Awkwardly Social

I had my transfer yesterday, it is a relatively simple procedure compared to some of the shit I’ve had done throughout this process.  You drink a liter of water, you get acupuncture (or, at least, I did, and I wasn’t terribly crazy about the guy who filled in for my acupuncturist, but whatever c’est la vie), you take a valium, they put your feet in stirrups, crank you open and show you a picture of the embryos.

We had 4 4As. Which, being the overachiever that I am, IS REALLY GOOD. Because our doctor is conservative about twin pregnancies, we transferred only one. The problem with twins is there is a higher chance of birth defects, and a WAY higher chance of pregnancy complications, and because my embryos were good quality, my doctor didn’t want to risk both of them implanting.  So, they call over to the lab and the embryologist picks the best one and brings it over.

They (gently) squirt it into your uterus while watching the whole procedure on an ultrasound, with a wand that is pressing PAINFULLY on your very full bladder.

Then, they tip you back and prop up your knees, you get another acupuncture treatment (or, you don’t, I wanted to) and pray to the fertility gods that you don’t pee all over the table.

They let you get dressed and put you in a wheel chair because these nurses do not know how I like to party, and finally let you pee.  I could have peed earlier into a bed pan, but my peeing in bedpans record is a full zero, and I kind of want to keep it that way.

Then they wheel you out into the waiting room and everyone wonders what the hell they are doing in those back rooms (at least when I was first a bright eyed hopefully patient, that’s what I wondered) and you go home and lay down for 2 days.

They told me yesterday that 3 embryos would definitely be frozen and that there might be more tomorrow (today) that make it to freeze. And I got the call this morning, 5 more were frozen.

My doctor was really excited about this. 8 is very good.  I get an A+++.

Now, I wait until next Saturday for my pregnancy test.

Last night as I was crying about nothing and everything in particular, I was lying on my back and the tears were rolling down my cheeks, and I thought to myself, “Why is it always so fucking cold in here?  My goddamned tears are ICY.”  Then I switched seamlessly into thinking about how I could use this moment, and probably will use this moment one day in my writing.  I’m an obnoxious writer-type person even when I’m sad.

Clomid has made me a really grumpy crazy person that every once in a while has really sweaty feet.  Alternate that with me feeling like I’m freezing in balmy 78 degree weather and the madness of  having my first pregnancy end in gumball sized blood clots and you’ve got a recipe for some crazy-fun times! If you think my already droll personality magnified into a gorilla in heat’s anger level is crazy fun, that is.

I had my 10 day ultrasound this morning with the ultrasound tech who reminds me physically of a character in a Wayans brothers’ movie.  In fact, she kind of looks like the Wayans’ sister, but really she looks more like a Wayans brother with a wig on.  She doesn’t act like a Wayans brother in anyway (thank fucking god, can you imagine getting some kind of live stand-up show while you have a wand in your puss?  Don’t answer that if you can.).  Anyway, she is brusque, but I’m starting to like her.   She doesn’t chit chat.  She just puts the wand up in there, and tells me good things like, “Your lining looks good.  You’re going to ovulate on both sides,” in her no-nonsense way, and I kind of like it.

So tomorrow…  with dread and hope I get my 3rd IUI.  Dreading the two weeks wait, hoping for the positive test, and dreading the next two weeks wait for the heartbeat ultrasound.

Is there some piece of wisdom that says whatever you’re seeing in people around you is a reflection of yourself?  Because I vaguely remember hearing that somewhere.  Maybe therapy?

Anyway, I mentioned in a post somewhere down there that I hate the waiting room at the fertility doctor’s office.  Partially because there are two TVs that are always on some innocuous HGTV home make-over show about some idiot who decided to drain their pool and make a “sunken patio” out of it, or whatever, and partially because I feel this awful sense of desperation whenever I’m sitting there.  Like all of these women are crazy baby-hungry monsters who can’t have their ONE TRUE WISH fulfilled and they’re all depressed boring wanna-be housewives.  Which… woah.  Is really judgemental.  Because I sit there thinking, oh, I’m above all this - these desperate idiots are NOTHING like me!  I am a special flower who only wanted to have kids because I’m SO in LOVE.

