And here, right here, is the quiet steady torture of IVF. This is why I
need to exist constantly, always, just shy of cautiously optimistic. No,
I don’t like sticking myself with needles and I don’t like all of my bruises
and it’s not nice to be roughly 1.5 times my normal size and hobbling around
with two bowling ball-sized ovaries, and my clothes don’t really fit and I’ve
had to wear stretch pants for three weeks straight. That’s not FUN. But the real pain lies in its many nuances:
- 8 transvaginal ultrasounds in 12 days that got increasingly uncomfortable as at least 23 follicles popped up and grew
- 9 blood draws in 12 days that resulted in my veins collapsing and a mad rush to find a portal for the anesthesia needle at retrieval
- a kerfuffle with the specialty pharmacy on day 12 that
almost cost me my cycle and resulted in a near-breakdown
- 10 nights of almost no sleep at all (first from the
estrogen, then nerves for retrieval, then anxiety over whether any of my
embryos will “make it”). I will not sleep tonight, I'm sure of that.
- the waiting: wait in the doctor's office.
wait to hear about med increases. wait for the refills to arrive on time.
wait to hear how many follicles I have. wait for the estrogen results.
wait to see if the trigger worked. Or if it worked too well. Waiting to see whether I'd develop OHSS (I didn't, thank goodness). Waiting, and waiting, and waiting until
day 5 and then day 6, then waiting for the pgs results if we even elect to
go that route instead of trying another stim cycle.
- The looking at myself in the mirror every morning and night, taking a deep breath, pushing the needles in, and knowing that this could result in a baby...or not.
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| Last night of stims: Lupron (trigger), Follistim, Menopur, and my trusty sharps container (aka my bff's) |
IVF is isolating. It is traumatic.
It’s all I talk about on social media and really in-person, and it’s caused me to
voluntarily cut myself off from so many of my friends and family, to spare them
the redundancy of just a constant steady stream of bad news. It’s why I don’t
smile for real and can’t let myself get excited about much at all. I’m constantly steadying
my hand, managing my expectations. This little embryo that could might be
my take-home baby and might be another dud, and I might have to repeat this
process again, and I have to hold all of the possible scenarios with equal care and consideration. IVF took my fertility woes and catapulted them through the stratosphere, where crashing back down to earth gets progressively more and more and more damaging. So I have to keep balance as best I can.
I am strong, I really believe that, and I also believe that I will fight until I get what I want. I'm not going to stop and I'm letting Hope rear its beautiful dangerous head because I am lucky to get just one embryo. But I'm constantly trying to play catch up here, and the things that I was worried about before I actually started seem so trite now. I feel like I'm in the battle of my life. The inside of my head would make a great movie.
I'm fixated, I'm hurt, I'm terrified, I'm obsessed, I'm on the verge...but I'm doing this and I guess I've proven that I'm determined enough to clumsily find my way through it. Thanks in no small part to my universe of support, I'm gonna find my way through it.
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| Retrieval day, on no sleep, looking forward to a sweeeeet medicated nap |
Until tomorrow, babes.
