I’ve been just terrible at updating – I’m sorry about that. However counting days has been a helpful reminder of how quickly time flies!
I took my last birth control pill on the 16th. I do believe the pills made me irritable, because on September 7th (day 12) I saw a sketch I had written performed. It had been edited, and I wanted to slap the person or people who had edited the sketch. It’s possible this dismay had nothing to do with the pills, because I’m still angry about it. Either way, I tried to limit my social interactions these past few weeks, lest my rage manifest itself through scathing, clever jabs that I could not take back.
On Day 22, the day after my last birth control pill, I had my check-in. They took blood and did an ultrasound to make sure everything looked good. On Day 24 I got my period, which is a good thing, because if I had started bleeding when they need to extract the eggs, that would have been a problem.
Day 25 was the first day we administered shots. We decided 11pm would be our recurring time. David was a champ: we watched the videos again, he mixed the Menapur, and he applied the shots. The first night the shots didn’t hurt, but the second night the shots did hurt. And last night the Menapur hurt.
Day 28, today, was the day to go in for bloodwork and ultrasound. Based on the results, they would let me know whether to change dosage and whether to take additional medicine. David woke up early to come with me to the appointment, but then I told him he didn’t have to come because he had already done so much. He accepted my empty offer to stay home – which is on me, I should have been more clear about my real needs – I drove to the facility in the rain, and I took the wrong exit, because I did not see the sign correctly and I generally have a terrible sense of direction.
When the nurse took blood, I winced. “I take it you don’t like needles,” she quipped, and I shared I was fine with them before, but given the general increase of needles over the past few days I’ve become more wary of them. Then in the ultrasound room I put the paper cover on the way I normally do, wrapping it all the way around me. Apparently this is incorrect. You are just supposed to use the paper to cover on top of you. You don’t sit on the paper. The ultrasound tech pointed the error out to me. Then I fixed it and asked how I should sit on the chair. The ultrasound tech asked if it was my first ultrasound and shared that she didn’t see a note in my chart about it being my first ultrasound, and had she known, she would have given me more guidance up front. This was closer to my 20th ultrasound, so I shared it wasn’t my first but that the chair was a little different. It was different. The back of the chair was flat, and normally the back of the chair is at an angle. In she went with the probe, and I have 16 follicles on the left ovary and 20 follicles on the right ovary. I asked her about the pain I felt around the medication, and she shared I would have to speak to a nurse and that she was only the technician and not qualified to dispense medical advice.
I shared the irritation in my stomach area with the nurse. “Do you have a lot of muscle in your abdominal area?” she asked.
“I…like to think so, yes,” I replied. (I don’t have the six-pack I aspired to a couple of weeks ago, but I’m not so shabby.)
“The more muscle you have there, the more it’s going to hurt,” she said. “Well that makes me feel better,” I replied.
“You can apply it to other parts of your body, like your thighs,” she advised.
I don’t mean to brag, dear blog, but there’s muscle there too!
Anyway, then I got back in the car, in the rain, and took the wrong exit coming home. But I made it home! I stopped on the way to go grocery shopping with my brother, and I might have bought some Nutella.
And then I might have eaten that Nutella.
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