Enduring Plum

I took another urine test this morning and today the line appeared darker and more quickly than it did yesterday, which is a positive sign; it could mean that the pregnancy hormone in my body had increased from yesterday (or it could just mean that my urine was more concentrated than it was yesterday). There's always the chance that the positive result has been caused by "trigger" shot hormones lingering in my system, but any of that should have diminished to almost nothing by now.

In any case, I scheduled my blood work for tomorrow at eleven, so that I won't have to go through the entire weekend wondering. Hopefully I'll get the news I want.

I've only really been dealing with OHSS since Sunday and I'm already so ready for this to be over! The bloating is freaking me out a little bit, but not as much as the weakness I feel after not drinking Gatorade every few minutes. Also, I have not been able to make a bowel movement since Sunday.

I called my doctor's office yesterday and felt comforted by what the nurse practitioner told me. She told me to weigh myself and call back if I gain any more weight, and to take chlortrimeton to help relieve some of the bloating, in addition to continuing to drink at least a liter of Gatorade a day.

The good news is that my weight did not increase from yesterday, but I'm still going to call them back tomorrow, I think, because I'm really just not feeling right and I think it's dehydration.

I had more blood work and another ultrasound this morning. My ovaries are hugely enlarged and pressing against my uterus, which is pressing against my bladder, so that explains why I've been going to the bathroom so frequently, but my small follicles have not continued to develop and my estrogen levels have fallen, so Dr. Lu is ready to go ahead with our IUI!

Earlier today I took another (95 dollar) shot of Ganirelex and tomorrow morning between seven and nine I will take the HCG trigger shot! Then all we have to do is wait until Saturday morning, when Carl will provide a "sample" that we'll bring to the lab to be prepared, and finally we'll go in to the office so I can actually undergo intra-uterine insemination.

Because we waited for so many days for my estrogen levels to begin dropping, some of my follicles are now a little past mature, with the largest being 22 millimeters. I felt a little sad that it probably can't be fertilized, but it is just a single cell, so I haven't been dwelling on it.

I went in for more blood work and another transvaginal ultrasound, which was hardly painful at all thanks to the prescription muscle relaxer I took about an hour before my appointment; of course, when I got home I wound up sleeping the rest of the day and I still feel sleepy, because I'm very sensitive to muscle relaxers and prescription pain killers.

My blood work was basically fine, aside from a high level of a "stress" hormone. The doctor who saw me today asked me if I was under any stress and I had to laugh like hell; I replied "Not anymore than anyone else in New Orleans!" Honestly - what a stupid question! If he had suggested I try to reduce my stress level I think I might have walked out of the examination room, pants or no pants.

By the time he asked me that, I was already annoyed beyond belief with this doctor and right now I'm feeling very thankful that I'm seeing Dr. Lu instead of him! You see, I have a huge number of follicles on both my right and left ovaries, but only three on each are mature or close to being mature, yet he insisted that I cancel this cycle! At one point he said, "I'm glad you're being so understanding about this," and I replied, "Well, I don't know if I'm going to be understanding about this or not," but he completely ignored that and brushed aside anything else I had to say. I understand that I run the risk of conceiving multiples, and I understand that I could experience ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), but I am absolutely not willing to cancel this cycle and waste all the time, money, and emotion I've invested in it so far!

Dr. Lu's nurse took me aside when he was going over the post-coital test with me to supposedly talk to me about OHSS, but once we sat down in a private conference room she laughed and said, "Well, Dr. Lu isn't going to cancel your cycle." I asked her and apparently this older doctor is always very conservative; in fact, he suggested that I was one of those women who will be fertile in to her forties, so I have plenty of time to try to get my ovaries to ovulate on their own with just metformin and clomid! I was bewildered and appalled by the suggestion! I explained that none of the women on either side of my family have ever had children beyond their mid thirties, but my family history was not going to change his mind about canceling my cycle and switching back to clomid and metformin, on which I have already failed to ovulate.

He also tried to convince me to move on to in-vitro fertilization and was shocked when I explained that it was too expensive. He wanted to know why I didn't have insurance that would cover it, so I explained that my health care is provided through the New Orleans' Musicians Clinic and that I am otherwise uninsurable. Because he was so quick to advocate in-vitro, I have a feeling that he was more interested in getting more money from us than in giving us a healthy pregnancy, or else that he just does not understand PCOS and insulin resistance as well as he should.

Fortunately, Dr. Lu reviewed my chart as well as the other doctor's notes and has not chosen to cancel my cycle, despite the large number of follicles on either ovary. He had me take a shot of Ganirelex (to prevent ovulation) tonight and wants me to go in for more tests tomorrow morning, because he'd like to see my estrogen levels rise fall before attempting IUI (intra-uterine insemination).

We would have just attempted to time sex correctly, but my cervical mucus is apparently hostile to sperm (somehow I'm not really surprised), so IUI just makes better sense for us.

I should undergo IUI sometime this week!

My visit to The Special Man's office went pretty well, although things have not advanced quite to his satisfaction. They took my blood, then went I went in for the transvaginal ultrasound, which is really the most important step right now because these ultrasounds are monitoring how my follicles (the structures that contain the eggs) are developing; it turns out that I have four or five follicles on each ovary, but none of them are close enough to being mature to advance, so I'm going to be taking an increased dosage of Follistim (200 IU instead of 150 IU) today and tomorrow, and then I'll go back for more blood work and another ultrasound on Friday.