You guys, I know.  I KNOW.  Stop thinking mean things about me.  I just had a miscarriage.  (How long can I play this card?  Because I just spent a dinner crying to a friend who hadn’t heard the story because she somehow manages to not read my blog even though she was the person I first started blogging with, and I feel like since it’s been a couple of weeks, I should probably stop crying every time I have to mention it.)

Has anyone else out there who’s dealt with infertility noticed this waiting room thing?  Or it just me?  Because when I’m in the regular gyno’s office, everyone seems different.  I… would think this is all totally in my head, but my last visit there, I caught a pinched thin woman glaring at me.  Like full on quickly looking the other way after I caught her bitch face in my peripheral. I wasn’t even doing anything annoying like I sometimes do, like dick around with my phone or pull out my laptop and act like an important writer person.  I was just sitting there.

I find myself defending Gwyneth probably more than is seemly.  Part of my defense is that she’s such an easy target, it’s so obvious to pick on her and find her irritating.  I guess I’m just being contrarian.  The fact of the matter is, I like her view of the world.  Rose colored glasses and all.  Now, Country Strong was not her fault.  I mean… the movie was terrible, but she didn’t direct it.  I defend her choice to portray a washed up country pop singer any day.  I mean, who else would play her?  Reese Witherspoon?  UGH, DOUBLE UGH.  It’s way more fun to watch Gwyneth be bad in a bad movie than to watch Reese be good in a bad movie - case in point that Johnny Cash biopic.  BORING.

Anyway, Country Strong was dumb.

Problem #1 - The baby bird storyline is abandoned 3 quarters of the way through the movie, and that’s one of my main problems with the script.

Problem #2 - Also baby bird related, why did they keep that bird in a cigar box?  A stuffy airtight cigar box? And, why did that bird never grow up?  Don’t baby birds grow up pretty quickly?  I guess not if they’re kept in a cigar box.

But this is not about the movie.  This is about ME.  memeeemeeemeeeeee (Side note:  When I have to do temp voice over at work, I pretend to warm up, and pretend to run scales and go memememememe, lalalalala.  It usually makes the editor laugh.  USUALLY.  When it doesn’t I get sad, because it’s a pretty funny bit I stole from a story producer on another show, and I don’t like to waste it on editors who don’t get my stupid sense of humor.)  I don’t know why I even brought up Gwyneth, maybe because of that dumb movie?  That I watched after my D&C?  That has a lot of dead baby talk?  Whatever.

The day after my D&C, I was walking Lula when I saw a hummingbird kind of dive bomb and land awkwardly in the street.  I could tell it was in trouble because every time it tried to fly it could only get about two feet off the ground before awkwardly landing on the street again.  Lula wanted to kill it.  I wanted to rescue it it.  But I couldn’t get close enough to it to capture it in a cigar box and carry it around like a symbolic baby.  Also, I didn’t have a cigar box.

Two days later I was in the worst pain I’ve yet to experience.  As my pregnancy hormones dropped and my uterus decided to disassemble itself from the inside out, I puked out my guts and wailed in agony while I sat on the toilet .  It… wasn’t pretty.  But then, after Seth made panicked calls to my doctor’s office, and they told him to bring me in, and I told him there was no way in hell I was sitting in that doctor’s waiting room (I HATE that waiting room). I finally got on the phone with the actual doctor, and he told me what was happening to my body and that some women find it more painful than others.  In that instant, my ego got all bent out of shape and I was like, “Pain, what pain?” And then I crumpled into a heap on the floor and my doctor called in a vicodin prescription and an hour later I was off to work.  Because that’s what a farmer would do, and apparently, I am a farmer. My crops are stories, and my field is an edit bay so the labor is physically more easy, but it’s hard to sit through a notes session when you’re doped up on vicodin AND the pain isn’t being even slightly edged out by the heating pad surreptitiously sitting in your lap. It was a rough day, and my bosses told me to go home, but I refused.  I mean, it was either get my show out or lay in bed moaning all by myself wondering what was happening to my show.  It’s not really that I’m country strong, I’m country stubborn.  Or… country stupid.

