Crackin Up

I think it was just yesterday…not even a full 24 hours ago in fact, that I was talking to my friend Jena on the phone and I made the comment “this hasn’t been a bad experience at all so far.” Well, I forgot to knock-on-wood and “so far” jumped up and kicked me in the ass.

I had a shitty day yesterday. J came home from work…which means it’s “medicine time”. To be honest, I’ve almost been looking forward to it everyday. It’s like our bonding time. We don’t get to go through a passionate night of “lovemaking” (who here hates that word?) to conceive a child. Instead we’re doing injections, which truthfully have been WAY harder on him than they have on me. Until last night. Something in me snapped during our bonding experience. Apparently I have about a 3-week mental limit on: a) the number of needles I can possibly stand, b) the idea of having no control over my own body, and c) the hourly thoughts of “oh my god, I’m not having any side effects right now…I need to get xyz done while I still can.”

I started a new drug last Friday - Bravelle. It’s the scary drug, which may or may not cause my body to store up to 15+ pounds (yes, pounds) of water either on my lungs, my heart or my ovaries, or all three. Ok, let’s just get this out of the way. I have become a MAJOR hypochondriac since the beginning of this month. Truth: I was one to start…only now I have a real reason.

Anyhoo – Bravelle is a separate injection. So I’m now taking 2 a day for whoever is keeping count. Lupron and Bravelle. Lupron keeps my body from really moving forward with ovulation…and Bravelle is telling my ovaries to go crazy. So right now it’s kind of like hitting the gas and the brakes at the same time. My engine is revving, but the car ain’t movin’. Jesus…have I lived in the south too long…that wasn’t a NASCAR reference was it? Crap.

The injections are given a half inch below the belly button and about a half inch either to the right or the left. So up until Friday I was only getting one shot a day…so each side of my tummy had a day of rest. Now that I’m getting 2 – there’s no resting. My stomach has turned a lovely shade of purple and green. With red dots everywhere. The Lupron shot is not bad at all…the needle is tiny and there’s about 2 drops of drug being put in me, so it’s lasts about a second and it’s done. Although now that my stomach is so damn sore, even the Lupron has become a bit painful.

The Bravelle is a different story. The needle is just a tiny bit bigger than the Lupron needle. THAT part doesn’t bother me. The part that DOES hurt is the actual drug being injected. First of all, it’s a huge dosage. It’s 4 vials of the drug and .5 cc of the liquid solution…that probably means nothing to you guys…but trust me…it’s a lot, it has to be injected slowly, and it takes a good 10 seconds to get it all in there. In real-person time…10 seconds isn’t that long. On Planet Bravelle….it’s 10 seconds of having the hottest burning fire injected into your already bruised, most sensitive part of your stomach. I was stung by a hornet once in high school. It’s similar to that. There’s the initial prick…then burning. Then burning so f-ing intense you don’t think you can take it another second. Then the needle is out…and then the pain continues to increase for another 5 or so minutes. Insert my wimpy-ness, so that’s at least 20 minutes of sobbing (after the initial screeching into a pillow as it happens…and of course the 15 minutes of whimpering just in anticipation of what’s to come). It takes about a half hour until the burning starts to subside. At least an hour after that until it doesn’t hurt at all. And then the bruising kicks in. My favorite position for sleeping is flat on my stomach. Last night I rolled over on my tummy around 2am and it hurt so damn bad it woke me up.

Last night was injection #4 of Bravelle. The weird part is every time I get the shot, it hurts more and more. Whereas Lupron hurt less and less. The first 3 days of Bravelle (although it wasn’t my favorite time of day, was doable). Last night marks the end of “doable”. I’m now so damn bruised that when DH just pinches the injection site (you have to grab a flap of skin and then do the shot) THAT alone sends me into orbit.

The doctor’s office called here around 10am today to confirm my blood draw for tomorrow. I asked the nurse (who is amazingly nice…she once talked to me for 45 minutes on the phone just to see how I was handling everything…she’s really incredible) if this burning was “normal”. She told me that since I’m smaller, I’m going to have a lot more pain and bruising.

Tangent: So…WTF…I get screwed because I’m thin? I can’t help that. Jesus Christ…I eat like an f-ing horse…ok, pig. To top it off, I can never find jeans that fit correctly. NOBODY ever has size 2…or even 4. Now I’m going to have more pain and bruising because I’m small…haven’t I already paid the price????? I can’t buy f-ing JEANS like normal people!!!!! Being thin also puts me at risk for hyper-stimulation. WTF? Had I known this I’d have started eating cows on the hour every hour for weeks leading up to this!!!!!!! I’m never dieting. In fact after this…I’m going to make it a point to gain at least 50 pounds.

Can I also just add here (while we’re on this tangent) that I’ve had several glasses of wine (oh my god it’s only 2:30pm). I’m a bit tipsy. Ok, I might be more than tipsy. Let me just say that I am on vacation this week. That topped with my imminent mental break-down, I thought a bottle of wine might be a wise idea. Plus, I figured, hell with it. Here I had this romantic idea of getting pregnant. When we first started trying, I was on all organic foods, no alcohol whatsoever, I was exercising (yes, me!), I wasn’t letting any stress sit with me, I was even sleeping with an air purifier inches away from my face. I figured if I did it all right, I’d end up with this fabulously healthy, beautiful baby.

