Oy veins!

Today I went to a local satellite of the IVF center in the big bad city for more cycle monitoring. Of course, each cycle monitoring is accompanied by yet another blood draw, and another dildo scan. I suppose it's a small price to pay for a chance at a future family, but my veins seem to be tiring of all the poking and prodding...

The nurses are having an increasingly harder time finding a vein from which to squeeze some blood. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that due to the missing lymph node and the mastectomy on the left side, they are not supposed to be drawing any blood from that arm. So that leaves only my poor right arm to deal with the onslaught of needles. So it's probably no wonder that my veins are hiding even more than they used to when they were being poked only once every few months.

Apparently my skin appears to be very transparent but really isn't. So there really aren't many good veins showing when they choke off my arm with the tourniquet. The veins really are there, but they need to be palpated by someone who really knows what she's doing with a needle. Plus, after a spot gets poked, it doesn't want to give blood again for a while. So we're slowly but surely running out of places to drill for blood. Right now, efforts have been concentrating on my right hand. It's still suffering from some residual numbness from the IV I had for my mastectomy, so it's not much fun when they poke around that hand some more. But just in case, I brought my own warming pad for my appointment this morning, as I learned at my MRI scan that those things do wonders to help make veins more visible. I guess their other patients aren't as fussy as I am, as they don't have them at the IVF center. With all the bloodletting that's going on there you'd think they have them -- but you'd be wrong, of course.

I am whining, I know. But I'm a bit worried about the whole bloodletting issue, particularly since I will probably need to go to cycle monitoring nearly every day for the remainder of this cycle. So there is a lot of potential future bloodletting to deal with, which comes with the requisite needle sticks. But I'll have to find a way to get through it all somehow...

The good news is that they've called me with my instructions for tonight and they've kept me on the same (ridiculously high) levels of medication for the next two days. This means no trip tomorrow morning for bloodletting and dildo scanning. Yay!!!

In the meantime I have lots of stuff I brought home from work to deal with and occupy my mind, as well as a really nice evening with dinner at a friends' house. So there are enough things to keep my mind occupied.