*I’ve been writing this post for three days, I am off the vicodin now so everything seems harder and stupider and everything makes me grumpy.  Oh, opiates.  Why can’t I get a bottle of laudnum for my bedside?  Also, why do I feel better, but still have a hard time getting out of bed?

This just in!  Just off the phone with the doctor, and my HCG level has dropped considerably but because of the *barfughsorry* clotting, he wants to do an ultrasound next week.  Ultrasound of sadness.  I’m kidding, I’m very fine with the very brief yolk sac pregnancy of nothing being over.  Finally.

Unlike Gwyneth’s character, I am perfectly capable of getting over a symbolic dead baby bird.  But I am still wondering about that hummingbird.

I wrote this yesterday, but was too sad to post it.  I’m still too sad today, but whatever.   I am now a card carrying member of the Ladies’ Miscarriage Club.  We can be a very dour bunch.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a pregnancy test that turned out negative.  So I drowned my sorrows in some really strong margaritas and then the next morning barfed up my sorrows (tequila and linguine with clams… for the visual) and thought, wow, my period and a puke won’t this be grand.   I didn’t get my period that Monday morning,  so I took a pregnancy test.

I peed on a stick and it looked kind of like it was positive.  Being a suspicious sort, I made Seth look at it.  He agreed it was positive.  Then I waited a day and did it again.  It was still positive.  The doctor confirmed it a week later and we looked at a blob on the ultrasound - no heartbeat it was too early.

I spent those two weeks obsessively waiting for morning sickness - only one gag session yesterday.  I kept thinking I should be more fatigued - I’ve been tired, but I’m working about 65 hours a week right now.  I was looking for more crankiness - there is nothing out of the ordinary about my crankiness.

And this morning at our ultrasound our yolk sack remained empty.  No heartbeat.  No signs of life.  Just a dumb empty yolk sack.  I’m like those penguins who stare at their dead frozen eggs and sort of wander around wondering what to do.

I cried in front of my doctor, who was kind and informative and reassuring and blah, blah, blah, and I’m crying again now as I write this, but I’m trying to do that WASP-y keep your chin up thing because wow, it could be worse.

It could be better, but it could be a whole lot worse.

Here are the shitty things I keep thinking:

• Now I’ll have to be trying to conceive when Seth’s son is in town -  a person who gives me a whole lot of stress when he’s around.
• Seth has two kids who will probably have kids before I do.
• I am fat.  I am fat and I’m not pregnant.  My body is full of betrayal.
• I hate every single person who got pregnant really easily, fuck them.
• I am too bitter and hateful to get and stay pregnant.
• The D and C I have to schedule is very inconvenient and why couldn’t I just have a miscarriage like a normal person.
• I’m probably causing the universe to have something even more terrible happen to me because I find having to schedule a D and C inconvenient.
• I am too busy to be pregnant.  In fact, I’m too busy to be NOT pregnant.  I’m too busy.

There’s more.  There’s much, much more.  But I am too embarrassed to say some of the things I’m thinking because they are pretty evil.

If you want to comment that’s fine, but if you can hold off on the “Everything’s going to be fine” sentiments, I’d appreciate it.  Right now, I just don’t want to hear it.

Last week I had a horrible procedure that rivaled the urology visit.  I left my doctor’s office with tears in my eyes, a maxi-pad in my bag and serious cramping.  I was furious with the chipper doctor who did the procedure and wanted to quit going to the practice because of it.  I waited for half an hour IN THE STIRRUPS, unable to get up because the x-ray machine blocked my exit.  And then!  Then, the HSG x-ray and I did not get along.  My cervix kept kicking the balloon out of my uterus.  If I hadn’t been in so much pain while it was happening, I think I would have been proud of it. After it was over the nurse looked down at me and said, “Are you alright?  I can see three veins in your forehead…”

Um, no, hand mistress to the chipper devil, I just had a balloon crammed through my cervix three times, filled with iodine and cramped out.  It was like having a balloon baby.  THREE TIMES.

