Awkwardly Social

Have I mentioned before that I have to take medication for a slightly elevated thyroid level that may or may not be related to my issue to conceive? Well, I do and now I have.  Mentioned it that is.

This morning I had to pick up my medication from CVS, the pharmacy that I hate because I always (no matter if I’ve called 3 days in advance or 2 hours, or my doctor called, or it’s for something important) wait.  I wait while the chatty pharmacists chat it up with old people and don’t fill my prescription.  I wait while the pharmacist looks things up on the computer (her e-mail? the codes to get the good medicine out?).  I wait while the assistant tries to remember the spelling of my last name. My last name is 6 letters long.

So today, when I was forced to wait for a prescription that should have been ready yesterday, I hissed under my breath at the pharmacy assistant, “You people need to get your fucking act together.” And then watched as they yukked it up behind the counter talking about their maternity leave and how much weight they lost.

Finally, after 10 minutes had passed, I stormed back up to the counter and went a little Shirley MacClaine on the poor woman. Except instead of my daughter needed medication, it was me. It… was embarrassing.

By the time I got to my car I was shaking and in tears.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m prone to rage against bad customer service, but cry about it? And shaking?  This is not me.  I generally get mad, tell them to shape up, roll my eyes at their lame apologies and go about my day.

I’m guessing it was the hormones talking?

Please tell me it was the hormones talking.  Or maybe the lack of sleep? Or could it be that I’ve marked a week away from home in a house that is kind of like something out of Sunset Blvd. without monkey butlers but with poodles.

You guys, I never thought I’d say this, but I am SO looking forward to acupuncture this week.

For the past two weeks I’ve been on birth control to stabilize and sync up my ovaries in preparation for IVF.  This morning I had an ultrasound (Helen says my lining is good and it looks like I’ll make a lot of follicles!) and this afternoon I got the call from my favorite nurse saying I’ll start Lupron tomorrow.  Lupron is given as a subcutaneous injection once a day and it stops the natural production of LH (Luteinizing Hormone) which signals the ovaries to ovulate, this way my cycle will be controlled by outside forces only. After five days or so, I’ll start stimulating hormones that will make my ovaries produce a lot of extra eggs (we hope), and about 12 days after that, I’ll have a small surgical procedure where they’ll extract all those eggs, fertilize them in a dish and 5 days after that, put one back in and hope for the best. I’m exhausted just thinking about all the worrying I’m going to be doing.

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs, studying literature on IVF, and basically becoming a human encyclopedia of all that can and will go on with my body.  I’ve also started a paper diary of the process, it reads about as dry as one would expect, “Woke up at 6:30am, took the dog for a walk, ate a turkey sandwich” etc. I’m just trying to keep an accurate record of what I’m eating and doing and thinking and feeling during this time in case we have to do this again.  That way I’ll have something to compare to for the next cycle.  (Heaven help us and money find us if there is a next cycle.)

We’re staying with my mother-in-law this week because she can’t live on her own and my sister-in-law is on a much needed vacation.  It’s basically a glorified dog walker position, in which I walk her bitchy poodle and watch Law & Order marathons with her. I’m doing my best to not be a pain in the ass, but pretty much everyone is a pain in the ass to my mother-in-law, so I’m also doing my best to not stress about being a pain in the ass.

I’m also unemployed at the moment, dutifully looking for work while I wonder about what the next show will be like.  Freelancing, not my favorite thing.

I woke up in the morning, and put on my paternal grandmother’s cherry sundress (something old), my sister’s blue cocktail ring (something borrowed and blue), a handmade flower in my hair (something new) and we drove to the Beverly Hills Courthouse.  Said, “I do!” And what a year it’s been.

This morning, we woke up, drove to Beverly Hills and talked to our doctor about IVF.  Happy Anniversary, baby, I’m giving you a bunch of medical bills as my traditional one year anniversary of paper.  I hope you like it!

I was sitting in a comfortable chair in my dream, I heard someone come into the room and I turned and there was my mom.  She was standing there.  My mom.

My voice was filled with tears, “Mom? Are you really here?”

She walked over to where I was sitting and I stood up and tried to walk towards her.

“No.  But I wish I could be.”

We hugged and I woke up.  I wasn’t sad at first, you know how you feel after you’ve first woken and the dream isn’t fading yet.  I got to see my mom.  She came to me in a dream.  Then reality starts crushing in and you begin to analyze everything.  You remember you don’t believe in heaven.  You remember that your mom will never walk into a room where you’re sitting in a comfortable chair.

I got up and went to my crushingly early ultrasound appointment where I was told that I should do an IUI that day.  So we did.  And all day I wondered if my mom coming to me in my dream meant that she knew it would fail or that she knew it would succeed.  And all day long I told myself that she wasn’t actually doing anything, that my little human brain was creating every frame of her.  My tiny little brain was reaching out across the ether of its own creation.

I went to work and in the middle of the day I went for a walk.  The first song that came on my iPod was from the movie Once.  The iPod I hadn’t updated in a few days, that was playing my acupuncture playlist.  “Are you really here, or am I dreaming.”

–

It’s been a two weeks since I wrote that and my mom has been in my dreams twice since then.  First it was a nightmare, I don’t have any firm grasp on what the content of that dream was because as nightmares go I try to forget them.  A week ago, it was a dream about setting my sister and her friend up in their dorm rooms.  My mom was there too, she was also going to be at school and was so glad she quit her job to go back to get her PhD. She said, “If I don’t do it now, when will I do it?” Then it started raining inside in my dream and she was gone, and we were just there dealing with getting my sister into the right room.

–

I took a pregnancy test tonight and it was negative. It would have been nice to have this all wrapped up in a neat little bow, “Are you really here?” But life does not follow the typical three act structure.  We do not always get satisfying endings and there isn’t always a good bit of dialogue to close out the story and leave the audience wondering why their life isn’t perfect like that.

I’m still here.  My life is pretty fantastic overall.  And besides, I’m way too tough to let this set back hurt me.  Bring it on, motherfuckers.