Great First Impressions

In about an hour I will head around the corner to my consult with Dr. Small Guns. I will show up without my medical records and ever so slightly hung over.

So far I'm crushing it today.

Not Giving Up

Welp. I've made an appointment with Dr. Small Guns. Consult is on December 10.

I spent the morning in my hometown city, where I am stopping over after a vacation to attend my friend's mother's funeral. This morning I met my friend and her small kids in a new snazzy park with fancy fake grass and fun tunnels and hills. While my friend chatted with other adult women I hid in tunnels, hung out on climbing walls, and served as a comfortable sled going down slides.

"You're such a monkey!" I said to the baby, who can barely walk but who scooted up the climbing wall like a rhesus macaque, if macaques had my hand shadowing their tush the whole time.

"I am not," she informed me.

"Okay," I said. "Then you're a beast. Do you think you're a beast?"

She leaned a chub arm over the top of the climbing wall and gazed moodily into the distance, like it was her turn on watch in the Napoleonic Wars.

"Yes," she said at length. So beast she is.

So, you know what? Fuck you, universe, for not letting me have my own beast.

I'm not giving up.

Yet.

Not Giving Up?

Considering not giving up because a fertility clinic is literally around the corner is high on the list of stupid shit I have actually considered doing. But I walk the puppy past this place every single day. It is literally the most conveniently located thing in my block. It is closer to me than our regular brunch place. It's closer to me than the coffee guy.

So I looked them up today. Fuck it. Why not? They take my insurance, they are two friends with academic backgrounds and all the lists of all the shit you're supposed to have, and their references in Fertility IQ are totally fine, and they seem to do all the monitoring themselves, and I have money left on the benefit. And it's sexist of me, but one of them is a woman. Which I'd really much prefer.

So.

I have written asking for an appointment in January. Why not?

Even if it doesn't work, it might be nice to have my hand held on the way out. And I could get monitored in my pajamas, and then go back to sleep.

Not going out without a fight, Succotash, you persistent hypothetical person, you. I'm going to go down fucking swinging.

Achievement Unlocked

I have just made it through watching Episode 7 of the Romanoffs, which is the one with the infertile couple that travels to Russia to adopt a baby.

I watched the whole thing, and I didn't cry. Not even during Kathryn Hahn's rant about IVF and how awful it is.

I am feeling proud of myself, and like I might celebrate by ordering in Chinese food.

Small steps. It's not full-bore baby shower attendance, but it's not nothing, either.

I sure wish my friend would just read Judith Butler

Instead of deciding that hating her life as a woman means she must definitely be a trans man instead of just your usual run of the mill woman who hates what she's consigned to and discovers feminism as a result, necessitating her mounting a one-person musical revue which isn't one person at all but includes a pianist and a husband and a son for her to sing about wanting to play on the jungle gym as a kid instead of with Cabbage Patch dolls, culminating in an Act 1 finale in which she performs in a maternity dress with a literal baby doll stuck under her clothes to express her complex feelings about motherhood, causing me to have a fucking emotional breakdown while sitting in the front row and then leave during intermission.

If she'd just read Judith Butler, I could have had a completely different night tonight.

Things that are Much Worse, Objectively Speaking, Than Never Having a Baby

Cancer

Dementia

Becoming paraplegic

My husband dying in a terrible accident

Me dying in a terrible accident

My parents dying in a terrible accident

Climate change

Heroin withdrawal

Sex trafficking

Dying in a plane crash like that sweet boy I went to high school with

Dying of the flu like my friend R did two years ago for no fucking reason

AIDS, even with all the new drugs they have now

Having a fascist government seize your home and belongings and put you in camps

Schizophrenia

Lou Gehrig's disease

Any wasting disease, really

Ebola

Chronic hunger

Being kidnapped and forced to play flute for the Khmer Rouge while the other children around you are executed one by one, and then escaping to the jungle and watching what the monkeys eat in order to learn how to survive

Being hideously disfigured such that you cannot recognize yourself

Having to be on dialysis forever

Having a brain tumor that changes your personality forever

Losing the ability to read or speak

I mean, really, this is a long fucking list when you get right down to it. Maybe I should add to it every day until I realize once again that my life is awesome.

And Now, the Grief

It doesn't meant that being done isn't the right decision.

But boy, am I ever sad today.

Game Over

Thank you for playing.

Now, it's time to go live a different kind of life.

Spot that Symptom! America's Favorite IVF Game Show

Spot that Symptom! America’s Favorite IVF Game Show

ANNOUNCER: It's time once again to play everyone's favorite game show!

AUDIENCE: SPOT! THAT! SYMPTOM!

ANNOUNCER: That's right, it's Spot that Symptom, where the audience tries to guess which of our lucky contestants had a successful embryo transfer and which gets to go on a faaaabulous all-expenses paid vacation to a Zika-rich island, with your host, Chuck Woolery! Chuck?

AUDIENCE: [thunderous applause]

CHUCK: Thanks Marv! And thanks to our sponsor, drugstore brand stool softener. Drugstore brand. For when you can't stand to spend another dime on IVF. Each contestant who appears on Spot that Symptom gets a free lifetime supply of drugstore brand stool softener! All right! Now let's meet our first contestant.

ME: Hi.

ANNOUNCER: Chuck, this is Doodlebug. She's a 41 year old writer and vegetarian from Texas who knows this is really her last shot! Known as the Doodle to her friends, she enjoys sailing, staying at home, and looking deep into an existential childless void.

CHUCK: Thanks Marv! Doodle. May I call you Doodle?

ME: Um. I’d actually prefer Doodleb-

CHUCK: Great. Welcome to the show. So let's see. You made it to two embryos this time. That’s great news. They popped ‘em in, you’ve been sticking yourself with progesterone every night, and you're halfway through the two week wait.

ME: That's right.

CHUCK: And this is your fourth IVF cycle. Whoo, that’s a lot.

ME: Uh huh.

CHUCK: What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever stuck yourself with progesterone?

ME: That’d be in the butt, Chuck.

CHUCK: [looks confused]

ME: Sorry, that was a deep game show cut. Carry on.

CHUCK: Terrific. Are you ready to play?

AUDIENCE: SPOT! THAT! SYMPTOM!

ME: I guess?

CHUCK: Terrific! Now you remember how this works. You describe all the weird and bizarre physical symptoms you’re experiencing even though the clinic has explicitly told you they are all caused by progesterone shots, and you could not possibly be feeling anything this early, even if the transfer was successful, which it most assuredly wasn’t! Then the audience decides if you’re pregnant, or just paranoid. Marv, what did you say she was, 41?

ANNOUNCER: That’s right, Chuck!

CHUCK: [avuncular laughter] Whoa nelly, that’s a doozy! All right. Thirty seconds on the clock. And, let’s play!

AUDIENCE: SPOT! THAT! SYMPTOM!

[ticking]

ME: Um. Okay. Well. I've been sort of crampy. Like unusually crampy this whole time. And I’m in a terrible mood. Like, I want to set everyone I meet on fire with my mind. And I've had the most wracking headaches, even though I’m staying hydrated.

CHUCK: Fifteen seconds.

ME: But there’s this one thing, and it’s kind of awkward.

CHUCK: Ten seconds!

ME: I can’t say it!

CHUCK: Five seconds!

ME: [panicking] I dunno I feel like I smell weird!

[BUZZER]

CHUCK: Judges? Did she make it under the wire? [Touches earpiece] We've got a ruling on this from the judges, and yes! The Doodle made it in the nick of time. Okay, audience! Can you spot Doodle's symptoms? Hit two blue lines on your console for "pregnant," and one blue line for "paranoid." Ready? Go!

AUDIENCE: [excited murmuring]

ME: So what’s the answer?

CHUCK: We’ll get to that, right after these messages!

ME: Wait, you’re not even going to tell-

CHUCK: Thanks for playing!

AUDIENCE: SPOT! THAT! SYMPTOM!

ANNOUNCER: Promotional consideration has been supplied by CVS, for all your specialty mail order pharmacy needs, by Holiday Inn, and by Giblees suits, on route 1 in Peabody Mass. All contestants on Spot that Symptom! receive a complimentary set of baby shower invitations from college classmates with whom they haven’t spoken in five years. Void where prohibited by law.

Avoidance

I've been dodging calls from my mother. I love my mother, but she's starting to have mild memory issues, and as a result phone conversations can sometimes take a surreal or hard to follow turn, which I used to find frustrating, but which I am starting to manage better, albeit slowly. But because of this my mother is in no position to understand what IVF is like, or what it means. She's worried about me, but I don't feel up to doing the emotional labor of making her feel better. I've been focusing on taking care of myself.

Is that selfish? I can't tell. Last January she was in the city for something - I forget what - and wanted to see me. It was her birthday, and we'd planned to go out to dinner. Well of course my egg retrieval wound up being the day before, and I was a mess. She came by the apartment instead - I had to remind her the address, which was frustrating - and all I could do was lie on the couch. I ordered us in Chinese. She was clearly frustrated. And I was frustrated that she couldn't see that I desperately needed someone to be taking care of *me.* My husband was out of town, and the best I could do was take care of myself. I couldn't also do the work of making her have a nice birthday and reassuring her that I was okay. I was sad, in the selfish sad way of children, that her response to seeing me suffering on the couch was to offer to leave and not try to make me feel better. As an adult, I could recognize that she needs me to be okay so badly that she cannot quite process or accept any state of non-okayness from me anymore. But that means that our relationship, from now onward, is going to be one-sided. I will always and forever be okay, or I will lie and say that I am. I will perform what she needs me to be, as she becomes increasingly less okay.

