94%

Well, game on. Everything went smoothly this morning. Had a great count today of 94% and 42 mil. They washed the little sperm buggers up, gave 'em a nice close shave, splashed 'em with cologne, and sent them on their way. May the best man win. Please win. Please.

Now it's the waiting game again. Let's hope these next 2 weeks (Tick) go quickly (Tock).

And, I will write this, I wasn't going to, but it's my secret hope that this is our month. It'll be the one year anniverary of my father's death, and if it's a go, I know I will not be able to help feeling connected to him. Please, let it be our time.

Better than an ice cream headache on a hot summer day

At 10:30 sharp! the needle went in. Sean did a great job handling the Waffler and Negotiater. The first time over each new hurdle is a bit unnerving. I'm glad to be done with all of the needles this time around. Now the progesterone begins, twice a day. Curious thing, though, while looking at he bottle this morning I saw 2 red warning stickers. One told me not to operate any large machinery or drive until I know how this will affect me. Ok, so, I've seen that one before, I'm guessing this may make me drowsy (Get in line progestrone, get in line). The other one told me not to use this medication if I am pregnant or plan to become pregnant. Hmm. Really? Isn't that the point? Must investigate.

Another new lovely side effect has popped up. I have large red blotches on my face now and the doc said they may not go away. Apparently the drugs can affect the pigmentation in your skin permanantly. Might have been good to know that ahead of time.

Besides being sore from over-sized ovaries I'm doing pretty well, oh, and the injections, besides that, and, well, being totally exhausted, and feeling like I want to cry for no apparent reason, and the splotchy red spots on my face, and besides the bloated extra 5 pounds that has me rifling through my closet to find ANYTHING that fits on this now sausage shaped body, and the ridiculously timed head cold that jumped me in the parking lot last night, other than all of THAT, good, yep, I'm doing just fine.

Tomorrow is IUI.

Ovaries the size of footballs

E2 level is at 716. I learned today that I should indeed be smug and proud about my numbers. I'm right where I should be and the ultrasound revealed 2 large (24.6mm and 19.5 mm) follicles today on my right ovary. My left, not so helpful. I do think I'm seeing a pattern here and am quite ecstatic that our chances this month are coming from my right side. (Go girls!) I do have a handful of follicles hovering around 14.5 mm that could potentially go as well. (they look for anything 15 and above) I think I saw them stick their tongues out at me on the ultrasound. They are on the rogue left ovary, of course.
We have been given the ok for the intramuscular stab of HcG (what an aphrodisiac) to push those eggs out. We will trigger tonight at 10:30. I've made a hot reservation for us on Saturday at the local swanky Advanced Reproductive Center. A romantic room for two, please, say 8:30?

Please cross your fingers, your toes, your legs, whatever you've got to cross, please cross 'em.

I'm deliriously hopeful, please don't let it be foolishly so.

Checkered Flag, I hope.

My blood test yesterday revealed that my E2 (estradiol) levels were well above where they want them to be. They clocked me at 561. Minumum speed limit is 100. Not bad. Not baaadd at all. Last night while I was all smug and proud about my performance, Sean asked me if that's good thing, being over by so much. Hmmm. I didn't consider that. Answer: I don't really know (very unlike me). I was so focused on getting past 100, that I didn't even ask what 561 means...

Tomorrow morning I have another blood draw and an ultrasound. We'll find out if the IUI will be a green light or not. There's always a chance they could cancel the cycle if I have too many mature eggs ready to go...

Twenty babies may be a wee bit much.

Ready. Aim. Fire!

I've decided to grade Sean on his needling. I figure what's it to him, really, if he hurts me? I mean, I know he wouldn't WANT to hurt me, but really what's in it for him NOT to. Well, maybe a good grade at the end of all this would help motivate him. A grade that would reflect his shot giving ability, which by the way, I think at the beginning of all of this he felt was fantastic. Confidence is not his downfall. Another very good reason why I was so scared to hand over the needles to him. So far, this is how it's adding up:

Day 1; Right leg: A
Not only was the delivery of the needle nearly painless, but he had a highly anxious nervous nilly trying to tell him where to stick it and not look at the needle all at the same time. He pulled it all off without a hitch. I didn't even flinch.

Day 2; Left Leg: F-
Not only had he 100 % more experience with giving a shot, but I was calm cool and collected, fully confident it would be just as easy as it had been the night before. I flinched(read as jumped out of my chair) with a startling and unexpected painful jab, moaned as the medication burned a hole through my leg, and then went completely white while I waited to see whether I would pass out or vomit first. I will give Sean a higher grade on the care that followed as he treated me for shock, propped my feet up immediately and covered me with a blanket. But the F- is non-negotiable. Don't even ask about extra credit.

