Coming up: A skittish Frankenfrolic towards the day of souls and the eve of howls. A mad-woman "cleans" house to horrific results. Will our DITK's domicile e'er recover from that tempestuous Tuesday typhoon? Monkeys emerge from the malaise of a mild muddle. Flying from walls and spewing candy, will they be any match for Batman in boots?? Will the corpse rise from the stairs to snatch the hordes of wee ghouls and goblins clamoring for treats? Will anyone stay up late enough to meet them? Finally toes twiddle towards the market for brobdignagian bulk buys. Will our twinkle toed trixy survive the Canadian gamut?
Stim up and step up to the pumpkin-plate and swing with the monkeys to discover the answers to these questions and more...
Frankenstein's Camo-Carnival and Stabby McStabberson Gives the Go-Go-Gonadotropins Another Shot (har har)
So a Halloweeney quibble with the querulous kind who insist in snooty timbres that all truly educated people know that Frankenstein was the scientist and not the monster. First off, monster? Shall we take Victor at his word? Surely he drove his creation to monstrosity by his own alienating ass-hattery. But truly, this Leviathan was more human than we're comfortable admitting. And, my take is that technically the "monster" was essentially sired by Frankenstein via some very primal and horrifically sexually suggestive liberties taken with nature. Why would he not also take his progenitor's surname?
Aaaaand having saved the world from pedantry once again, I resume my meanders about the farrago of frippery that is my life.
And on to true horrors THE CLEANERS! Usually the office cleaner is the sole source of my bile. But this particular week, it's whoever the hell ran rampant through our home. Damage list is extensive. Mostly, she just "reorganized" everything. Ottoman face-planted into the chair. Scale hidden in a bathroom several doors away from its original location. Coffee filter and jar jammed into the dishwasher. Some indeterminate powdery substance on the counters. Oh and she tore our bathroom mirror off the wall. It was just sort of sitting propped up against the wall when I got home. No note or anything. Maybe she thinks it looks better there? I'll be finding creatively placed menageries of missing items for days methinks.
On the other hand, she did organize our shoes and cleaned off the stove quite nicely. So I guess it wasn't a thorough debacle.
Other horrors: I had a consult yesterday! Contact with the public!! With grandiose celerity, I convinced them that they didn't actually want a dissolution. This is, after all, my specialty. I am the anti-divorce attorney, despite my generally warm and fuzzy feelings about a good dissolution.
Another horror Andrew's new bike shoes might be too small still. He originally owned a pair that were size 42.5. But those didn't fit this time out. So he returned them for 43s. In sporty camo! Yes, the price discount may have had something to do with that design choice, but it's actually far less tacky than I'd anticipated when he first pitched these new shoes to me (to, not at... those bike shoes would hurt!). Anyways, after wearing them for a very sporty viewing of The Wire, he thinks they're still too small. Let the merry-go-round of returns begin again.
And more horrors: DATE NIGHT!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Ok, actually Date Night is rarely a horror, although I guess we ought to have gone somewhere haunted for Halloween and all. Ah well. In fact, it was pleasant. Andrew was between bodily-excretion samplings. We were both in the mood for good old Lakeway Teriyaki. And I'm continuing my dedication to moving at a slower and more relaxed pace. To the point that Andrew's rushing me, actually. I was legitimately taken aback when, mid-sentence, he rose from the dinner table and started to leave. I even asked if he was going to the bathroom or something. And later in the evening, I nearly had to drag him back down to the couch, he was so ready to go upstairs and upload his run (i.e. "obsess over his training calendar in between Facebook clicks and chat group posts about bikes"). But for now, I'm gonna savor the sitting time. A few minutes here or there. Because life is short... especially now...
... especially when I'm back (horror of horrors) to stabbing myself in the stooommaaaach. Wow, the proper dose is tiny. Given the prior kerfuffle, I was nervous all day about my second stab at stabbings. I'm still a bit spooked and certain I'll discover still more grievous snafus some time today or tomorrow.
I did also have my first long ponderous scheduling panic. You're supposed to self-stab within the same two hour window every evening. Without exception. Which means the timing of my first shot should be considered carefully. Especially when I realize that I'm supposed to go out all evening on Saturday in a manner that would require an exceedingly early or obscenely dilatory injection. My happy-range is usually just after dinner. Maybe sevenish. BUT daylish savings and our free-fall back in time is also coming up on the same day that I'd be heading out. And that would mean that seven today is six next week. And five on Saturday would be FOUR on Sunday. Which I absolutely can't do. But given how late the evening would run, either midnight or one pm is still... way too late.
Always the little logistical things that really stoke panic. Reminds me of the bar exam, in which I had nightmare after nightmare of computer malfunctions. Tripping on the way to upload my exam... missing a vital id car that would allow me into the testing room... Forget the test. I'm either prepared for that or not, but everything else is a crapshoot.
Forget the injection. I'm panicked about exposing the medication to too much light. I get nervous every time I open the fridge. I get nervous that the alcohol swabs may have touched something and are no longer antiseptic. I get nervous I'll run out of swabs. The pricking part - no matter the totally wrong dosage - continues to be easy as mud-pie in March. Feels a bit like a teeny bee sting afterwards, but really not bad otherwise.
So I say now... I'm sure something horrible will reveal itself (oh the horror!)