My doctor, not the one horrible chipper one that did the test, the good one that I like who takes long pauses, called me while I was sitting in the Burger King parking lot weeping and told me that the results were good.  That my fallopian tubes were beautiful structurally and that despite what the Chipper Idiot said, that there were no real signs of scarring or issues whatsoever.  He also told me that judging by the size of my follicle I should come in and get inseminated.

So we did.

And now we wait.  And I pray that all my cycles line up with my doctor’s schedule so I never have to see the Chipper Idiot again.

We met with the fertility doctor again last week.  This time to do what most teenagers (and come to think of it, many adults) would see as the most embarrassing test they’ve ever had to take, unless they had to do the test with their parents watching - the post coital test.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of dabbling in the fertility arts, this test happens on morning after your peak cycle day (the day your pee strip indicates you’ve ovulated) and after you’ve had sex.  There is much questioning about whether or not you’ve had intercourse the night before, or in my nurses’ lingo “gotten busy.”  Three people asked.  Then the doctor asked again.  I guess they want to make sure they aren’t sucking out your cervical mucous for no reason.

First, they do an ultrasound, and the wand is not playfully smooshed around your belly like it is in the movies.  Nope, it’s up in there.  The doctor pronounced my lining nice and thick (thanks, Jen for your magic tea!) and my ovaries very young for their ancient 34 years with lots of healthy follicles.  I want to say 24 follicles, but that sounds like I might have exaggerated in my head and I don’t want the fertility police to tell me that I’m crazy if I think anyone would believe the human body could naturally have 24 follicles at the age of 34.  So, it was a lot of follicles.  More than he expected, given my age.  They were very nice about how old I’m getting (seriously, I’m only 34, but at 35 they really start to scare you about your chances of having kids if you’ve never been pregnant before) but at one point I was like, “Look at Seth!  He’s the OLD one.”

Then they got out my old friend the speculum.  And sucked out some cervical mucous.  He warned me it was about as painful as a pap smear, and I just laughed, once you’ve had your urethra “stretched” and a uterine biopsy, a pap smear is about as painful as brushing your teeth.

Then they took the mucous to the microscope and looked for sperm.  Which is when the nurse enthusiastically told us about a documentary on the Discovery channel about the journey of the sperm.  She went on and on about the documentary, and when she finally left the room so I could put my pants on, Seth was like, “They really love their jobs.”

The doctor directed me to look in the microscope.  I have never been able to see what people are seeing in a microscope.  I always sort of fake my way through it.  And this time was no different.

Then we had a meeting in his office.  He told us that our next step would be IUI (I made a joke about being a cow) and that what he saw didn’t mean anything was wrong with me or with Seth, just that my mucous was possibly a hostile environment and not being very helpful.  (Aww… my mucous is just like me!)

So that’s what’s happening over here.  I might get pregnant this month, but from what the doctor saw, he thinks it’s pretty unlikely.  And next month we go to the next step.

You know that box you have to fill out on doctor’s getting to know you forms?  It’s somewhere after “Did your mom ever have cancer, depression, diabetes or beat you senseless with a leather strap?” and somewhere before “Who is your overpriced insurance company so we can overbill them and then adjust the bill when we realize they aren’t going to pay $500 for an office visit?”  It says Employment Information.