Day 3; Right leg: A
Happy to be back on the good side. Only a slight tinge of pain.

Day 4; Right leg: B-
After squabbling over which leg to use, I finally won the toss. I think his loss resulted in a bitter a jab.

Day 5; Left leg: D
After a day with an achy right leg that I told no one about, we didn't even disuss it, I just swabbed up the left side with alcohol and turned my head. Why the hell does the left leg hurt so bad? If there's any behavior correlation between my right leg vs. left leg and the eggs released from right ovary vs. left ovary, I do hope we get a nice amenable egg from the right ovary that wins the coin toss. Can you imagine how incorrigible the kid could be from the left? Pain in my leg to a pain in my ass.

I go in to the clinic in an hour to see where the levels stand. Other than feeling like my ovaries are 2 huge sloshy bruised balloons and finding myself with tears for no real reason last night, I feel good. Still leaps and bounds above clomid. Alas, I do hope they tell me to trigger tonight.

And we're off!

Last night Sean and I sat down in front of our 19 inch television and plopped in a riveting dvd titled Follistim AQ: How to do at home self injections with your Follistim Pen brought to you by Organon. Pen, my ass. Do they think they are really fooling me with the "convenient pocket clip and pen cap"? I know it's not a pen! Go ahead, take that pen cap off, what's under there??? A NEEDLE!

Actually it wasn't all that bad. The anxiety I had stirring within before my dear husband lovingly jabbed The Pen into my thigh (I opted not for the stomach) was far worse. Really. I'm not just saying that either. So we are off and running down the next runway of fertility treatment. Destination Pregnancy. We'll do this for February, and March, while we wait for our IVF appointment on March 10th.

I'm relieved that they will be monitoring me more closely with this treatment. I'll have ultrasounds and blood levels checked throughout this process, so more will be revealed this time around. It's been over a year since my last ultrasound, which I passed with flying colors I might add. I created more than twice the follices they said I needed. But last week after my discussion with the doc and all the talk about my shortened follicular stage pointing to unviable eggs, I was a little nervous to see what has transpired with the production line of my ovaries over the last 17 months. Turns out, not much has changed. I am stil an overachiever they tell me, with 10 follicles on each little kidney shaped egg maker. Give me an O-! And a V-! And an A-R-Y! The twenty-something ultrasound technician with blond streaks in her auburn hair says to not give up and that it's only a matter of time. Despite her much younger eggs, I feel uplifted.

But just before I get too excited about all of the good news, I ran into a co worker in the waiting room. She tells me that she's already done IVF and all her eggs were abnormal and unviable. Wait, did you feel that, everyone? As if some barefooted youngster races into the house and slams the backdoor on a wicked breezy day in April the wind stops and suddenly I'm dead in the water with my sails flapping loosely in the wind.

Oh, well. I guess it's better to know that it may not just be a matter of time now instead of later. I can better prepare myself for that. Maybe it's time to start the adoption process, too. Have it in my back pocket just in case.

This is all so far from how I imagined things would play out. Yet, it is our journey, no one else's. And, honestly, I love our life, I adore my husband, and even though I feel out of control and helpless, I can't help but notice I'm terribly grateful.

What remains

It's been too long since my last entry, however, my posts were getting too melancholy, and frankly, so was I. The new year has brought renewed hope and a rose color to my glasses.

Christmas. It came and went this year with lots of snow, heavy heart, and family drama. I know, this is already sounding morose, but I need to write about it, because it all has to do with the return of joy and appreciation for those lost.

My gift this year was wrapped a little differently. First of all, I didn't find it sitting under the tree. And the wrapping paper was made of cool crisp Christmas air, embellished with bright white winter stars. A translucent delicate ribbon with sparkly snow crystals was neatly wrapped around my gift and as I held it the breeze swept it up to tickle my nose. It was gorgeous and magical. As I opened it up my senses soared, my head swam in a pool of childhood memories. You see, this year I had asked Sean for a walk. Quite literally, a walk down memory lane. It was the only way I could think of to feel close with Dad this Christmas.

So, on Chritsmas Day, we loaded our 2 dogs into Ruby, our Subaru, and drove to my old elementary school where we parked the car and opened my present. We walked home, to my childhood home, where for a moment it felt like my mom and dad would be waiting for me to arrive. We set out towards 224 34th Street. We followed my old route that I had taken so many times as a child, past the geo dome home that was all the talk when they built it in the 70's, past Steve Knapp's house and the old dirt entrance to the creek where I first got nettles, now a cement embuttment.