It's only two days after transfer, and I've got some articles I want to read, and more volunteer shifts coming up for my political candidate, and otherwise I will take it easy and try to keep my elderly dog from barking for no reason. But I can't really put off calling my mother.

I just have to make sure I'm ready to pretend to be okay.

Two

Well. Both made it to transfer today.

I deliberately asked them not to hand me the photo. I didn't want to see them. I didn't want to know the cell stage. I needed to be as aloof from this experience as possible.

A friend made me a series of videos of sunset over the Atlantic ocean, which I watched in the waiting room. In previous attempts, I have dancing in the waiting room to hip hop or the B-52s, trying to psych myself up. This time I decided to calm myself down.

Calm. Quiet. Even keel.

Now, all there is to do is wait.

Nearing the End

Between my Percocet haze (yes, they gave me drugs this time, fucking finally) they call to tell me that of five eggs retrieved, four were mature, and two fertilized.

So. So much for that three months of DHEA and Ubiquinol for egg quality. Turns out, time will tell, and though my skin looks as tight and smooth as a 28 year old, my body belongs to a 41 year old woman. A 41 year old woman who is - as she always secretly suspected, if she is honest - never going to have children.

Transfer is scheduled, in theory, for Tuesday.

I'm not really sad, is the weird part. Maybe I'm in denial. Or maybe I've already put a lot of emotional energy into this, and my summer of freedom from thinking about this gave me a window into what my life will be when this is no longer something to which I feel I have to give my time.

I'm almost done. I'm almost ready to move on, into the rest of my life.

Detachment

I think I am somewhat alienated from this cycle. The first week went okay, I did my four shots a day, I did my work, L was away and I had the apartment to myself. I walked the dog. I felt calm.

I have four follicles going, which is not a great response. I admit to being disappointed, as all I'd read suggested that this protocol could result in surprise super follicles for ladies in my condition. But I am unusually nonresponsive, it would seem. I am stubborn. This, perhaps, should not come as a surprise.

Now as the fatigue sets in and my midsection has ballooned my mood has lowered accordingly. But with the lowering comes what I hope are the earliest stages of acceptance.

I catch myself thinking, oh, what if we did another cycle with the protocol that got us seven eggs instead of five? And then I ask myself, why? Why would I do that? Do I even want this anymore? I certainly don't want to be treated for this anymore. Do I want a kid?

Do I really?

As I reflected earlier, I have already not had one. I can't ignore how wonderful this summer was, not thinking about any of this. Doing what interests me. Using my body. And, if I'm honest, soon enough I will have a lot more work ahead caring for my parents. That will require travel and physical and emotional energy, and it will go on for a long time. And this time of self-absorption has kept me from building intimacies with my friends' children. That is a loss that I regret. The sooner I can push through this disappointment, the sooner I can get to know the small people in my world, who I can love, and support, and invest in, and not have to discipline or educate or raise.

The truth is, I'm tired. Part of that is where I am in this cycle - the meds make me tired, and uncomfortable, and I'm probably two days away from egg retrieval. But I told myself I wanted to make it to retrieval one more time, and it looks like I'm making it. And that means this is the last time I'm doing this.

I will have done everything in my power to make this happen.

I will be almost free to live my different kind of life and not look back.

Three Patches In

And I've already gained back two of the pounds I sailed off this summer. And I nearly started crying in the book marketing meeting when the marketing director said she really, really wanted me to start an email newsletter.

I didn't, thank God. But you know. Among other things, I really really really don't want to start a fucking email newsletter. Because what am I going to be thinking about, primarily, in the coming months? IVF, that's what.

It's easy, they said, you just have like a picture, and maybe a track you're listening to, and what you're reading.

I immediately picture a photo of used needles, the same track I've been listening to all summer, and an article about protocols for DOR.

Fucking bullshit nonsense waste of time.

My period is due in six days. So in theory, one week from today I go in for Day 2 monitoring, and I probably start my shots that night. Today the huge pack of meds arrived. No syringes, strangely, but fortunately it doesn't matter because I still have so many of them that it's crossed my mind to find some kind of heroin needle exchange to donate them to.

Anyway. I'll try to buck up. Soon, the bucking up must occur. I must get with the program, as my father always used to say to me when I was sulking about something that I was expected to do.

Get with the program, Cartooniste. Stop all this mucking around. Make your fucking newsletter, take your fucking shots, and shut up.

How Do I Feel About It

I'm in a piss poor mood. Is it the rain? The change of season? The pressing need to put boats away and ship the oars and put on socks and go back to work, and in this case, back to the work of trying to have a baby that I will never have?

I was feeling confident before, but now, even before I start the most preliminary of all possible steps, I feel not just hopeless, but annoyed that I am wasting so much of my own limited time. There is so much else I could be doing. I could get a job. Not my current job, but like a real one. I don't know. Or I could do better at my current job, crank out book after book after book instead of dilettanting around daydreaming and waiting for a good idea. Any good idea. Who said all ideas had to be good? Who even knows from good anymore?

In a way, I feel like the process is already over. Am I just going back and retracing my same steps, hoping for a different outcome? Do I even hope for a different outcome anymore? Having a kid is an awful lot of work, much of it very boring. I already haven't had a kid. It has already happened. I'm railing against a thing that lies in the past. What a pointless enterprise that is.

Why not let the past stay the past?

Why am I doing this?

Am I doing this?

What would it be like if I just..... didn't do it?

Mania

So you know that thing where you have sex with your husband and it's sort of chafey but okay, and then it's still sort of warm and irritated for two days afterwards and you start worrying that you have secretly been a carrier for chlamydia for twenty years and it's just now flaring up because of stress and your husband will leave you in a rage and your life will be over so in a fit of neurosis you go to the urgent care place to get checked out and when the warm and friendly nurse practitioner asks what else has been going on and you tell her you're about to head into your fourth round of IVF and it's awful and a complete living nightmare and she says oh I know my sister did it, it was terrible, and gives you Kleenex and assures you it's totally okay to bawl all over her in her office?

That's where I'm at today.

Getting ready

I have picked up the prescription for the estrogen patches to start priming, and this morning I took my first ovulation kit pee test. When I get the smiley face, I call the office, and they tell me when to start patching.

It's coming. It's coming very soon.

IVF attempt #4.

I felt confident about it at first. Today, I have my doubts. That this cannot be good for me, or my mind, or my body.

In my regular work cafe, and a cute slender pregnant woman has sat in my direct line of sight, which I shouldn't find depressing, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with me. There's construction outside the door of the cafe, and the noise is deafening. Perhaps literally, like I might need to be wearing ear protection, but I'm not. I'm listening to cafe chatter and the Talking Heads.

Once in a Lifetime.

That's all it takes.

Let's talk about HGH

Specifically, is there any point? Dr. Big Guns says he can't prescribe it off-label. Original RE says she will "definitely not" prescribe it. Some girl on the internet has offered to get me some where she lives in Mexico, and for those of you watching at home, that means I am at present contemplating black market off-label use of a controlled substance in order to improve my chances of conception with unproven rumor.

In other words, I have lost my fucking mind.

Is it worth it? Will it give me cancer? Does anyone even know?

I was all set to do it, but now I'm just like, fuck this noise. For real. I'm finally getting my body back under control. I'm finally getting my sexuality back. I don't even understand what the risks are. Why am I even considering this?

Why am I doing another round of IVF at all?

I should just call Dr. Big Guns, though a fifteen minute conversation with him will probably cost me three hundred fucking dollars. Fuck's sake.

Nope

Just late, for no reason.

Fun.

This is so much fun.

I'm really, really glad I'm having this experience. It's definitely not bad for my mental health.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Two Days Late

Huh.

A Day Late

But not a dollar short.

I'm sure it will come tomorrow.

Right?

Of course it will.

Because DHEA and CoQ10 and whatever that powder shit is and vitamin D is all a scam, and I am kidding myself that "egg quality" is even a thing, and certainly that it is a thing that is even remotely in the control of a 41 year old woman who has spent the summer living her live and sailing and drinking rum and not even really doing much at her job, just like fucking around and relaxing and sleeping and being more active to try to lose some of that IVF midriff squish she's got going on.

I bet it comes tomorrow.

And yet more sadness

Only now, with rose wine.

Also, I've been sailing constantly.

And I've ordered some nonsense supplements online. Because I'm a chump.

That's all.

Sadness Continues

It waxes and wanes. These days it's waxing. I don't know why. Hormones? Time? I don't know.

My sister in law was here for an entire week, which is about a week and a half too long. The first night she was here, I was exhausted after a stressful day of houseguest tending, and I was loading the dishwasher for the second of what felt like two dozen times over the course of the week, and she was going on and on about the baby shower for the third in their assortment of four siblings, a well-meaning doofus with no college education or professional aspirations that I know of. They're having a baby in a matter of months.

I was invited to the shower. The invitation arrived either on or around the day I found out one of - which one? Who knows? - my IVF cycles failed.

I threw it away. I told my husband he had to deal with it. He said okay, and promptly forgot.

Of course, if any of them knew even the slightest thing about me, they might understand. But they don't know me.

