Race ya

Here's what this feels like to me (on my bad days, which is sometimes every day):

You break your toes. All of your toes, your big toe and little toe and the ones that went to market and the ones that stayed home, and you break them randomly, cruelly, really painfully, and you're just dumbfounded. You can't understand why you keep on breaking toes, you look where you're going and step so carefully, you spend thousands on good shoes with ankle support and you read every last book on toe-break prevention, but you can't help it, the toes just snap no matter what you do. You get tiny little toe casts which give you momentary relief, but as soon as one of them comes off the toe breaks again, and I don't have to tell you that it hurts more the second time around. 

And then just when you can't take it anymore a magic genie doctor appears and tells you about a potion that he promises will make your feet "good as new," but it's halfway across the world and you have to walk miles and miles to get this stuff and there aren't any buses or trains that will take you even a block or two and this is the only thing you can take to heal (ha), this is the only way. 

So you start walking. I mean, what choice do you have. 

As you hobble towards your salvation, people are just sprinting past you. Running circles around your dilapidated depleted self, slapping you on the back and yelling "you can do it!" "just think good things!" "at least you're still alive!!" into the wind as they pass you up one, two, three times and without any effort. 

You're walking by the most gorgeous scenery in the world, these perfect idyllic towns, but you don't pay attention because you can't stop focusing on your stupid ugly feet and then you realize that you're focusing only on your stupid ugly feet and feel even worse about yourself because you can't even smell the flowers or feel the sunshine.

And months or years later, when you're almost there, almost to the finish line, you learn that this potion will probably help but oops, magic doc forgot to tell you that it isn't actually a guarantee, just a possibility, and sometimes people who take this medication develop bizarre side effects like maybe they grow an extra arm or can't ever blink again. And you've forgotten where you live and who you know and who you are, you can probably remember your name but everything else you just left on the long long road you've been walking on forever towards this one measly possible chance at comfort. And you're not looking good, you're gross and sweaty and hoarse, and eeeeeveryone can see you. Everyone. And they're all wearing sandals and their pedicures are perfect. 

This metaphor is completely on the nose (or the toes), I realize. I thought it was clever at first but now I'm not so sure. 

ivf ftw

The psychologist at my RE's office told me that if my transfer fails, it will be awful...but she's more worried about me if it's a success.

She talked about our baby making it to 6 weeks, heartbeat, then 8 weeks, then 9 weeks when I can stop the PIO shots, then 12 weeks when I'll be returned to the care of my OB, then 20 weeks, then 24...and so on and so on and I couldn't stop crying, and eventually I said, "I just can't imagine ever getting that far." And she said, "I know."

Three years of trying, two of absolutely perfect timing, 8 months of letrozole/trigger, and 2 IUI's resulting in: one miscarriage, one ectopic and removal of right tube, and five chemicals...and I'm ready to admit that something's not working. There's a thing that's wrong with me or there's a thing that's wrong with our embryos but there's a thing that's wrong. We have killer insurance and I'm at my wits' end and broken from the inside out and well, it's time to give it our all and our best shot so we're doing in vitro fucking fertilization. Starting in October.

Even though I researched this I didn't know what it entails, and what it entails is this, best-case scenario: self-administered shots to the abdomen for several days to plump up your ovaries and produce lots and lots of beautiful follicles, most of which hopefully contain a perfect maturing egg. You give yourself another shot that triggers your ovaries to release all of those eggies, then roughly 34-36 hours later it's to the doctor's office for Egg Retrieval Day, where they make a little incision and suck out the eggs and fertilize them in a lab using technology that I am grateful for and which makes my head spin, then they age the "embabies" (I am fond of this term) to three days, then to five, then they freeze them and biopsy them and send them for genetic testing. I get a little rest. THEN I start taking estrogen pills and injecting myself with a truly terrifying needle, right in my butt, which is all supposed to prime my body for Transfer Day, where they put the thing back in me and hopefully it implants and bam, I'm pregnant. Scary butt shots until 9 weeks but I'm pregnant so I do not fucking care.

Best case scenario.

Worst case scenario is that I don't respond to the medication and if I do respond maybe I ovulate too early and the whole thing is a bust, and maybe I ovulate on time but they aren't able to retrieve any mature eggs and maybe none of our embryos make it to three days or five days and maybe none of them test genetically "normal" and maybe they don't survive the freeze or maybe they don't survive the thaw or maybe somebody sneezes in the petri dish or maybe I get OHSS and have to stay in bed for five weeks or maybe I get pregnant and it's another chemical or maybe I get pregnant and miscarry in my second or third trimester or maybe the birth hurts or kills me and maybe I never get to take a baby, MY baby, home from the hospital and I don't ever have children and don't ever recover from the trauma of these last several years but most specifically from the trauma of my failed ivf cycles.

I am completely overwhelmed, I am so excited, and I am beyond terrified. I have isolated myself to an astonishing extent and I mostly speak to my husband, my mother and sister, and a few friends who persist in contacting me for some reason.

I'm going to write all about my ivf experience. Some who read might not agree with this crazy science (I am open to discussion but not to ignorance), some might gain insight, some might stop after the first paragraph because it's just too boring, but I'm documenting all of it here because this process affects so many of us and it is kept silent and the lead-up to this is the worst hardest most inexplicable thing I've ever been through. Maybe this starts or continues a conversation or something, maybe it's purely gratuitous self-indulgence but at this point and in this pain and with this renewed hope I do not care.

Been on birth control pills for a couple of weeks, hysteroscopy last Friday, slated for baseline ultrasound and bloodwork on October 2nd and will start injections (stimming) on October 4th.

Here we go.