BrooklynGirl

That Lean, Mean Green

Money money money money money
Some people got to have it
Some people really need it
Listen to me y'all, do things, do things, do bad things with it
You wanna do things, do things, do things, good things with it
Talk about cash money, money.
--The O'Jays

Well, I paid the fertility clinic today. I had been suffering from the delusion that the bills had been delayed or that some anonymous benefactor had taken pity on us and just made them go bye bye, but no--it turns out they had come and my husband was just waiting for the "right time" to bring it up. As if there is such a thing.

Feh.

GRRRRR

This is not exactly news, but my insurance company has officially rejected all my claims for IUI #1. I was expecting this as they had been quite vigorous in their assurance that I have no infertility coverage because my husband's lame ass HR folks are a bunch of cheap bastards (okay, they may not have said exactly that, but it was implied). I had hoped that some of the blood tests or ultrasounds would slip by as diagnostic, but no such luck.

So, that's $2,135 for February in case you weren't keeping track, and March will of course be more because I had a few more days of monitoring. MOTHERFUCKER.

Oh, and of course there's a kicker, and there would have to be, right, because after a week of working my ass off, I couldn't possibly have a nice quiet dinner and collapse peacefully into bed sometime before 9, could I? No, I couldn't because, like Monica, I have cramps.

DAMN.

Silver Linings

Well, it turns out that the pee stick was right and this cycle has ended, or since I'm focusing on silver linings, you might say the next cycle has begun. How do you like that optimism? I've called the clinic to let them know I'll be there for Day 3 bloodwork on Saturday. On the one hand, I'm hoping we stick with the Bravelle since I have a bunch left from the last cycle, but on the other, since I only produced one mature follicle, maybe we'll investigate some other options.

The negative HPT really broke my fall so I'm okay--or okay as you can be when your insides are sloughing off and your codeine containing drugs are in your medicine cabinet at home.^* Doh! A couple or 10 medicinal margaritas should fix me right up, and then I'll hop back in with both feet.

This new cycle is offically our 24th, so it's the two-year bookend of The Project, as we like to call it. There's not much that could make this milestone much worse except for the possibility that Saturday's ultrasound will reveal cysts, and I'll have to take a rest cycle. But we're gonna pull a Scarlett O'Hara, and think about that tomorrow.

^*I'm just being dramatic. Codeine, while fun, is not strictly necessary.

Change In Plans

I swore I wouldn't do it, but I just couldn't help myself this morning: I HPTed. It was a resounding negative--without even the merest hint of a second line. I'm 14 DPIUI today so I've got to be believe that if it were going to be positive, it would be by now. But it's not. And it's a bummer.

I'm supposed to go in for my beta tomorrow morning, but I've got a lot going on at work and school so I've decided not to go. A negative HPT in the privacy of my own home is one thing, but I just can't bear the idea of the call from the clinic. I'll wait it out a few more days, and if by some miracle Aunt Flo does not show, I'll go in for the beta.

Naturally, thoughts turn to what's next. I guess we'll try another medicated IUI if I'm cyst-free. My acupuncturist said I might want to think about taking 2 cycles off from the drugs and working on some "core" issues, and that's tempting too.

In the fullness of time, my friend Elizabeth would say. God, I hope so.

Acupuncture: The Sequel

I had my second acupuncture appointment today. I'm still on the fence about whether this will actually do anything for me fertility-wise, but after my first appointment I was very relaxed, and these days relaxation is nothing to shake a stick at. So, I went for appointment #2.

Now, I like my acupuncturist. Because Julie Bean had asked me to gather a little more information on last week's recommendation that I soak my feet in warm water at the end of the day, I asked about that, and she sort of chuckled and said, "Well, that alone won't get your pregnant, but it feels nice and it's part of Chinese tradition." And I respected her honesty. Also, she lives in the same funky little neighborhood as I do, which means we have some common ground. Plus, she's a 5 block walk from my house and costs a full 50% less than the acupuncturists in Manhattan, which I dig. Last week I was 6DPIUI so we focused on trying to stimulate the uterus to promote implantation. This week I'm 13 DPIUI and there's really nothing to be done with the exception of outright prayer and animal sacrifice. But she doesn't do those things so instead we worked on "supporting my uterus."

She said she had noticed a lot of tension in my upper back that she wanted to work on, and since my 2WW is winding down and I'm nothing but a little ball of tension, this sounded good to me. She told me lie on my front, and so of course Olivia Drab's post sprang to mind and all I could think was ASS NEEDLES! I was not able to think of a grown up way to ask "Are you going to stick needles in my bum?" so I tried to amuse myself by focusing on the wood plank floor beneath me. It was beautiful--pine, I think--with lots of grooves and indentations. Ultimately there were no needles below my coccyx, and we revisted some of last week's hot spots. Oh, and we did some moxibustion on my feet, which was kinda cool. There must be a bit of a firebug in me.

As the session ended, I started to panic about whether I should make an appointment for next week since I don't know what Tuesday's beta will hold. Making another appointment seemed like the realistic thing to do, but it also seemed like the sort of negative thinking that I've been trying to avoid. Still undecided about what to do, I was making out my check and she said, "Well, call me next week, whatever happens, and we'll figure out where to go from there," and she listed a bunch of things she wanted to try. It's nice to be reminded that there are lots of options out there, even if they're not options I fully believe in.

The Double Whammy

Let's start with the first whammy. As I've expounded previously, I have really sucky insurance that doesn't cover any of this infertility stuff. Now, everyone tells me that you don't really know what that means until you start submitting your claims so you should just submit them all anyway and see what happens.

