Blood, drugs and other nasty surprises

Fucking Aunt Flo found me on Wednesday last week.  Another cycle down and still no bean.  Almost to drive home the point that "No! you are not pregnant!", she arrived 3 days early.  I didn't even get to the point where I could wonder if we had a chance before it was suddenly there.  I say suddenly, but in actuality it came on pretty gradually; I was spotting for 3 days before her arrival - I was just choosing to ignore all the signs.  It's funny what infertility does to you... how many things you can be blind to.

As much as I hate it when AF comes to visit,  I welcomed her this month.  I welcomed her because this month I FINALLY get to start to do something that might actually increase our chances.  I finally get to do something!  In a situation that is so totally out of your hands it feels amazing to finally get to do something about it.

And her coming 3 days early?  That actually turned out to be perfect because it meant I could go to the clinic on Friday instead of the holiday Monday (I didn't even know if they were open on Monday) and going on Friday meant that I could go to the clinic I like.  Only the main clinic is open on the weekend, but I like the smaller satellite clinic that is closer to me.

On Friday I had my day 3 appointment.  It was at 7:10 am and it was an hour away and I needed to have a full bladder.  Good times.  I had my blood work done then had the pelvic u/s and then was finally allowed to go to the bathroom, and then I had the internal u/s.  My old friend the transvaginal wand, oh how I loathe thee.

After that I got to pick up my drugs!  Well almost, the pharmacy that they sent my script to didn't open until 9 am... grrr... If I had known that, I would have either a) had them send the script to a pharmacy in my town, or b) made my appointment later in the morning.  Now I was stuck waiting around for over an hour until they opened.  So I got a coffee and went to Walmart (it was the only store open before 9 am).

I got back to the pharmacy just after nine and picked up my drugs.  2.5mg Letrozol (Femara) once daily for five days; day 3 through 7.  I was also given another drug called Ovidrel.  I wasn't expecting this one.  The nurse mentioned something about something that needed to be refrigerated, but  I couldn't hear her properly on my cell, she also had a fairly thick accent, so the combination was brutal.  Anyway, Ovidrel is a shot of hCG (human chorionic gonadotrophin), a hormone normally produced to initiate ovulation. A variant of hCG is also produced during pregnancy.  This is what ovulation predictor kits (OPKs) and home pregnancy tests test for.

Ovidrel is an injection.

I was not prepared for this.  I'm nervous for when I have to take it.  Luckily that will be next week some time so for now I can put on those infertility blinders that I wear so often, and just not think about it for now.  I have to go in again next Thursday (CD9) to see how things are progressing.  They will give me instruction then on how and when to take the Ovidrel.

I'm on the second day of Femara right now and so far so good.  I'm not having many side effects, aside from a couple headaches, but those really can't be traced back to the Femara since I get headaches all the time anyway.

I am scared.  I am scared because my hopes are up too high this month.  The higher my hopes are, the harder I fall and I'm afraid of falling.  Luckily my cottage vacation will be there to soften the landing.  With it's sunny beaches and good friends and alcohol.  Lots of alcohol.

Just to top off my amazing week... my cousins girlfriend (ya that one he knocked up after a couple months of dating) gave birth to a little girl last night.  I know jelaosy is ugly, but so is infertility.  And I am sooooooo jealous, so what does that make me?  I don't care.  I know it's bad, but I was really hoping that they would have a boy.  If I couldn't have the first baby, I at least wanted to have the first girl, and they got that too.  This sucks!

And in other totally non baby related news... I bought myself an ereader yesterday!  I'm having so much fun with it and it will be awesome for the cottage when I am on vacation in a couple of weeks.  A vacation I was looking more forward to before T became pregnant... there I go with the jealousy again... it's too bad those infertility blinders didn't work for stuff like that!