So sister in law was talking about all the cool stuff that she sent to them for presents, because presents is how sister in law shows love for people, and shopping is how she makes herself feel better about her own spin-heavy life, and I was loading the dishwasher, and I was exhausted, and I felt the sadness rising up, and I said "SIL, I can't talk about this right now," and drew my finger in a line across my throat in the no-I-really-mean-it gesture, and she backtracked and said she was sorry, but it was too late.

I started weeping over the dishwasher.

I cried so hard I had to go to bed. I didn't even say goodnight to anyone. I just got in bed and sobbed.

Everyone finally left on Saturday, after a full week here, a full week of dishwashers, and I am still coming down from it. Like I'm in an emotional hangover.

Yesterday I went out for a sail with a friend and his new girlfriend, not new I guess, it's been over a year, but God damn is she boring. She's one of those people with nothing to say except prattle about her kids. Normally I don't care, beyond being bored out of my fucking mind. Yesterday on the launch I found myself swallowing salt water and weighing whether or not to tell her hey, so, I cannot fucking listen to this shit right now, I just can't, and while you're complaining about your sullen teenage daughter at home, you need to understand that I will never have a sullen teenage daughter to complain about. Never.

So shut up.

I am telling myself that I won't always feel this way.

I hope I'm not a liar.

Still Sad

That's not much of a report, but it's true.

Also, DHEA makes me a monster. I'm taking 1/3 the suggested dose, because anything higher than that and I'm concerned I might go to prison for assault. I tell myself that it probably doesn't work anyway, but if it does, surely something is better than nothing, as I cannot withstand the rest.

I'm not, like, crushingly sad. I'm trucking along. I'm working, I'm sleeping, I'm doing hobby-related things. There are moments when I am able to forget myself, and to immerse myself in my life and not think about No Baby.

But, you know, it sneaks up on me. A wrangle with the billing department at the hospital. At dinner, discussing gender politics, a friend confesses that she loves being a woman because when she was pregnant she felt superior, because of this special thing she could do. But then, I meet one of the children of a successful person I know, who is self-made and ambitious and canny, and his kids - all older than me - to a person seem sort of pathetic and beaten down and are clearly a disappointment. What if Succotash were a disappointment? That would be hard, wouldn't it? Harder than no Succotash? I don't know.

Right now I'm still thinking we'll take another stab at it in the fall. But then, sometimes I think, maybe I won't. Why bother? Why put myself through that again if I don't have to? I've been given a 15% chance of success. That's an 85% chance of failure. That's a solid B. I've accomplished things that were less likely to happen, it's true, but not very many of them. If I had cancer, and were given an 85% chance of death, I would probably be putting my affairs in order.

So that's what I'm considering doing.

Don't know. We'll see.

Spherical

Three weeks after my failed cycle, and my bloating has not gone down. None of my dresses fit. I pulled on a pair of Spanx under one of the ones that sort of did, and by the time the evening was over the top had rolled down. My belly will not be contained.

It's awful, and I don't know what to do about it. I make and glug iced tea. I drink water. I drink coffee. I avoid salt. I seek out salt. I go to exercise classes. I go to ab day. Nothing is helping. I look like I swallowed half a volleyball. Or like I'm four months pregnant. Which is its own horridness.

Meanwhile, I call Dr. Big Guns' nursing line to ask for a refill of the meds used to control my brain tumor, and to find out if this bloat is normal or what the deal is. No one ever picks up this phone line. I mean, not once in nearly two years of treatment has this phone line ever been answered live. They always listen and call back. This time, hours pass, they call back, I miss the call, and they leave a message saying they need to test my blood first before doing the refill, and they need to know when I'm doing my next cycle, and am I really going out of town for the whole summer, and blah blah blabh fucking blah they haven't called in my prescription. No comment about bloat.

I call them back.

I inform them that last summer I went off the meds, and that's why my prolactin levels were elevated when I did my first IVF stim cycle this year, the one to which I didn't respond, and even though Dr. Big Guns feels those are unrelated, that subsequent cycles with my prolactin controlled did respond, and I'd like to have my prolactin controlled when we start what is likely to be my final attempt at IVF. Also, WTF with this bloat?

They call me back. Okay, fine, they say, they've checked with Dr. Big Guns (standard practice at this clinic - discount what the patient reports about her own body unless confirmed by someone else, preferably someone male), and they'll refill my prescription. Thanks, I say, what about this bloat though?

Have I had weight gain, they ask.

Yes, I say.

Have I had shortness of breath? they ask.

Not especially, I say.

Then it's not related, they tell me. The sound of hand washing coming through clearly on the line.

It's been this way consistently since my failed cycle, and you're telling me it's not related?

Go see your GP, they shrug. They did the same thing when I had ongoing pain from the hysterosalpinogram. I forced them to check me out anyway. Nope, shrug, nothing, we don't know.

I recognize that I am probably among my nursing team's least favorite people to speak to on the phone. Whereas in real life I am funny, and snarky, and empathetic, and love my dog, and able to make soup for my friends, on the phone with my clinic I am curt and dismissive. Or too honest. How are you? they'll ask on the phone, pro forma. This is my waking nightmare, I might answer. Nice to see you, one of the attendings said as he came in this last cycle to probe my vagina. Oh sure, I said, unable to stop myself, it's a dream come true, being here again.

WTF

Had my WTF call with Dr. Big Guns yesterday. He professes disappointment that this cycle didn't work. Would urge me to try again if I can handle it. I told him I'm taking the summer off to give my body and mind time to recover, and that I want to try again in September. Asked him about Lupron micro flare. He's willing to try it, and if we have to cancel due to non response, we can go back to the protocol that has resulted in eggs. Thinks the endometrial co-culture wasn't worth it. Is fine with my taking ubiquinol and DHEA, is "agnostic" on whether they're worthwhile or not, but doesn't think they hurt anything. Says there is some evidence for effectiveness for HGH, but he's not allowed to prescribe it in New York State, so I'll be hustling my first RE in Massachusetts to see if she'll prescribe it for me at the end of the summer. Basically, it seems that at this point he's just saying "Fuck it, why not?" to anything that I ask about or suggest.

He puts my odds of success at 15% for the next cycle. So. I'm getting pretty near the end.

Honestly, I can't believe I've made it this far. First I was never going to have kids. And then I was never going to get ART treatment. And then I was definitely never going to do IVF. And now I'm seriously planning to hustle out of state hormone supplements that New York State treats as a controlled substance. What the fuck has happened to me? Am I just stubborn? Do I just hate being told I can't do something? Why would I keep wasting my time like this? If I didn't have some money left on the insurance benefit I definitely would have already stopped.

Should I stop?

I don't know anymore. I just don't know.

Mind Games

A couple of days ago my denial went into overdrive, and I became convinced that this process would eventually work. I felt confident. I felt good. I bought the Kindle edition of a book that seems designed to take the money of desperate women such as myself, and I powered through it in almost one night, and ordered one of the supplements it suggests, and resolved to ask my doctor about the other one it suggests, and I felt good.

Then, the denial cracked. I realized that with each failed cycle my odds of success diminish. I suspect I'm down to about 5% now. And if something has a 5% chance of happening, that means that it is certainly not happening.

And that's when I got depressed.

I know it's only been a week since the last cycle officially failed, and a week isn't actually that much time. So I'm trying to cut myself some slack. I've found a new exercise class. I've gone once, and I felt really good afterward, so I'm going to keep going. I'm looking forward to things, like finishing this book draft and going away for the summer. But all of those things right now are reaching me through a fog of sadness. I'm not as productive as I should be. I don't have as much energy. Right now, I should be getting ready for an interview, primping and whatnot, and instead I'm writing a blog entry about how sad I am. I'd better hurry or I won't have time to get my eyebrows done for this interview, and then I'll look sallow and wooly-eyed and miserable, and it will be a wasted opportunity to build my brand, and also will be on the internet for fucking eternity.

I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad.

No baby.

There is no baby.

There will be no baby.

I will not cry before I start getting ready for this interview.

I will wait, and I will trust that one day, hopefully soon, I will feel happy again.

Sweet Jesus

But these post-failed-transfer cramps hurt. Like, I'm having trouble sitting up straight. I'm sort of half-hunched over like a crone.

Rain and chill outside, so the dog is trying to persuade me that dogs don't have to go outside to go to the bathroom. Going to the bathroom is all in your mind, and he has risen above it.

There is something essential and mammal-like about wanting to hunker down in soft things when it's cold and wet outside.

It is all I can imagine doing right now.

It's official

This cycle failed.

I'm too sad to write right now.

That's all.

No Dice

The cramps were getting too bad, so I finally caved and took a pee test this morning.

Negative. Of course.

I went back to bed.

I cried a little.

If I pointed out to myself that all this meant was that my life, as I know it, as I've worked so hard for it to be, is not going to change, then I felt all right. Nothing was being taken away from me. I have my home, and my job, and my husband, and my dog, and my friends, and all the things that I love to do, like art and music and sailing and all of those wonderful things.

It was only when I thought of you, Succotash, that I cried. Because there is no you. There is no Succotash. You are my imagination. A character I have made up. A void onto which I have projected vague, inchoate hopes and imaginary experiences, none of them tinted by reality - lost sleep, or your mental illness, or your first bout of pneumonia, or your drug addiction, or any of the simple horrors of being alive that lay in store for you, both imaginable to me and not. You are this loose, hazy ideal. Which, even if you had come to be, would not have existed. Because you would have been a person in your own right, with all the flaws and troubles that we all must bear.