Well, today I got my first rejected claim for procedure code 58322: Artificial Insemination. Damn. I was expecting this, and I hear if they're going to reject anything they're going to reject this, but still. I'm still waiting for the big bill from the clinic, and it's gotten so I'm almost afraid to open the mailbox.

Oh, and what's the second whammy? I have cramps. Definite PMS-type cramps. Shit.

Needles and the Infertile Girl

Well, apparently a whole week of not poking myself with a needles is too much, so today, just to recapture that special pin cusion feeling, I went to my first acupuncture session.

I am a Western medicine sort of girl. I like doctors and hospitals and drugs dispensed in shiny capsule form, but since those don't seem to be getting the job done, I thought I'd check out acupuncture. Now, going into it, my biggest fear was created courtesy of getupgrrl: I had a vision of myself stuck full of needles, totally forgotten by the acupuncturist, and too scared to remove the needles my own self so I could flee into the night. Still, when I talked to her to make the appointment and she asked if I had any questions, I couldn't will myself to say "You won't forget me on the table, will you?"

Also, my appointment was at 6 pm. On a Sunday night. Of President's Day weekend. When all of Western medicine has its answering service on. It seemed a little unusual, but it would leave me time to grab a bite to eat after and still be home for "Sex and the City." So, it was all good, as the kids like to say.

The appointment itself was anti-climactic. We talked about my diet and she said I should cut back on the carbs (tell me something I don't know) and stay away from cold foods so as to make my uterus as warm and inviting as possible. Also, I'm supposed to soak my feet in warm water every night--I didn't really get what that was all about, but it beats a subcutaneous injection in the tummy any day so I'll try it.

Then it was time for needles. She put some in my ears, in my scalp, in my feet, and in my belly. She covered me with mylar, turned on some soothing music, and left. I kept hearing her puttering around outside my little treatment room so I began to have faith that she would not abandon me--though the fear still tugged at the edges of my consciousness. I'm pleased to say she did eventually come back and removed the needles and, as a special bonus, rubbed some rose oil on my belly. What little embie wouldn't want a rose-sented uterus to call home for a little while?

The Day On Which We Take a Break from All That Fertility Stuff (Yeah Right)

I'm ready to try to stop obsessing about the IUI. My Infoholic Witch spent every spare moment yesterday googling IUI success rates and sperm motility information so I've about had it. I've pasted a quotable card above my computer--the one I bought myself on the day I decided to quit my job and go back to school. It says:

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson supposedly said this but I haven't been able to locate the source. I'll sic my Infoholic Witch right on that.

It’s a Numbers Game

With apologies to Harper’s Index:

The number of Spanish tests I could not concentrate on because I was obsessing about the IUI: 1
The number of mature follicles I expect to ovulate today: 1
The number of other women in the waiting room nervously clutching test tubes and semen analysis reports: 2
The number of times the tech called me by the wrong name (Jennifer) as she was performing the insemination: 3
The chance of success that the tech gave us for completing The Project this cycle: 20%
The approximate number of sperm deposited in my uterus this morning: 35 million
The motility, pre-wash: 43%
The motility, post-wash: 95%
The number of dollars spent on semen wash: 195
The number of times I sang the Offspring’s "Come Out and Play" with special new infertility lyrics (below): Infinity

Come Out and Play (Infertility Remix)

Hey, man you talkin' back to me
Take him out
I gotta get inseminated
Hey, man you disrespecting me
Take him out
I gotta get inseminated
Hey, they don't pay no mind
If you're over 25, it’s just a matter of time
Hey, come out and play

By the time you hear the ticking
It's already too late
The fertility’s questioned and the answers aren’t great:
One egg's tiny and the other's a waste
It goes down the same as the thousand before
No one's getting smarter
No one's learning the score
Your never ending spree of distress and despair
Is gonna tie your own rope
Tie your own rope
Tie a rope

Etc.

Seriously though, the IUI was fine, thanks to the buckets of support from my homegirls. We're supposed to have some non-technologically enhanced sex tonight and tomorrow and then I start progesterone suppositories. What fun!

Lesson Learned: Don't Do IUIs on Mondays

Notice: Really Boring Scheduling Minutia Below

Some people have been known to call my clinic a factory because there are so many people there--both patients and medical staff. I myself have found this comforting. I like that they have systems in place and that everything runs like a well ordered machine. Until today.

Now, one of the things that impressed me about the clinic is that they're up and running 7 days a week most of the year. Yesterday was a Saturday, and as I groused previously, when I went in around 7 am, the joint was jumping with business as usual. The way it works is that you go in for monitoring and a coordinator from the induction team calls you between 3 and 5 that afternoon to tell you what your next steps are. So yesterday afternoon I got a call as I was expecting, but it wasn't from my usual coordinator. He told me to go ahead with the trigger shot and to call today (Sunday) for a semen wash appointment on Monday when they'll do the IUI. Since this is my first time on this particular merry-go-round, I had lots of questions, but this fellow didn't have any answers and said I should ask when I call on Sunday.

Okay, now flash forward to Sunday. I call to make my appointment and get the clinic's answering service who says someone will call me back. An hour later, I get a call back telling me I'll have to call tomorrow to make an appointment, which isn't really practical since the appointments have to be made between 8 am and 10:30 am, and we have to leave the house by 6:30 to be there by 8. Add to this that I have a RIDICULOUS Spanish test tomorrow morning and my husband has a work meeting at 9:30. So, I'm all in a dither. I'm vaguely okay with blowing all that stuff off, but I'd be okay-er with it if we actually *had* an appointment, and I knew I wasn't going to spend that time just sitting around the waiting room twiddling my thumbs.

UGH!