That box always strikes fear in my heart.  And the reasons are many-fold.   The first being my inability to remember any physical address of an employer ever since I quit being an assistant where I had to repeatedly type and say my physical address over and over again to people who were coming to visit my boss, or deliver shoes to my boss, or bill five star hotel rooms to my boss, and, well, you get the point.  Now that I’m a freelancer I’ve had 5 addresses in one year.  Also in that time I’ve seen five new doctors (urologist, ENT, ENT surgeon, accupuncturist, fertility doctor) and every time I have to fudge a physical address and leave the zip code out.  Because seriously, I drive there, park my car and know what street it’s on, but have no idea what the phone number is or how to mail a letter there.  I don’t know why I worry about this but it must go back to my paranoia that they’re going to get mad at me if they need to get a hold of me and also, I worry they’ll think I’m a no good beatnik with a fake job and no source of income to pay their outrageous bills for procedures like stab me in the urethra and poke my ovaries with tiny needles.  Which brings me to the next box - title.

I am a story producer for reality tv.  I have worked on four new shows in the past year.  When I say new, I mean, each of these shows were first season shows, so no one has heard of them.  One was a spin off of a big reality show, so that helped, but doctor people aren’t Hollywood people, so when you say the name of a show they haven’t heard of you have to say stupid things like, so and so is my boss.  And then doctor people, who think they’re being funny, say stupid things about your (tv famous) boss and you try to explain that no, really, you work for this person, and no, it’s not really ok to assume they’re just some dumb actor, because seriously, I don’t walk into the doctor person’s office and make fun of them for working out of a glorified strip mall and collecting semen samples in a badly decorated janitor’s closet.  This is my job.  And yes, we that make reality tv know that we’re easy targets, but I do it for a living.  It’s not a hobby.  It’s work.  And I know it’s fun to make fun of Hollywood people with stupid jobs, but you should stop that.  You need us like the lamprey needs the shark.

Maybe it’s just because I’m sick of hearing new doctors’ schtick (did , but the fertility doctor’s schtick was so… not the kind of thing that works for Seth and me that we have one more test to do there before we bail and see someone else.  I don’t want to miss this cycle is the only reason we haven’t already bailed.   I mean, coming out with guns blazing by making fun of my boss is one thing, but then to not get why we had concerns in another area and not read the situation in that area with sensitivity and care was beyond douchey.  It was so the opposite of what I wanted in a fertility doctor.

But that’s also the beauty of Los Angeles.  The next day, I went to work and complained about my doctor, and three people gave me recommendations for people they loved.  People who understand our kind of people.  Showbiz type people who don’t know their own work address.

We’re moving at the end of the month, I have a day job and a night job (both are incredibly fulfilling and I love the people I work for and with), and my general outlook appears to be positive. I feel like I’m finally happy in more aspects of my life than I’m unhappy in.  This is noteworthy.  I think therapy helped push me in one direction, and even though I broke up with my therapist at the beginning of December, I’m not terribly worried I’ll accidentally kill myself in a fit of depression anymore.  So, that’s good!  Especially since I can’t even afford to go to therapy anymore…

Before Christmas and the awkward meeting of the ex-wife, I was referred to a urologist for a mystery UTI that wasn’t showing up on my gynocologist’s lab results, and wasn’t clearing up with antibiotics.  Believe me, I have made all of the urology jokes.  I got in a last session of therapy and a urology appointment and STILL didn’t meet my deductible.  Oh, me. You just love to spend money on the silliest things!

My first visit to Dr. Metal Instruments of Pain (Dr. MIP for short), I figured would be another pee in a cup scenario with advice to do something my gyno hadn’t thought of.  I was only prepared to pee in a cup.  I sat down with him and we talked about what I’d been going through, and he told me that he wanted to take a look in my bladder that very day.  He explained the procedure and that this was the next step to take in this series of steps that I had wrongly assumed would continue to only be me peeing in cups and taking antibiotics while my mystery pain continued.  When he described it, I figured it couldn’t be worse than what I was currently going through.  But I haven’t dubbed him Dr. MIP for nothing.

The next think I knew, I was pantsless and laying on a table with in a room with terrible cabinetry from the 80s.  There was a drain in the center of the room.*  I was laying there trying to figure out how to get my legs in the most awkward knee stirrups I’d ever experienced.  The nurse had to explain to me how to get my legs over  these swinging plastic things that she assured me were way better than what my gyno had.  I don’t mean to quibble, but I have this feeling that gynos know more about girls lying on tables than urologists do, judging by the ratio of male to female patients I observed in the lobby.  I finally wrangled myself into position and the nurse draped my pubic area.  Dr. MIP came in and fussed around with a long segmented thing that looked like a droopy pointer.