It's a fantasy I'm mourning, which is stupid, because my reality - my REALITY, RIGHT NOW - is both terrific and unchanged. I have enough money - that's a real surprise. I have work that I enjoy. I have a husband who I love to distraction, even though it hasn't always been easy, and hasn't always been perfect, and he isn't who I would have imagined I ended up with, but look, there he is, and he knows me better than anyone. My life has assumed contours I only dreamed of in my teens and twenties. And it's happened that way through my own dogged labor. Good fortune too, yes, and I'm grateful for it. But I also busted ass.

So what I am sad for?

A friend asked me if I was doing this ART stuff because I really wanted a child, or if it was just a thing I was supposed to do, and I was annoyed that I wasn't achieving at it. I mean, she had a point. I didn't entirely know the answer. I've certainly been frustrated that I haven't been able to will or achieve my way out of this predicament. My brain has almost always done what I have asked it to do, and I never needed to rely on my body beyond the general requirements of staying functional and alive. Now that I am asking my body to do this unfamiliar thing, and no amount of willing or thinking is making a damned bit of difference, I can admit to being galled.

Behind me, the dog is curled up in a ball of fur in an inviting nest of throw pillows and the mohair blanket I've been carrying around all year. He looks safe and warm and snuggly, and my disappointment changes nothing about him, the pleasure I take from my friendship with this creature, my investment in his well-being, his sincere affection for me.

I am still loved. I am not alone. I do not have cancer. I haven't lost my job. Nothing is different.

Only my fantasy is gone.

I cannot fucking concentrate

I'm crampy, Succotash.

I've been intermittently crampy since the transfer, so it shouldn't be a big deal. Also progesterone can cause cramping. This is normal. This doesn't mean anything.

I'm telling myself.

But the truth is, this didn't happen last time. And so I'm jumping through mental hoops to keep myself from guessing, and I'm failing, because all I can think right now is oh my God what if it worked.

What if it worked?

That will freak me out.

But of course I know that the odds are that it didn't work, and all I'm doing by wondering if it did is setting myself up to be crushed. Again.

I'm considering doing at at home test before I go in for the blood work on Thursday. It will almost certainly be negative. But then I'll have ripped off the band-aid and I can let myself feel sad and I can spend the afternoon trying to let myself feel the feelings that will come, instead of waiting for the phone call with the news I already anticipate.

The challenge will be to not test tomorrow morning.

God but I wish I weren't cramping today. I have work to do, Succotash. I have a finite amount of energy and attention, and it need it for work today. I can't just sit here at my desk obsessing over my body. I can't!

But I am.

Crabby

I can't tell what it is. I might be fighting a cold. Though I haven't so far had the low grade fever I had the last time during progesterone shots.

But I'm crampy and grouchy and tired and stuffy-nosed and lacking in motivation. This morning I had to haul my ass out of bed early to go for a blood test, the results of which they don't share with me, and which - per the nurse drawing my blood - won't affect my progesterone dosing, and therefore won't affect the outcome even slightly. So why am I losing literal sleep and paying twenty bucks in cab fare to do this? I'm considering skipping the next one and sleeping in. My body wants sleep. And I want to give it sleep.

Today is one of those days where I am secretly hoping it won't work out. I'm tired, Succotash. I'm tired of doctor appointments. I'm really sick of having my blood drawn. I'm getting track marks, for Chrissake. I'm sick of medication schedules and supplements and not being able to exercise and I'm really sick of being ten pounds over what I think of as my set weight. I'm sick of acupuncture, although it was probably the most pleasant part of this whole process, but even so, at $135 a pop there are other things I would like to spend my money on. A personal trainer, for instance. A gym membership. An entirely new wardrobe. Anything.

I can't tell if the crampiness is digestive, or premenstrual, or progesterone-caused, or the earliest possible sign that this worked. I have no idea. I hate feeling so alienated from my body. I have no authority, I have no control. I can't even have sex for another week. Of course my husband is out of town til then, but even so - it's the principle of the thing. I resent it. I'm sick of being a walking test tube. I want to be free of all this, and go away for the summer, and go sailing and write and read books and actually remember what I have read.

Sorry Succotash, but I'm sick of this shit. I really, really am.

Flipping Out

Your would-be father told me he couldn't go to the punk show for which I got us tickets weeks ago, which will serendipitously take place the night that we find out if this process worked or not. He told me he was giving a paper that night, and I completely flipped out.

"I feel invisible," I said. "I'm alone, and I'm sad, and I'm scared."

The truth is, these hormones are wearing on me more than last time. Or I'm more aware of them wearing on me.

I read this morning that a prominent feminist writer is editing a mini online magazine on "unruly bodies" in the coming month. I write to her to say that I hope one of those unruly bodies belongs to an infertile woman. We are all, to some extent, accustomed to being judged on our outside bodies along various axes of power around which we have no control. But it's an entirely new and uncanny experience to have one's body judged on the inside, often using violating and high powered imaging equipment.

She wrote back almost immediately to say no. We are invisible, the sisterhood of the judged with internal cameras. The up early and the left behind and the tired.

I have forgiven myself for flipping out, but I'm now in a kind of emotional hangover, sapped of energy and craving cookies and to lie down. I have work to do, and part of my rage and frustration has to do with how fucking distracting infertility has been, how it has colonized by brain and sapped my energy and made me stupid and volatile and slow.

Right now I don't even have enough energy to be angry. All there is to do is lie down.

And now we wait

Well, four of you made it. I was fantasizing that everyone would be hale and hearty nine cell balls of awesome, given the way the me-slurry was sold, but it was not to be. Instead we have two sixes and two fours, and a careful review of the internet suggests that they can be graded at two As, a B, and a C.

The internet is so helpful and informative. I even found a page that rather agreeably suggested I not worry about eating pineapple and instead take this whole week off from work and loll around on the sofa.

Unfortunately I've been doing a lot of lolling recently. It's really time for me to get back to work.

During transfer I insisted on playing my music for everyone in the ER again. This time I went with "Song for a Future Generation," by the B-52s. The doc seemed sort of nonplussed, but the nurse was into it.

Now, all there is for me to do is wait. And eat well. And take vitamins. And not drink. And avoid sugar. And avoid hot baths. And not put the heating pad on my abdomen. And sleep as much as possible. But without taking sleeping pills. And avoid exercise. And avoid heavy lifting. And take my intramuscular progesterone shots at the exact same time every night.

That's all. Nothing else for me to do.

The Most Overdetermined Day

Well, Succotash, here we are. The senna tea kicked in around 7 this morning, which means that while I'm not as rested as one might wish, I'm also much less uncomfortable in the midsection. Thank God.

Last night we went to a fun and raucous seder at your would-be aunt's house in Brooklyn, which is something of a trope. Loading into the car with the big soup pot and all the haggadahs and driving an hour to Brooklyn. It's Passover, that's what we do. A plague of taxicabs harries the people of Israel.

I was tired from all the drugs, and so lay down in the den while your would-be father helped her get everything ready. There were plastic jumping frogs on the table for everyone to play with. I got a nice picture of everyone with wine glasses raised, but I would have liked to get one speckled with airborne plastic frogs.

And now it's today. With grumpily moving bowels and a small bowl of cottage cheese with strawberries. I've walked the dog and determined it's cooler out than I thought. Today's outfit will be jeans with new leather jacket, rather than dress with bare legs. A little too chilly for bare legs still. But it's okay.

Now I have to get in the shower and dress and go downtown for acupuncture appointment number one. Then I will have a couple of hours to kill before all however many of you are still hanging on today - up to five, Dr. Big Guns says, which is a staggering number, but then again, I'm old - will be transferred into the center of myself.

I have a playlist. I've added "Song for a Future Generation," by the B-52s. I hope this doc will let me play music like the last one did.

Then it will be straight back downtown for acupuncture number 2. And then, home. And tonight at 7, another shot.

Your would-be father is in town this time, so I'm deciding if he should come along for our appointment this afternoon. There's nothing much for him to do, but it seems too early to shut him out from an enterprise that will, at least initially, largely be conducted between you and me. We don't want him to be left out, Succotash. You're his bowl of carrots and corn and lima beans too.

Today is the third day of Passover. It's also Easter. And it's April Fool's Day. And it's my father's seventy-second birthday. A more overdetermined date for our transfer I could not have come up with. If I'd put this into a novel it would have been redlined as trite. But real life is like that sometimes. Sometimes you go hunting for Easter eggs on many levels, all at once, never sure what you're going to find.

Now We Are Six

Six of seven eggs mature, and all six fertilized!

Succotash, you surprise me. That's two more than last time. And in theory, that delicious me-slurry they're stewing you in should help you hang on til Sunday.

Sunday is the day. We go on the most important, most memorable Easter egg hunt of all time.

Me and my stupid hopes all up now.

Seven

Hi Succotash.

I'm home. A bit woozy. A bit high. Some pain, but at least this time I was expecting it, and your would-be aunt made sure I had some drugs just in case, so I am no longer afraid of what's happening. Is pain more manageable when you expect it, or understand it? I don't know.

Anyway. I'm home. I'm a bit high. And we got seven eggs. Seven!

Honestly, I thought there was a good chance we'd only get three or four. Seven is a surprise.

Now, we wait. Today I will spend lying on the couch in a semi-drugged haze. Tomorrow they will call and tell us how many fertilized. They - you? - are presently hanging out in lab slurry made of my carefully harvested membranes and blood. Like the goo Neo wakes up in in the Matrix. Which is already a dated reference, and will essentially be to you as.... I was going to say Saturday Night Fever is to me, but that's not right, because that movie came out the year I was born. More accurate would be a movie that came out in 1968.

