Today is Mothers' Day -- and for the first time in a REALLY long time (we're talking decades here) I got to spend it with my own mom!!! It was really nice, even if I couldn't do terribly much (see below), and if we all got up way before the crack of dawn to drive into the big bad city for my Sunday IVF monitoring.
Another day of monitoring meant another two needlesticks this time. I'm starting to get tired of this routine...and I am now officially out of usable veins! So tomorrow's monitoring should be extra fun. i'll be bringing both warm packs and ice packs to that appointment, in an effort to salvage what's left of the veins in my right arm.
In the meantimes, my follicles seem unimpressed by my plight with the blood draws and keep growing a very respectable 2-3 mm a day. This means that I'm starting to feel like a chicken that has to pop out a whole bunch of eggs in no time at all in a way that mother nature never quite intended. It's starting to get a bit uncomfortable, as my ovaries are simply not meant to be this size. If I weren't as special as I seem to be, they'd simply trigger me now, but with the letrozole my doctors have me take, this would mean immature eggos. So where other women get to go when the follies reach 17-18 mm (as mine did today), I have to wait until most of them reach 20-21 mm.
So I'll have to be a hormonal, superovulating chicken for a bit longer before they tell me to go ahead and get the trigger shot (yes, yet another injectable medication -- this time an intramuscular one that DH will have to administer). So my egg retrieval surgery (or the assisted egg laying, as I like to think of it) will probably occur sometime later this week, anywhere from Tuesday to Thursday as far as we can tell at this point. So sorry, guys, but I'll have to remain non-committal on lunch and dinner dates ... My medical stuff just tends to get in the way of things.
Thanks for being so understanding of my flakiness. :)
This weekend, DH was supposed to take me to the movies to take my mind off stuff a bit. The latest Star Trek movie is playing on a local IMAX screen, and we figured this would be a cool way to see it. As it turns out, not only didn't I feel up to meeting friends for dinner, but I chickened out of the movie, too, since sitting for a long time does not really sit with me real well. Those superovulating ovaries of mine simply take up more than their fair share of room right now, and they don't like being squished. So I'm spending a lot of my time lying and resting, hoping that those doctors won't be hyperstimulating me into OHSS (ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a serious complication that can result from IVF). But overall, things are going pretty well, for which I am very grateful.
Back to the day's Mothers' Day activities. I was going to cook and grill lamb chops and make some other stuff, but didn't have the energy. So instead, I sent DH to our favorite rib shack to pick up a platter. You have to know that my mom LOVES those ribs -- and she can't get them at home. So I figured she'd appreciate them as a holiday meal for her special day, which she very much did. It was fingerlickin' good! I wanted to go on a walk with the entire family later to take the doggie out, but this, too never materialized since I needed to rest. So we just sat a while on the deck, enjoying the sun and the back yard, where mother natures is springing back to life. I haven't had this much quality time with my mom since -- ever! And we're both really enjoying the time together in person, rather than our usual daily Sky.pe chats. A quiet Mothers' Day, but a nice one I hope.
Talking about spring, all kinds of things are springing back to life. Even the frangipani tree that my friend 1l brought back from Key West for me is once again starting to sprout leaves! The biggest one is almost two inches already, and others are following. I wonder how large it will have to become before it blooms.
Well, so much for my stream of consciousness -- must be the hormones talking, guys! I think I need to go rest up now, so I can face another bloodletting tomorrow -- and hopefully get the trigger soon so I can be on my way to ending my chickendom, and have those eggos popped out of me and ICSEd into little pre-embies-frosties that will await the time when the doctors tell me I'm good and ready to work on our dream of becoming parents again.
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