Hopefully I'll be feeling better by my appointment Friday afternoon. Like my dad and so many others right now, I'm sick with a cold or flu. I was feeling pretty good this morning, but as the day wore on I began to feel worse and worse. Now my sore throat is back, my congestion hasn't let up, and I'm having muscle aches and chills. The neti pot my mom bought helped relieve my congestion a lot and I didn't really expect it to work at all, but that thing is wonderful! I'm going to use it again in a little while, because it does a better job than any of the decongestants I've been taking. If nothing else, I think I do feel better than my dad, who has been staggering around the house in his tighty whities in a NyQuil stupor when he's dragged himself out of his bed for whatever reason; he's got a lot of congestion in his chest and is obviously feeling downright dreadful.

Surprisingly, it's supposed to freeze tonight! We brought all the cats in, even Sterling -- and he is not pleased with us at all.

Well, it's no wonder I was having so much pain in the region of my right ovary, because I have a cyst there that dwarfs the poor, little ovary to which it is attached. I did expect them to find cysts/follicles and I thought I might have a rather large one on my right ovary because of the pain it's been causing me lately, but I did not expect anything quite that disturbingly large.

Because of the cyst we have to wait to go ahead with injectable drugs, so this month I'm taking my temperature as normal, continuing taking my metformin, and taking a birth control pill in an attempt to diminish the cyst and just generally calm my ovaries down.

I go back for another ultrasound in eighteen days or so. If I come up without any large cysts and my bloodwork is okay, we can probably move on to injectables.

I'm struggling with a particularly bad and sudden bout of depression right now. Looking back, I think I saw it sneaking up on me, but I never realize it until it hits me hard. This is the only time I start wishing for the magical pills the psychologist can prescribe, but the long term side effects are never worth it to remain "med compliant." I've been diagnosed with major depression and bi-polar disorder, so it's clear to me that none of my doctors have really understood why I go through this; I think it's more closely related to my out of whack hormones than anything else, because I first began suffering with depression during puberty, whereas other manic-depressives I've known have been severely afflicted with their mental illness since they were young children - Maybe I should take my left over Clomid as a mood enhancer.

Other than feeling depressed, I'm trying to keep up with my class work, but I'm falling behind, I'm continuing to learn new songs so I can keep subbing with the Pfister Sisters, but I'm also apathetic about that, I'm urging Carl to keep working on getting us pre-approved for that home loan because I don't think I can work on it myself right now, I'm pursuing outside financing to help with our infertility treatment costs, and I'm just waiting on my period so that I can begin those treatments. I have a long cycle, but it's later than usual, so I may have to take the Prometrium my ObGyn prescribed to induce it; I'm going to wait until next week to see if it will come on its own, because I dislike taking drugs unnecessarily.

I've made my appointment with The Special Man. I'll be seeing him at ten-thirty in the morning on October thirtieth, which I feel is an auspicious date and time; I feel there's something very special about seeing him on that day, when the veils between worlds are at their thinnest, the day before Samhain, which is a very transformative day.

The cost of the initial appointment is a bit painful, at two hundred dollars, but as Leela would say, "You gotta do what you gotta do." It most bothers me that I have no idea what the following treatments will cost or if every visit will cost us a cool two hundred dollars; I don't think that will be the case, but I suppose it's possible.

My mom did raise the point that I am technically homeless, so I should bring that up to see if they're able to offer me any discounts. At the same time, because this is a fertility specialist, I don't know if I want to bring up our tenuous living arrangements because then he may not feel I'm ready to begin treatment with him, which is far from the truth; people just so often misunderstand.

On a different note, we've found a house on which we plan to make an offer. It needs a ton of work, but it's on a great block in a good neighborhood that had minimal flooding and no flooding in any of the homes. This week we're trying to get the estimates for the work we'll need done on the house and pursuing state bond money, for which we are eligible.

It seems odd, but I think that taking Clomid has improved my overall mood. I have often struggled with depression in the past and last month was no exception, but this month I am again chipper and pleasantly motivated. I feel that way naturally sporadically, as is the case with most people, but I always feel cheerful and energized when I get close to my period, so I think my elevated mood is strongly connected to the Clomid and the associated hormones. At the same time, I'm also more emotional; usually only touching stories about the loyalty of dogs will make me tear up, but I've found myself tearing up from just thinking of something especially sweet or if a particularly sad song comes up on my playlist.

Yesterday I began my third cycle of Clomid, which I am taking on Cycle Days 3 through 7 at 150mg a day. I was supposed to have done my third cycle last month, but the pharmacy filled a lower dosage and then failed to fill the correct dosage before I left town for Dragon*Con. It's just as well, really, because I've had a lot of interstitial cystitis pain all this month, so having sex every other day would have been difficult and stressful for me; I'm hesitant to take the muscle relaxers Dr. McSherry prescribed because they are extremely relaxing, so much so that I feel wobbly, dizzy, and weak. It was also just nice to have a break from taking my BBT each morning, peeing in a little cup every afternoon, and all the general pressure of trying-to-conceive.

We're trying again this month, without any idea what the future will bring, but I still feel comfortable with the decision to try to conceive now, rather than later, for a multitude of reasons that I won't re-examine right now.

On a different note, I really want to make cinnamon rolls! I found a couple recipes on All Recipes that I think I can modify to be less sugary and with fewer carbohydrates, but still delicious. I think I'll try the home economics teacher's recipe first.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cinnamon-Rolls-I-2/Detail.aspx
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Ninety-Minute-Cinnamon-Rolls/Detail.aspx

I'm taking a perspective class this semester and I need to buy myself a graphics tablet for it, but I have no idea what brand I should purchase or what size, so I have a lot of research to do before I can start doing my class work. I'm going to order my text book tonight, so I can at least start my assigned reading as soon as possible. The more "real" assignments won't be due until the second week of classes, to allow the students time to collect all of their materials.