Dr. MIP told me that it might hurt a little, and I would feel a little pressure in my bladder because they were going to also fill it with water.  Then his nurse ripped a little hole in the drape.  Yeah, you read that right.  They were operating through a ripped hole in my modesty drape.  I was too confused to just tell them to take it off.  I figured they must know what they’re doing.  They work in an office with a yellow sign.  Mmhmm, my urologist’s practice thought they’d really brand themselves as peehole doctors by having a yellow sign.

Then Dr. MIP proceed to jam around my pee hole while his nurse held the rip open.  And then the bladder cam wouldn’t go into my bladder.  He popped up from between my legs and told me I had an unusually tight urethra.   Ladies and gentlemen, I’m trying to come up with a joke about that, and it the punchline is very blue, but the set up just isn’t coming to me.

This is when he pulled out curved and pointy instruments that looked positively medieval.   And he proceeded to jam them in my tight urethra while I gasped and cried.

The good news is he stretched my urethra!  The bad news is it was just an infection that my gyno hadn’t caught.  So that was a pointless yet expensive and painful procedure! Yay, modern medicine!

I’d tell you all about my other appointment wherein I got my uterus biopsied and I’m pretty sure everyone in my office thought I was getting an abortion (because that’s the kind of jokes I was making…) and how everything was fine, but there was about an hour where I was pretty sure she was going to tell me it was cancer and that I had 6 months to live.  I still haven’t received the bill for that.  Oh, god, you devil!

*That drain in the middle of the room is for the pee water combo that starts dribbling out of you because you have a camera on a pointer being jammed up your pee hole.

So, after my barfing Monday morning, there was some groaning and leaving work early and lying about, all accompanied by what I assumed was a raging UTI.  After some calls to various doctors, an antibiotic was prescribed and I took to my bed.  With your niggling thoughts of pregnancy dancing in my head.

I remembered that my sister once had a UTI whilst* pregnant, and that of course, made me think that, oh-ho, I MUST be pregnant.  Because UTI’s are a symptom of pregnancy.  Because my sister once had one concurrently.  This is how retarded I am.

Two days later I was still in agony, so much so I wasn’t able to go running for two days straight.  Some might think that was a convenient way for me to puss out of running, but those people are only partly right.  See, if I don’t run, I don’t sleep.  And guess who gets crazy if she doesn’t sleep!  Ding, ding, ding.  That’s right, this girl.  So after some haranguing by Seth, I called Callie (at her new office, which, I assumed would be a logistical nightmare which is why I didn’t want to call her, which is because I’m extra phone averse when I’ve got a double dose of the no-sleep-crazies) and she fit me in today.

First of all, this is a woman I’ve only seen twice now.  But she’s so extremely huggable-looking, I wanted to cuddle up with her and take a little nap in her lap.  Don’t mind me that’s just the crazy talking.  Sort of.  But I resisted and just undressed below the waist for her.  (She asked me to!  And I left my socks on.)   They tested my urine, and it was totally clear, Also, I’m a clean catch champion.  The nurse started to explain what clean catch was and I was all, stop right there, sister, save your breath, I know how to clean catch!  She smiled.  Weakly.  So, Callie rooted around in there and see if there was something else going on, like, I don’t know A BABY and took a slide from the baby making region and it too, was totally clear.  There was nary a baby or bacteria to be found.

Basically, I have nothing.  Except phantom pain that keeps me from running which keeps me from sleeping which keeps me from being a normal human being.

I have a shrink appointment on Saturday.

*Who was it that hates it when people use whilst, was it you Schmutzie?  If it was you, I’m kind of sorry, but I have an excuse!  I’m tired!  And while seems so boring when one is tired.