You Know You're An Infertility Patient When...

...the lab tech knows you by your veins rather than your name. "Oh, I remember you, you're the one I have to draw in the top of your hand instead of your arm."

...early morning his-and-hers lab appointments count as a "date". "But honey, it'll be romantic, really - we'll get to see the sunrise on our way to the lab." (It was a good effort, but he didn't buy it. Apparently his idea of fun at 6 a.m. involves sleep rather than a needle being jabbed into his arm. Imagine.)

More to come later (hopefully this weekend), but I just wanted to make a quick post since I've been quiet the last few weeks. Nothing majorly exciting going on, just beyond crazy busy at work. Since I was in a humorous mood for the moment, I figured I'd share...

As I Said...

It's a week later. (Okay, 9 days, though I did actually test 2 days ago, so that part was exactly a week.) Anyway, as I said in my last post...still only 1 single line. And then CD1 showed up.

So, no big happy surprise.

I guess the cramping I was feeling just before we left for vacation must have been ovulation rather than implantation. I used to only have a few sharp pinches around ovulation time, but within the past year or so I've been noticing a bit of spotting around that time and cramping rather than pinching. I wonder if it means my ovaries are covered in scar tissue from all of the retrievals? They've each been poked with a needle more than 50 times, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Oh, and about the hot tub - thank you all for the advice. I decided to follow the prevailing vote and stay out of it. Oddly enough, no one else expressed interest in going in again all week, which was particularly surprising given the group we were with.

One thing I am happy about (in that odd way that only someone who's been dealing with IF for a ridiculously long time can be) is that at least my post-ovulation progesterone levels seemed to be higher than they usually are, given all the symptoms I had. So maybe my body is functioning in a semi-normal way in at least one respect.

And now, I need to cross my fingers that it continues to do so. I spoke with RI's office today. I'm still waiting for the test orders, but one of them will be an endometrial biopsy, which from what I understand has to take place at a certain point after ovulation. So I will be starting up with the OPK pee sticks in about 10 days. Given my ovaries' propensity to quiet down when I need them to work (and to work when I need them to be quiet), I could wind up going through quite a few sticks.

To that end - and since I kind of pigged out on vacation - I regrouped again yesterday to cut the refined sugar and caffeine out of my diet.

It's day 2. I'm hungry, I'm cranky, I'm sleepy, and I. Want. Sugar.

I've been eating fruit in an attempt to compensate - strawberries, raspberries. I cut up an entire watermelon last night. I eyed a banana as dessert. Of course, it would have been much better sliced up over a bowl of ice cream and chocolate sauce, but I figure I have to make it for at least 48 hours. :-) (Ideally, much longer.)

I know it gets better. It's just this initial withdrawl period that stinks.

I'm an Idiot

In more ways than one. And I have the receipt to prove it.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I still cling to the faint hope that I can be like a normal person who has sex, gets knocked up, and pops out a kid 9 months later.

R discourages hip-propping after the deed, figuring that I don't have much of a chance of producing a normal, healthy egg sans fertility meds. But last weekend I ignored him and did it anyway.

So then on Thursday, I started having really bad cramps. As in, I-can't-remember-the-last-time-I-had-cramps-this-bad cramps. I even went home early from work.

And I was ticked, because we were leaving for a week at the beach yesterday, and the last thing I wanted was to be dealing with AF. But I didn't start to spot or bleed.

Then last night it occurred to me that my chest is sore, which rarely happens outside of pregnancy. This morning, the back pain started, and I've been having AF-like aching and pains all day long. Which I thought were maybe round ligament pains.

So I made R take me to the store to buy a test (first way in which I am an idiot, as proven by the store receipt for the test). Of course it was negative, despite my hopes to the contrary (second way in which I'm an idiot). And then after taking the test, it occurred to me that given that we had sex last weekend, I could only be a week out from conception at the very most, so if anything these are implantation pains and it's still way too early to test (third way in which I'm an idiot).

But now I don't want to hang out in the hot tub with our friends, and there are two more pregnancy tests stashed in one of the dresser drawers, mocking me and tempting me. And chances are 99,999 to 1 that in a week I'm going to be coming back on here to post that 1) AF has shown up, or 2) Still no sign of AF, but the tests still show only one stupid line.

In other news...I had a phone consult with an RE who believes in immune issues. She recommended IVIg - no big surprise there. I finally got myself together enough to send off my records to an RI as well, so I'm waiting to hear what tests he wants to order.

My dad is doing well enough that his oncologist now thinks he is a candidate for a bone marrow transplant. (The level of cancerous cells in his blood is low, but on the other hand his marrow isn't producing much blood, so he's still needing transfusions all the time - hence the recommendation for the transplant.)

So his siblings are getting tested, and we're waiting for the results. Our next FET is on hold until we know more about what's going on with him and whether I'll need to be tested as a possible donor.

My mother is having memory issues, not to the degree that I think it's dementia but still to a degree that is unusual for her and something to keep an eye on. She doesn't believe this, so we had another big blowout in which she: 1) accused my husband of lying, 2) accused me of trying to make her think she has Alzheimer's, and 3) accused me of making her upset enough to have a stroke. (This, despite the fact that I never raised my voice to her, even when she was shouting at me.)

We are still living under the same roof as her, but now all of our communication with her takes place through e-mails, which are sent to her and then printed out, logged in a binder kept in the kitchen, and I even go so far as to make a copy of the log sheet every time I add to it, so that I have proof in case she ever tries to remove an e-mail and edit the log, because that is something she would do.

And she thinks the problem is us.

I've also been doing some preparations for Plan B. More on that to come in a later post, but for now I need your thoughts - do I spend the next week staying out of the hot tub on the very remote chance that this may be implantation that I'm feeling, or do I throw caution to the wind, climb in, and say "Whatever will be, will be"? If you were me, what would you do?

(Also, Peaches, you commented a few posts ago that you'd be willing to chat about surrogacy, but I'm not sure how to contact you as your name doesn't seem to link to a blog?)