I'm too high to think of movies that came out in 1968 right now. Medium Cool? Let's call it Medium Cool.

Anyway.

I've done my part. Now it's up to you. Your job is to stew and divide. Stew and divide. Stew and divide. Luxuriate in the slurry. I worked hard to make that slurry for you, and so did several smug overpaid doctors. So enjoy it, okay?

And then on Sunday, you'll get to luxuriate in me.

That playful tone you detect in my blog entry is called "hope," Succotash. I've tried my best to keep it at bay, and intellectually I know the wiser course of action would be to hold it at arm's length. Or further - leg's length. I'm just so unaccustomed to hearing serendipitous good news. This might be the very first time, since we started this project, that it's happened.

Onward

Well, Succotash, we're still in the game. Five follicles going, of which three are in the same ballpark, one is larger, and one is smaller. Another smaller one still which they aren't counting for some reason, but I see it there plain as day on the ultrasound. Yesterday when scanned by Dr. Big Guns I asked if they were sure to address every follicle. He promised me they would.

"Wring em out," I said.

It's been a week of strange coincidences. The acupuncturist standing in for my usual one remembers me from college. Then in the waiting room today a woman recognizes me from having met through a mutual friend. Then as the nurse draws targets on my haunches for the trigger shot I will likely have to give myself later, she tells me that another nurse recognized me from writing. I was her favorite author and she was star struck. This is gratifying information, I suppose, though a bit surreal to receive while one's pants are lowered and someone is drawing on one's rear end with a marker.

Almost certainly triggering tonight. Then egg retrieval Thursday. I am being very assiduous about my bowel movements Succotash, because last time the constipation wrought by egg retrieval surgery was both painful and horrifying. I'm heading it off at the pass this time. Stool softeners. Magnesium. I've even laid in a supply of prune juice.

Prune juice, Succotash. See what I'm willing to do for you?

Now your job is to grow. And then, if we get that far, to hang on.

Still Going

I'm starting to be able to feel them in there. I'm guessing we'll trigger tomorrow, which would mean retrieval on Tuesday.

I don't know.

I'm not optimistic. I have glimmers of it, against my better judgement.

Then, of course, the big decision will be whether or not I can handle this again.

Well.

We'll see.

More scans tomorrow morning. My forty-first birthday.

Bullshit

Four follicles, Succotash. I mean, what the fuck kind of turnout is that? That's pathetic.

Some other little small ones though. The girls on the internet seem to think it's possible that the little ones can wake up in time. I hope so. Or else, what's the point?

Anyway, the cycle isn't cancelled. At least not at the moment.

We start our extra load of shots tomorrow.

And So It Begins

 Stims day 3, Night Sweat edition. I woke up in the middle of the night soaked. Dripping. I had to get up and towel off and change pajamas. My eyemask was soaked.

Also worrying, as Day 2 baseline ultrasound showed a follicle on the left that was already 8 mm. I asked if I was at risk for another dominant follicle cancelled cycle.

"We only worry if it's over 10," said attending, surprised as usual that I was asking questions at all.

Next scan not til Wednesday, but you know my prediction. You heard it here first, Succotash.

Though by all means, feel free to surprise me, you wily hypothetical person, you.

On an unrelated note, I had squirreled away surplus meds in flagrant violation of Federal law to give to a friend from high school who works in the arts, like me, but who has no insurance coverage. Do you have any idea how much these meds cost out of pocket? It's fucking staggering. It's many thousands of dollars. So I gave her my stash, and she's got a good five follicles going, possibly heading into retrieval on Wednesday.

If she's successful, I've made her promise her kid will come visit me in the home.

Monitoring

I am a ball of rage and despair, and that is why I am crying during blood draw.

"Are you okay?" asks nurse.

"No," I say. "Everything about this is terrible. This is a total nightmare and I won't want to be here."

Anyway. The guacamole has been sitting out too long. I'm starting to brown around the edges.

Probably starting stims tonight.

Lab person and nurse are nice about it, though as usual when I self-report an impression or sensation (in this case, "the estrogen is making me volatile") their response is to contradict me ("Weird! Most people say it makes them all lovey-dovey.").

To which I say "Nothing makes me all lovey-dovey."

Also there is someone observing the nurse, which I didn't consent to and which is never fully explained to me. I ask her if she is a student. She says no, she's just observing. I'm like, oh, so you could be anyone? A process server? A debt collector? Knox Harrington, the video artist?

"Yeah, but what are you doing here?" I ask.

"I'm a nurse," she says. No further explanation.

Stay tuned for next week, Succotash, when your would-be mother is involuntarily committed.

Day 1

The meds have arrived. I've put them all in the meds drawer.

And my period has arrived on time. I'm sitting at my desk now, wrapped in a mohair blanket like a 19th C invalid, telling myself the cramps don't hurt that much.

I'm lying.

Tomorrow morning, I will go in for a baseline ultrasound and blood work.

One more time.

We'll do it one more time, Succotash.

Cover Song

To the tune of "The Sweater Song" by Weezer

First monologue:

Oh hi there. Welcome. Here are some forms for you til fill out. How long you been trying? What? Five years? Oh. Well. The doctor will try to see you soon. Within three months, no longer.

chorus:
If you want to have a baby
That's too bad, cause you're way too old
It serves you right, you're too damn successful
Lying on the floor
Lying on the floor, your period's come!

So we need you to sign this release saying that nothing that happens to you is our fault. Also are you aware that each cycle costs fifteen thousand dollars? Good thing you put so much effort into your career, huh? Oh I know. Great. The doctor will see you now.

(chorus)

So I've looked at your chart, and I can confidently say you have at least a 20%... make that a 10%... make that a 5% chance of success. But won't it be worth it? Your life will finally have meaning. Now slide your butt down here and spread your legs and let's have another look.

Last chorus:
Wait, you wanted to have a baby?
Well that's too bad, you're too fucking old.
You should've worked less,
Been less ambitious.
Lying on the floor, Lying on the floor, your time is done!

Outro:
Have you tried supplements? What about melatonin? What about pineapple juice? What about yoga? You should try acupuncture, you SHOULD GO ON VACATION. MAYBE THIS WOULDN'T BE HAPPENING IF YOU COULD JUST FUCKING RELAX!

Estrogen Patch, On

The first baby step into the deep morass of IVF cycle #3, like I'm just boarding the plane that will eventually take me to another airport where I will catch another plane and fly far, far, far into the Southern Hemisphere where I will drive from the airport into the jungle until I come upon the raft that will take me deep into the heart of darkness, where Mr. Kurtz will be waiting for me to tell me that the transfer failed.

The Minister of Scraping, or How I Finally Got the Doctor to Shut the Fuck Up

Me: "I'm here to see the Minister of Scraping."

Front Desk (humorless): "What doctor are you here to see?"

Me: "Oh, fine."

Later, in exam room, I lie waiting, reading New York Magazine.

MoS: "Hello! I'm Dr. Whosis, chatter chatter chatter chatter chatter chatter chat-"

Me, interrupting: "Hey, do you mind if I just read my magazine while you do this?"

MoS (perplexed): "What? Uh. Sure?"

Me: "It's nothing personal. I just prefer to be checked out of my body while this is happening, and I'd like to read and use my brain."

MoS: "Do you want me to tell you what I'm doing before I do it?"

Me: "Nope."

MoS: "Okay."

I read my magazine. There's some pain but reading helps keep my mind off it

MoS: "All done. You may have some cramping and spotting, like a period, blah blah blah. Then we're going to yadda yadda yadda blah blah bullshit blah get you pregnant blah."

Me: "Got it. Thanks."

MoS: "That's maybe the longest I've ever had to be quiet."

Me: smiles politely, thinking, that appointment was fifteen minutes, max

Popped half an Oxy in the ladies' room on my way out, and am now home, with hot pad, feeling pretty good all things considered.

Also, word to the wise - on the consent form for this endometrial co-culture nonsense they pointed to two spots for me to initial like it was no big deal. They were consents for the procedure to be filmed (WTF?) and for a medical apparatus sales person to be present (WTF x 4?). I did not initial them, and you don't have to, either.

Slow Crank

Out of bed at 7 am, pulling on clothes, to discover the dog has soiled the dining room, which is a really strange development for him. I resolve to deal with it when I get back, and run outside into the bomb cyclone and hail a cab.

At the office, they mispronounce my name. Again. When they go to take the extra blood this time, I keep my eyes closed.

"Did you eat and drink?" they ask.

"I drank water," I say.

Prodding at my elbow. They seem to think I'm lying to them, but I'm not.

I get an Uber home as the rain turns to sleet. Back in the apartment I take off my shoes and pull out paper towels and cleaning supplies and I deal with the soiling in the dining room, worrying over the dog. He'd been so chipper yesterday. I don't even remember the last time he had an accident in the house. Did he try to wake us up? Did we not hear him?

I finally climb back in bed a little before 9. I resolve that I will close my eyes, just for a little while. I listen to the sleet against the windows. The dog wagged me hello and then went back to bed too. My husband didn't stir.

At 12:15 I finally awoke, confused, in a kind of jet lag. Everyone was still asleep.

Like we are resting up for the challenges ahead.

Good Morning Smiley Face

Hello LH surge! I call the office.