SUR-VEY SAYS……..errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk…. (that's my typed imitation of the "Family Feud" noise, in case you didn't catch that).

That has all gone out the window. I am now willingly injecting my body full of hormones and drugs that may or may not cause cancer in the state of California. These drugs actually make my uterus a “hostile environment” for embryos….ironically for the sake of creating embryos in the first place. Sorry…blastocysts....we want blastocycts. Even more ironic – because these drugs create a bad environment for an embryo, I have to be on MORE drugs (Progesterone) once I’m actually pregnant to turn my body back into a “good growing area”. And the irony doesn’t end THERE. Progesterone is (supposedly) proven by the FDA to actually cause deformities in the fetus. Although, frankly, I think the FDA is full of crap…Progesterone occurs naturally in the pregnant body anyway. So I’m taking my chances. Seeing as I have no choice in the matter anyway. Ok…oh my god, between the wine and this last paragraph I’m really about to panic…so let’s switch gears here…

Tangent over. Back to the story:

The nurse told me that if I was really concerned about the pain, I should call the doctor and talk to him about it. I actually spent an hour procrastinating the phone call. “It’s his cell phone, it’s the holidays, I don’t want him to think I’m a total wimp…” Then another thought popped into my mind: "I’m going to be in debt for the next several years because of this man...hell with it…where’s his cell number?" He answered the phone and I could hear a tea-pot whistling in the background. I instantly had visions of him at a ski resort, snow coming down peacefully outside, him cuddled up with his (much younger) wife by the fire. It was all very Currier & Ives. I wanted to kill him before he even said hello.

I told him what was going on. He said it was normal. Shit. Pictured him spilling the hot tea-pot all over him. Felt a little better. Then he suggested if it was hurting THAT bad, that I could inject the Bravelle intramuscularly and there shouldn’t be any burning. Ohh...It’s an inch AND A HALF needle. In my hip. Oh…and J's not a doctor...I’m just not down with me being any more of an experiment that I already am. I told him I’d deal with the pain. He laughed…apparently I’m f-ing hilarious. I bit my lip to hold back tears…hung up on the phone and thought…my god, I’ve got at a minimum another week of this stuff…will I be able to do it?

So that’s where I am: In less than 24 hours I’m gone from…”this really isn’t that bad”….to “I don’t know if I can finish IVF.”

It’s really disappointing to know that I’m emotionally breaking down so quickly over all this. I thought I was being “tough”…but I’m not even close. I mean if I can’t handle THIS…how the hell will I handle actually giving birth, or worse - dealing with teenagers? Haha.

I’m just feeling like this really weak person today. Hence the glass of wine. And the glass number 5 of wine. I’m also feeling ridiculously emotional. Not sure if that’s a side effect from glass #5, or from the drugs, or the whole damn process - or what.

But the worst part about it is: since my screeching, sobbing debacle from last night, J's been apologizing left and right. And NOT because he’s giving me injections. For the whole situation that HE feels like he got me into. That alone makes me want to cry. He’s still not over the idea that this is “all his fault”. Which of course it isn’t. But he still doesn’t get that. Blame genetics, blame pollution…but it’s not his fault. So it makes me feel even more of a loser that I can’t fake it through the pain if nothing else for his sake.

And YES…I know it’s pain that’s going to result in a baby (knock on wood)…I know it’s going to be worth it. But that’s not really registering with me. IVF and getting pregnant still feel like two totally different animals at the moment. In my mind, they have nothing to do with each other. Jeffrey keeps saying that when he gives me the shots: “Just think what will happen in the end.” Yeah, that’s not working for me.

Apparently WINE is though. It’s literally taken me 2 hours to write all this. Mostly because I’m being ultra-careful not to spill any wine as I poor my sorry ass a new glass. Hey - I’m a poet and I didn’t know it. See? I’ve had too much.

Tomorrow is my first day of blood work. I go in at 9:30 for blood, then I have to be at the hospital at 11am for my first ultrasound. I’ll be doing that every day for at least 4-5 days. They’re monitoring my hormone levels and my ovaries to see how quickly things are working. They will start adjusting my drugs on a daily basis…and depending on how quickly my body reacts will determine the date that they harvest my eggs. Tentatively I’m on the calendar for November 28th (one week from today). It’s an out-patient surgery. I’ll be totally knocked-out for it (thank god). Although I’m totally freaked out about having my legs up in stirrups and not being conscious. I hope they let J stay with me the entire time. The surgery itself doesn’t scare me…just the phobia of what’s going on with my body while I’m dead to the world. Oh…and in my bizarre little brain…I’m mostly (and secretly) TERRIFIED of the IV I’ll have to have. Ok, it’s no longer a secret. Damn.

I’ll be getting bloodwork and ultrasounds every day except Thanksgiving. They’re giving me that day off. Woohoo!! Although I’m still getting 2 injections a day until the harvesting. Undo that "woohoo".

It’s really coming down to the wire here. I could be pregnant in a week and half to 2 weeks. My god, that’s soon. Maybe that’s why I’m cracking up a little. Time has caught up with me…and suddenly…WHAM…it’s here….it’s happening....and I'm freaking out....

Maybe. Or maybe it’s because I have less than 3 hours before my next set of injections…..