, upon deftly catheterising him for the fifth time, ‘Now THIS is what I call the ideal p.enis….’.

I took a picture for her to present to future suitors.

Gentlemen, take note. Don’t all line up at once.