The Coordinator of Scraping answers. On Friday I am to come in for blood. "Make sure you eat and drink beforehand. It's a lot of blood."

Check.

They will collect six gallons of blood and also test my hormones to make sure (stupid woman) I actually had an LH surge and didn't hallucinate the digital smiley face, and they will also check my other hormones and see if I have spontaneously developed chlamydia or gonorrhea since last February, which - one hopes - I have not.

Then on Saturday I will meet my friend's new baby, and on Sunday I'll have a bunch of women over for a clothing swap, and on Monday I will lie on the floor in a panic, and on Tuesday at the crack of dawn I will go in and see the Minister of Scraping. But they'll give me a urine pregnancy test first.

Then I will experience "30-45 seconds of discomfort" which will cause bleeding, but not to worry, I can just take a liner or pad from the office and go straight back to work.

If by "straight back to work" they mean "back to the apartment where I will take prescription pain killers provided to me on the QT by my sister in law from her knee surgery and finish rewatching all of Deadwood," then yes, I will go straight back to work.

And then, we wait.

I'm like Bruce Willis before the boxing match in Pulp Fiction, huffing and puffing and jogging around and hitting myself on the head with my gloves, getting psyched up.

Three weeks out, Succotash. You psyching up?

It's Possible

That writing a novel where the main character (who everyone identifies with me) gets surprise pregnant was not the kindest thing I have ever done to myself.

Because I'm starting to revise for my editor right now, and it's a super drag.

That is all.

My period is just about over

And I'm still really sad.

Hiding out in a coastal town, breathing sea air. But still having occasional flashes of inappropriate anger and blooms of despair.

I've started my ovulation tracking pee sticks again. Just one so far. 

I'm not ready to feel hopeful again. I was really unprepared for how disappointed I would be, when this last cycle failed to work.

I really thought I was ready. I thought I could handle it.

I'm drinking wine on the couch and watching a dumb true crime melodrama and hiding from how I really feel.

Bite Me

A new plan forms. My period starts, basically, at least I think it starts. It's slow getting underway - the tale of the reluctant uterus. But it's started, pretty much. So I call the office.

First, call the nurse, who never picks up the phone (and I mean, not once in a year and a half has anyone actually *answered* this telephone). Leave a message saying guess what, it's day one, I'm doing X procedure this month, and I'll need meds called in. Hang up, forgetting to ask her about the possibly infected injection site on your left butt cheek. Awkward. Well, we'll watch it another day. It could be an allergic somethingorother. It could be adhesive allergy. It could be anything. And I'm pretty certain they would prefer it to be nothing, so that is what they'll say it is.

Next, call the mystery person you have never heard of who, you are told, exists only to schedule this procedure. This person answers the phone. Go back and forth with her about what day in your cycle it really is. Write down all the various stages of things you have to do before you undergo this dreadful sounding procedure which, she says as an afterthought, isn't covered by your insurance, so that'll be a thousand bucks when your next IVF cycle starts, thankyouverymuch.

"Awesome," you say.

"And you can't try to get pregnant this cycle," she warns. "We'll be doing a blood pregnancy test before the biopsy, so you should avoid intercourse around ovulation."

Bullshit, you think to yourself. I'm having sex with my husband whenever I fucking feel like it, and if I should happen - against ALL FUCKING ODDS - to get pregnant NATURALLY this cycle from MAKING LOVE WITH MY HUSBAND then that's what I'm going to fucking do, and fuck you and your biopsy and your not-covered-by-insurance.

Obviously I have a very healthy attitude these days.

Anyway. Period's started. Next stop, ovulation kits. And then we see what lies ahead.

Now What

I just got back from a meeting. A work meeting, Succotash, where we sat in a big conference room with laptops and ordered in lunch. My new editor is lovely. Even more lovely was being in a professional conversation for two hours, talking about character and plot and title and voice and revision strategies and release dates, and being taken seriously as a thinking, competent, professional human being instead of a body that has failed.

I talked to Dr. Big Guns. He claims that he is disappointed too. He suggests we try again, same protocol, only with the added benefit of something called endometrial co-culture, which essentially means that any embryos we come up with will be brewed in me-slime rather than lab-slime. But to make the me-slime they have to - hooray! - scrape out my endometrial lining a few days after I next ovulate.

I will refer you to my entry on female pain, below. That, Succotash, is going to suck. And how.

So I'm back to waiting for my period to start. Once it does, I am to call the nurse and also the Coordinator of Scraping to get on the calendar. So. A month off from shots. A month off from hormones that make me exhausted and insane. By a happy coincidence, this will be the month I'm given revision notes. A month for my mind, instead of my body.

I have already informed your would-be father that I would like to have the maximum amount of sex for fun. I would like to remember that my body can bring me pleasure, too.

I choked up during my call with Dr. Big Guns, which is why I'd insisted on having the appointment via telephone rather than in the office. First, as I told his assistant, I'm pretty done with going to the office, thanks. And second, when I started to cry, as I knew I would, I would be home, and safe, and not sitting in front of the great man's office like a scolded child.

He got off the phone in a hurry. I guess I can't blame him.

Then I took myself out. I got my eyebrows done. I got my bangs trimmed so you could see my well-shaped eyebrows. And then I went to the foot massage place.

I'll tell you, Succotash, I don't know what it is, but something about a young ropey-muscled guy digging with careful attention into different specific points in my feet was completely mind-reorienting. I walked in so tense and anxious I was shaking. Raw, ready to cry again, hateful, bitter. I walked out relaxed, positive, hopeful, and excited to go to a party with some friends. Maybe that's fuel for another blog post, or maybe it's as simple as someone - a stranger - making a gesture of care to my body rather than a gesture of intrusion, or of judging.

My hope has persisted into today. I'm ready.

I'm ready to try again.

2 in the morning

I got home from dinner with my friend, which went so late and with so much laughing and good talk and wine (finally) that I missed the brass band I'd planned to see for Mardi Gras, but didn't mind. Walked the puppy, got ready for bed, watched a couple of Youtube videos of guinea pigs snuffling around - this is what I do now, because reading the news makes me insane - put on my eye mask, and shut off the light.

I waited. I usually have to wait awhile, but eventually sleep comes. I take a Benadryl most nights, which horrified my acupuncturist (I am now a woman who has an acupuncturist to horrify), but I would rather have the guaranteed sleep. So I took the pill and I waited.

But instead of falling asleep, I fell apart.

I don't know how long it lasted. I sobbed so hard I thought I was going to vomit. I got up and staggered into the bathroom. I sat in front of the toilet, curled into a ball of horror, mouth open, tears so wet they had almost no salt at all, and I wailed "My baby, my baby, my baby, my baby, my baby."

By 3:30 I was back in bed. The tears would stop, and then they'd start again, pumping up and hot without any apparent beginning or end. The deep and dwelling cramps inside me, the cramps of lost time and emotional energy and pain and possibility, drove me to cry harder.

I got back up, not caring about my body anymore, fuck all the supplements and the fucking acupuncture and the kale shakes every morning and all that shit, that fucking waste of time bullshit nonsense. I cracked my sole secret stash opioid pain pill in two halves, and swallowed one. I went back to bed.

It's interesting, that physical pain and emotional pain operate on the same neural pathways. The half pill did what I asked it to. I got heavier. I felt more calm. Calm enough I could fall into a tight, balled half sleep.

Five or six hours later I woke up sore, like I'd been in a fight. My eyelids swollen. I dragged myself into the kitchen, heated up yesterday's coffee, sat at the computer, and started to cry again.

The dog asked to go out. "Okay," I said. I suited up in boots and coat, face puffy and pink, hair askew, and we got in the elevator, slow and unwilling.

"Good morning," said the elevator man. "Happy Valentines Day."

Negative, Ghost Rider, the Pattern is Full

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. Or sad. I am both of those things. Though the sad definitely started yesterday, as the vague and nameless certainty of failure reared its head, seized me about the midsection, and dragged me out of the rest of my day. The truth is, I have always secretly, deeply believed that having a kid was just not something that I was going to do. It just didn't seem possible. I had a horror of my pregnant body, for one thing. But it also just seemed.... unpossible. Like flight. I don't have wings, either. After I got married, when people would ask me when I planned to have kids, I would be baffled in the same way as if I'd been asked when wings would sprout from my shoulder blades and carry me into the sky.

So the sadness is real, and the disappointment is real. But if I'm honest, right now I'm feeling a lot of relief. That's pretty fucked up, but there it is. I have learned, in my majority, that uncertainty is very hard for me to take. That I can take a negative outcome much more smoothly than uncertainty. Give me a no, by God. Give me a no and I can move on. Stuff your maybes and your possiblys. A yes is good, yesses can be great, and I've been fortunate to have some pretty spectacular yesses here and there. Statistically impossible yesses. That I should now be faced with a statistically predicable no does not take away from the good fortune that I have already enjoyed.

I have a boat, for Christ's sake.

I can imagine the person my mythical child would be, and I know for some people the loss of that imaginary person is hard to take. But I imagine people for a living. Succotash, God love you, but you are no more real - are in fact, less real - than the protagonist of my first novel, who lived in my mind much longer than you have. She is out there, in the world now, living in other people's heads. I have no control over how they feel about her, or what they do with her. She is remembered differently by different people, forgotten sometimes, hated on occasion. I have a little control over her life now as I would over yours, once you started to encounter the world for yourself.