We wove our way through new neighborhoods that used to be playgrounds of cornfields, and then suddenly we were at the end of my street. We took a left and I reflected on all the families that used to live there; the Temmes, the Peaches, the Rodishes, and Zimmermans. Past the Smith's where dad and I presented the drum we had made together for Indian Princesses. I, Running Fawn, he, Big Buck. Past the Sheebles, the Schaeffers, the Sullivans, and Wrights. The Teifentollers, the Corbetts and Weidmans, and of course, we lived next door to the Jones', seriously.

It was a new development when we moved there in 1973. All the newly built homes were soon filled with young families and lots of kids. We created a strong community and commenced growing up together, young parnents and kids alike. The kids rode the school bus together, played in the streets until the street lights came on, decorated bikes with streamers and rode in the neighborhood Fourth of July parade. Andrea Jones always won first prize, I always runner-up. We knew everyone here. My parents hosted bridge parties and we had block parties together and made homemade ice cream. An idyllic place to grow up. It was the burbs, but the backdrop was cornfields, railroad tracks, and a creek that ran perpendicular for miles at the end of the street. I spent hours down at that creek, wading through the water, trying to catch crawdads and making boats out of leaves and sticks, racing them to see which one the fastest. I wrote my first poems there in a field of purple flowers.

Once we we arrived at my house we stopped. I stood there facing my front yard where I spent hours lying in the summer grass looking at the blue sky picking out cloud animals. Where Dad, the first year after the divorce, had presented my first ten speed bike, a yellow free spirit, that would replace the pink banana seated Strawberry Sizzler my parents had given me for Chrsitmas 28 years ago. I noticed how much the trees had grown, and that our old grape vines had been torn down. My dad had made a fence for them to climb on. My mom could always made the best grape jam out of those green grapes. Heather Wright and I tried our best to make wine out of those sour grapes in an old washing tub with our grubby little summer bare feet after watching a rerun of I love Lucy, you know which episode I'm referring to. We had raspberries and a strawberry patch, all gone now.

The swing set out back that dad put up, gone. Our basketball court that dad had created so we could practice our shot, gone. The clamatis vine growing on the rod iron fence by the entry way where I would do "he loves me, he loves me nots" until mom would yell at me to not pick ALL the flowers, gone. All the families that had lived there and their children that had grown up with me had moved on as well.

I looked up our street, a long gentle slope that was the length of 3 normal city blocks, and closed my eyes. It's night time and cold, there's a lot of commotion with all the neighbor kids clamoring around. You can hear squeals of delight and yelps of sibling rivalry, as the entire street is filled with sleds. Dad and I are about to go down together on our old wooden radio flyer. He's wearing a navy blue down jacket with a nylon shell. We are face down on our bellies, he on the sled, me on top of him hanging on for dear life. I can feel the slippery way his jacket felt between my mittens in my Incredible Hulk hold. A scarf my mother crocheted is wrapped around my face and the steam from my breath has made the yarn wet. I feel so safe. I feel so loved. I can hear my dad laugh as we slide. The tears fall down my cheeks and I open my eyes.

Sean put his arm around me and we kept walking. We went all the way to the top of our street and around the block back by the creek. He asked if I wanted to walk down by the tracks. I had already decided we would.

As a kid, the railroad tracks were really a hiking trail that we had to share with the trains. Which was ok by me. You learned in short order who had the right of way and to check for approaching trains by listening to the rail. It's a wonder no train ever derailed from all the spikes us tikes had stolen from the tracks. Sean and I walked along and I thought about Heather and all the sack lunches we had packed for our long adventures out to the The Bridge. We would talk about boys, of course, and dream about the one we would marry some day. I looked up to my left and kissed Sean on the cheek. I didn't have to wonder anymore about who my dream boat would be. I smiled and then chuckled a little at the thought of all those silly conversations, and because it's funny how life comes full circle.

I ran down off the tracks to the creek, and called out to Sean to follow. I showed him one of the best bends in the creek, told him how much I loved it down there. I hadn't been there for years, at least not physically. I had travelled there so many times in my mind and my dreams. I felt dad with me walking those tracks, and I'm relieved he knew Sean and loved him. I'm thankful for all our good-byes.


The sky is full of Christmas light, the sun is setting, almost gone now. And I know now that even though all the grapevines are gone, and the fireman sticker in my bedroom window is gone, and that, unbelievably, my hero, is gone, that my chest of treasured memories of him and my childhood will always remain.