So, this relief. First, I'm relieved because it means that this cycle is finally over. Good lord, but I'm glad it's over. I hated all the shots. I hated the mindless probing, the digging in my veins. I got to enjoy the acupuncture, lying there watching balls of ultraviolet and yellow blob and morph into each other. But at $125 a pop, and even more needles, I'm ready for a break. I loathed getting up in the morning, dumping $30 a day on cab fare because I couldn't face the rush hour crush on the train, and I wanted to get home fast enough to go back to bed. God, the money, Succotash. I can't imagine how much differently I would feel if this failed cycle, in addition to costing me in emotion and time, had also cost me $15,000 dollars.

One more cycle. That, I can do. Two, max, depending on what Dr. Big Guns says, or what we learn, if we learn anything. So part of my relief, to be honest, is that I am one step closer to the definitive no. A no that I can know, and understand, and accept, before I go on and become whoever it is that I am set to be.

Doubts

I don't know, Succotash.

I guess it doesn't matter how I feel about it, as we'll find out the score tomorrow. I do know that I'm sick of needles. I'm sick of being tired. I'd like to leave the house. I'd like to see art and see friends and go to restaurants and read and think and so far I haven't been able to do any of those things because I have been parked on the couch under an anvil of hormone fatigue.

That's a Looney Tunes reference, Succotash. If you ever come to exist, will you watch Looney Tunes? I loved them. Some of them are pretty racist, though. This is the problem with American culture - everything is racist. My father used to read to me at night when I was a child, which is super progressive for fathers in the 1970s, and he did it because he loved me, and he did all the voices. What's the problem? He was reading Uncle Remus stories. I'm here to tell you as someone who has taught them in a literature class that those stories are racist as fuck.

I can't believe I'm digressing on racism and swearing on my baby blog. Obviously I'm not cut out to be a mother. Right? I mean, come on. If I were cut out to be a mother, wouldn't I be one already? I'm old, Succotash. I'm so old I remember when TV remotes only had six buttons. And only my grandparents had cable. And telephones were objects that sat on the end table. I remember dial tones, Succotash. How in the hell would I even explain dial tones to you? Also everyone I went to high school with has middle and high school age kids now. Of course, for the most part they also don't have careers. I have a successful career. Technically. Of course has my editor sent me the revision notes yet? No.

She might be waiting to learn the beta results too. What does it mean that my life is such that my editor might learn I'm pregnant before my mother does? I have already been in a world where my editor calls on my birthday before my mother does.

There's a writer out there who's famous, who I have never read, because I bristle that his fiction is 1) called "My Struggle," which makes me think of Hitler, which makes me not want to read him, and 2) all about picayune details of his family life, which 3) if he were a woman would not be hailed as groundbreaking contemporary fiction but 4) would instead be marketed as women's fiction with a hazy photograph to two girls on a dock somewhere, leaning blonde braided heads together, possibly wearing galoshes. Just thinking about this author makes me angry, and I'm not usually one to begrudge another writer's success. But the only reason I'm bringing him up is because he's quoted in Publisher's Weekly this week saying not only that contemporary fiction is overrated (agreed, but I still this he's a pretentious ass for saying it) but also that any family with a writer in it is cursed.

I might be a terrible mother Succotash. I'm self absorbed, for one thing, and sometimes cold and withholding. Part of me will be relieved if it's negative tomorrow because I have hated putting my body through this, as I knew I would, which is why I put it off until the very last minute.

I have a tendency to put things off that I don't want to do, which is a human tendency I guess. But then I do it, I rush through the important parts, make mistakes, and then when it doesn't work, and I fail, I can reassure myself that I tried, but probably not as hard as I could. This is called self-sabotage, Succotash, and I've done it my entire life. But now it matters, because my self-sabotage has been you-sabotage. I put it off too long, I didn't want to do it, I wasn't ready, I was ambivalent, and now I'm rushing through everything at the last minute.

And it's not going to work.

I'm going to fail.

I'm sorry. It's a trap, being born. You have no control over who your parents are. I'd be better than some obviously bad ones - I'm loving, I'm patient (older mothers are, on average), I'd develop you and encourage you and I wouldn't use drugs or take off and go to Burning Man leaving you in the care of an underpaid immigrant nanny for a month and a half. People do that, you know. People are the worst. But I have substantial flaws, Succotash, and you and I are facing the consequences of those flaws today. Right now.

Together, or alone, it remains to be seen.

Fever

Started at 99.1. Today it made it up to 99.6. I called the office.

"It could be the progesterone," they said.

"I'm also tired," I said.

"That could be the progesterone too," they went on.

"Okay," I said.

"If it develops into what seems like a respiratory infection, go see your regular doctor," they continued. "If that doesn't happen, and the fever gets above 100.6, you have to come in."

"Okay," I said.

I ordered soup. It was just okay.

I am lying on the couch. Bored. Uncomfortable. Slurping pink coconut water out of a wine glass, which makes it look pretty and festive.

All I can do is wait and see.

Tea Leaves

I told myself I was going to be very good. I wasn't going to test early. I wasn't going to symptom-spot.

Symptom-spotting, Succotash, is when a woman reads her body like tea leaves, trying to interpret arbitrary patterns of residue as if it holds meaningful codes to the near future. Conventional wisdom holds that symptom-spotting, like tea leaf reading, is a waste of fucking time and energy. On the one hand, any sensations that appear in a body as freshly pregnant as mine might be will be indistinguishable from the symptoms of a coming period, and on the other tea leaves are garbage that should just be thrown away.

I was being really good, I think. Yesterday to distract myself I applied for a writing job at Princeton. Ridiculous, right? I mean, it's the kind of job they only give to people who are famous and on high school reading lists. Or, like, young white guys with five o'clock shadow who have written only one book. Those are the choices - either Jamaica Kincaid, or some young white guy. His book will have come out with Graywolf Press. His author photo will have him in a black t-shirt and lit in a way that makes his eyes supernaturally blue.

But I digress. I was being really good, is what I was saying. I was ignoring my body. I am exceptionally good at ignoring my body. You know the whole Cartesian thought experiment that posits human consciousness is a trick and we are nothing but brains in vats? Of course you don't, because you don't exist, and if you don't exist you haven't had the chance to read Descartes. Suffice it to say, when I first learned about that thought experiment, which is supposed to strike the budding philosopher as absurd, I thought "Huh. That would explain a lot, actually."

So. I thought I had it nailed, Succotash. I was going to completely ignore my body until it was time for our determinative blood test.

That was before I woke up this morning with tender nipples.

Sorry if that's TMI, Succotash.

Now, logic suggests that I ignore this metaphorical clump of tea leaves. That I hold the cup under running water in the sink and rinse out the leaves and take them for what they are - arbitrary.

And yet. My breasts are often sore before a period, these past few years. It never was that way in my twenties, and I can't account for the change, but there it is. They typically get sore. Sometimes too sore to touch.

Not just the nipples, though. It's usually the whole shebang.

DAMMIT. See what I just did? Succotash, what the hell? I'm staring at the tea leaves instead of washing them down the sink. I'm squinting at them, and seeing shapes. Just as I promised myself not to do.

You would-be mother is a hypocrite, Succotash. A hypocrite who lies to herself. What hope can you possibly have, with such a woman for a would-be mother?

Waiting

What I have done:

Opened the monthlong backlog of mail
Paid the various medical bills
Filed the medical bills
Filed the tax stuff for later
Discovered I made even less money last year than I thought
Worried if this means my career is over
Reminded myself that I'll get the manuscript notes any day now, and then I'll be expected to, like, work on them
Worried that the book will tank and then my career will be over
Watched half of Apollo 13
Remembered I hate space
Reflected that it's pretty cool that of all cities on the planet, the name of my home city was the first word spoken from the moon
Wondered why people get excited about stuff like that
Flipped through the monthlong backlog of New Yorkers, accepted that I will not read them, and recycled them
Eyed the Vogue and wondered why I subscribed to that in the first place
Wished for a bathtub in the apartment, because then I could read the Vogue
Wondered if we'll have to turn the den back into a second bedroom if this process works
Wondered how I can pay for turning the den into a second bedroom if my career is over
Walked the dog
Cleaned up dog poop on the street
Thought about how much Poland is pissing me off these days
Wished I didn't have to redo my website before the new book comes out
Wished my career was over
Wondered if I'll get either one of those writing jobs
Wondered if I actually want either of those writing jobs
Wondered if I'll ever have a good book idea again
Gone downtown to meet my sister in law in a bar in the West Village so she can inject me with progesterone in the bathroom, thereby checking off a longstanding 1990s bucket list item of "Shoot up in a West Village bar bathroom" but not in the way I would have guessed in the 1990s
Reflected that I am yet another example of how New York has lost its edge

Playlist

"I have a soundtrack I want to listen to," I said. "Is that cool?"

"Sure. You want to play it out loud, or just for you?"

"Oh, out loud if y'all don't mind."

"Sure!"

I climbed into the stirrups. They shone the lights. Then I hit play, and Dee Lite sang "Groove is in the Heart." We made it through that, and "This Is How We Do It," and then "We Got the Beat," which ended just as they pushed me though the double doors back into the recovery room.

Three little embryos. 9 cells, 5 cells, and 3 cells.

Okay, Succotash. This is how we do it.

On Female Pain

How is it possible to be in this much pain, and not be believed? This question is informing a large swath of popular culture at the moment, though in that instance the pain referred to is typically emotional rather than physical. But there is physical pain, too. A recent piece made the rounds of the things people read problematizing the assumption of female pain that we all live with. That sex will involve pain. That the pain is not important.

Yesterday afternoon I was reduced to begging, in tears, on the phone, for painkillers, and I wasn't given any. I awoke from egg retrieval surgery writhing. The pain was acute. I was gasping. Tears sprang to my eyes. I can't properly account for the pain, or describe it. The nurse asked if it was like menstrual cramps, and it assuredly was not anything like menstrual cramps. It was a slicing and a burning. I begged for help. I sobbed. They finally relented and put Dilaudid in my IV. The pain receded into a dull roar, though it took away my equilibrium. I sat swimming in pain and confusion as my husband was brought back to me. I slowly dressed. They gave me a hot pad, which made my skin hot, and still in pain.

We got home and I was installed on the couch and almost immediately fell asleep, with my knees up, which I didn't think was possible. I was curled in sleep from the pain. I dozed fitfully in the last Dilaudid haze, and woke up with a tearing and a roaring and I started to cry.

I was told to take Tylenol. I did.

Finally, we called the doctor. Weeping. I was told they'd leave a message for the nursing team. The nursing team never called back. My husband called. They put him on hold to transfer him, and instead of transferring, they hung up on him. We called and called and called. I finally made the doctor's assistant go downstairs and physically locate a nurse. The nurse called back and told me that what I was experiencing was normal, and they would not give me a prescription, and they were sorry.

Earlier in this process I had an imaging procedure that involves rinsing my insides out with iodine. I experienced cramping during the procedure, and burning pain afterwards - for three weeks. I called them, worried. They said they doubted it was because of the procedure. I asked to be checked to make sure nothing was wrong. They said I should talk to my regular doctor. I said I didn't have a regular doctor yet, I had started treatment with the clinic the minute I moved to New York City. They shrugged and said it wasn't because of the procedure. I said it had begun right after the procedure, was occurring in the exact same region of the body as the procedure, and had never happened before. I insisted they look at me. They did, and shrugged. Nothing wrong here, they said.

Pain is temporary, fortunately. But when one is inside it, and it is bad enough, it becomes consuming. It replaces my identity. I did not recognize the woman who was weeping and begging on the phone last night. I knew I sounded like a manic drug addict. But I didn't know what else to do. How can you beg without begging? How can you convince someone that while most people do not experience "discomfort" like this after these procedures, that human experience actually falls along a bell curve, and out here, in the long tail, I am suffering so much that I do not even recognize myself?

It's hard not to read their persistent doubting of my account of my own experience of my body through a lens of gender. The highest ranking doctors in this practice are all men. Most of the residents and attendings are also men. The nurses are all women. The entire power structure of this system consists of well-paid men telling women that they should give over control of their bodies, that they do not understand themselves, that only expert men can help them. The fact that they cannot experience our pain, be it emotional or physical, means that the pain does not exist. We are as guilty of hysteria as any fainting harpy in Freudian Vienna. And it doesn't matter.

Bangles

Hauled myself out of bed at 5:15, unsure the state of taxicabs at that hour. To my surprise I got one almost immediately, and so rolled into the clinic before 6. Ten minutes with my eyes closed on a couch in the waiting room, and then ushered into the conference room for my pre-op orientation.

Parked in the conference room alone, filling out forms and wishing for death. Enter two women, my age or a little younger than me, clearly strangers also.

1: "It says here you have to take all your jewelry off for surgery. But I can still wear this, right?" points to gold bangle

2: "Oh I know! I hope I can wear it. I don't even know where the screw driver is!"

1: "I know! I'd have to, like, buy one."

Me, interrupting: "You have to take them off. It's surgery."

2: "I can't!"

1: "I haven't taken it off in, like, years! [to 2] They always want to polish it for me, but I'm like, no! I like it! It's my thing. I have foreign sand in there!"

Me: "Y'all are both wearing bracelets you can't take off?"

1 haughty: "Yes. They're from the seventies, like a love bracelet? The idea is, your lover screws it on you and then you can't ever take it off."

[Sidebar - I know this. They're by Cartier, and cost about one zillion dollars.]

2: "That's the whole idea. They're like a modern chastity belt."

Me, having had no coffee, so dangerously free of filter: "You mean, like a handcuff? That's fucked up."

THUD

Anyhoo. Onward to retrieval tomorrow!

Well Well Well

Six nice plump little follicles in there. Tonight, my friend Jane will come over to give me a shot. Tomorrow bright and early I go to my orientation. And Tuesday at 8 am, we see how many eggs are warming inside me right now.

This is the farthest we've come, Succotash.

The farthest we've come.

Are you in there right now? I guess we'll see.

Morning Farm Report

Well. Would you look at that.

Three or four follicles on the right ovary. Another four or five on the left. All about the same size.

Scanned by none other than Dr. Big Guns himself.

Now I'm home waiting to be told what my medication regimen will be for the next couple of days while L is out of town.

I don't know, Succotash. We keep this up, we might even make it to egg retrieval. How wild would that be?

Jackhammers

At six I heard the dog lie down heavily, with a thump, and then I heard a faint whimper. I've been worrying about him. The arthritis in his hips seems to have worsened. We're giving him a pill in the morning and at night now, to help him be comfortable, but old age comes for us all, and the arthritis will only get worse. He's a brave boy, and when his pills make him comfortable he wants to romp and play. He's still my baby dog, stuck with the hips of an old man.

I was awake anyway. I slept on my neck weird the night before and then, with a locked-up muscle under my scapula, I went on a march in midtown Manhattan with about half a million other people, holding a sign over my head for much of that time. It felt necessary, and important, and I'm glad I did it. But then last night I added two more injections to the arsenal of pills rattling around in my own aging body, and now I feel like I've been hit by a truck.

I don't have the energy to take the ferry to Red Hook to look at art and see friends I haven't seen in a long time. I don't have the stamina to continue on to my sister in law's house.

I haven't even yet mustered the energy to get in the shower. Which, since ibuprofen is forbidden, is the only option on the table to unwind whatever is going on in my back. There are half a dozen things for me to do. Write this, write that. Research this, research that.

The dog and I are tired. And jackhammers are breaking the street thirteen stories down.

Damn, Yo

Clomid, man. It's no joke.

Just the act of sitting in a chair having someone give me a haircut, and having to hold very still, while mentally writing a cover letter for something, has now made me ready to take a nap.

Ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

Here We Go

Hello sweet imaginary Succotash,

Why would I assume you're sweet, first off? I haven't met you. You could be a demon beast for all I know. But right now, you are wholly hypothetical, and I choose to address you as though you are sweet. Never a moment's trouble. Easy. It's a fantasy, one shared by many no doubt, but intensified by how demonic is the process I am presently undertaking to grow you.

After tracking my ovulation date over Christmas and phoning it in to the nurses, I was told precisely when to start applying a hormone patch to my belly. My poor belly, used and abused even before being stretched out of recognition. Right now it has shadowy outlines of adhesive in three spots. I patched and patched and patched. I left my vacation early to be sure I didn't miss the window. I patched some more. My period didn't come.

"Where is it?" I asked the doctors.
"This happens all the time," the doctors said.
"Not to me. I have never been this late. Ever," I pointed out.
"Well," they shrugged. "Your blood work says you'll get it this weekend."
Then the shrugged me out of the room.

"It's the patch," said my new acupuncturist, who, poor creature, is also serving as my de facto therapist, since I tell her about my mood as soon as I show up.
"I thought it was," I said.
"It is. We can deal with that."

I resisted acupuncture. I'm not, despite being someone who tells woo woo stories, someone who is actually a woo woo person. But enough smart, educated women I know - at least one a scientist - said it was worth trying. I gave it a stab (ha! Oh, dear) back in Ithaca, and walked out halfway through. It hurt. And it stressed me out.

I warned my new acupuncturist about this on my first appointment. "I'm squeamish," I said. I didn't go on to tell her that my husband refers to acupuncture as witch-doctoring and that I thought it was probably all a load of hooey. But I suspect she could tell. "Squeamish" is code for other things.

"Don't worry," she said.

Anyway. My period finally started last night, about two hours after my acupuncture appointment, and with it came instructions from the doctors office to start my pills. We are off and running.

Here's the recipe for Succotash this time: Two 50 mg tablets of Clomid, at night. Plus prenatal vitamin with DHA. Plus small spoonful of royal jelly, per acupuncturist book. Plus L arginine supplement, which acupuncture book suggests is good for poor responders. Then, after three days of that, add 150 IUs of Follistim (which must be kept in the fridge, and injected into the tummy fat using a cool pen device). Also add 75 IUs of Menopur, which must be drawn up and mixed with diluent and injected using a disposable syringe, also into tummy fat, though it burns going in there, so sometimes I resorted to using my inner thigh. So we do all that for a couple of days. Then we get checked out again. I bring consent forms and a prefilled syringe of Ganirelix in my handbag and a positive attitude, which is hard for me early in the morning, but I'm pledged to do my best.

The details, Succotash. They're killing me. They're taking up so much room in my brain I barely have room for anything else. No wonder I feel so stupid and slow. I feel dense. Uncreative. And tired. 

What else have I done? I have stopped putting sugar in my coffee. I have stopped drinking alcohol. I am down to only one coffee a day. I am trying to prioritize sleep.

This regimen is probably going to last about two weeks. The goal, Succotash, is to get my follicles to grow. Last cycle I had one that drastically outpaced all the others and so there was no point continuing. It was a disappointment.