And speaking of happy horrors, happy zombie-camel-day! Our usual date night got bumped earlier so Andrew could celebrate one last horrific stool sample collection. So, it's going to be a fun and interesting day. We both have appointments for various vital essences to be drained from our bodies on Thursday, so Wednesday shall be "conservation of our chi" night!
May your essences flow freely (but only within the appropriate parameters) and may all your shoes be snug but supportive!
Zombie Aesir Eve of an Eve Bloodletting!!
Enough with the stabbing. How about some plain, old fashioned exsanguinating? Actually the needle may be larger for my (ever so frequent) phlebotomies, and the needle may need to go directly into a vein. So in some regards, it's a bigger deal than stinging myself with go-go-gonadotropins. On the other hand, a professional handles the blood draws. And they are mighty darned PROs.
When I was a wee lass, I was a touch ... umm... averse to bloodletting. Unfortunate I had a high cholesterol (now gone pretty moderate and mostly soaring in the "good cholesterol arenas" so I can feel like at least one part of my health may or may not be benefiting from my so-called "healthy" lifestyle). That meant several gladiatorial struggles with the needle. And boy did it involve an army. I used to struggle, wail, and moan so piteously that my sister would start crying in terror.
So, not a great relationship with needles. Eventually I gained a sliver of self control... over my screaming, though not my veins. For whatever reason, I had a series of horrendous phlebotomy experiences in young adulthood. People poking through veins. Jabbing at my arm fruitlessly. And otherwise just drawing the blood-draw out into an uncomfortable nauseating extremity. Did I mention the idea of blood can sometimes (though not always) make me incredibly faint?
It's a minor miracle that in my thirties, as I skirt and skate towards near-weekly blood draws, that I've found the wonderful professionals at PeaceHealth. Also that they have a lab that is open at first crow of the coffee-d up ragin' rooster. It's a match made in heaven. My regular phlebotomist is usually sitting at the desk looking into space when I arrive to the otherwise empty quarters. She skirts me back immediately. We exchange a word or two of small talk ("do you have to go to work after this?" "Any plans for Halloween?") and before I know it, she's impatiently waiting for me to hold the cotton swab over a recently slurped vein.
And like that I'm at work only five to ten minutes behind normal schedule. Now to wait by the phone for that phone call about what it all means. The blood test, not life. It's like a choose your own adventure medical book. If the estradiol is above 100, then time for an ultrasound. If below, I think I go to fight a dragon in the caverns of chthonia. Or get another blood test. Something like that.
By the phone... oh yeah... so I forgot my phone at home today. Which is a bit problematic since I actually will be expecting a phone call once my blood test results are in. But I don't want to leave work again either. Oh the agony. The confusion. The uncertainty! If only my flying monkeys weren't on vacation!
Andrew has nearly made the rounds of weird bodily excretions. By the end of today, he will be off the hook for at least a little while, as results trickle in and maybe somebody attempts to make sense of his bodily essence (this all so he can be like "what I'm fine... it's my Jezebel whose cursed womb is a desert" or whatever). In the meantime, he can go back to obsessing over his leprotic pathfinder and his perpetually pinchy shoes.
I see no end in sight for myself. There shall be several more bouts of stabbing and prodding and bloodletting, but I'm getting to be an expert at it, so no complaints hereabouts. Well always a few. I revel in grandiose self-pitying lachrymosities from time to time. Too many excellent words and turns of phrases to pass by when one is being equipoised.
And in the meantime, it's Thursdafriday. I say this because tomorrow is Halloween. While technically a workday, it is SO A HOLIDAY. And therefore it is SO not a workday. We have an excess of Halloween candy to offer to the one or two people who amble our way. I'll decorate the bajeezus out of the office in the morning. We'll leave early to hand out candy. It will be a festival! Whooo. Making today our last real day of work. Which lines up with the early date night making Tuesday feel like Wednesday. And with the long Monday making the entire week feel like several.
But it is now the end. Almost. Nearly. One final bloody sprint and loads of trepidation to bring this ookey spooky #socktober to a grande finale tomorrow!
Happy Zombie Thorsday all! Watch out for any handsome strangers with capes and AWOL reflections.
The Gauntlet is Laid and Declarations made: The Halloweenification of Friday!
Quoth She at 6:00 a.m. one blustery Hallow's Eve-morn..
"I do not care how exhausted I am. I don't care that those self-stabby shot thingies seem to plunge me into momentary ambivalence between a full on crying jag over Trix commercials (I am the rabbit: perpetually denied his true treat by the cruelties of nature and humanity), a ten hour nap or maybe just a good old fashioned juvenescent existential crisis (with special Sartre serenading)... I SHALL celebrate this howliest of holidays!"
"And everyone at work had better come along and eat twenty tons of candy at least, while I crank out Mr. Ghost Goes to Town and the Monster Mash on perpetual repeat!"
And feting didst she do, despite her haze and malaise...
Halloween is a very important part of the year, and shall not be missed (entirely) for even the best or worst of causes. At least when "celebrating" mostly consists of "cancelling all appointments for the day, forcing everyone to eat candy, and insisting on wearing a homespun costumey thing."
I very nearly lost an essential part of my costume that morning (the monkey hat itself). After some early morning storming and self-pitying, I had a flash of inspiration on my first rev of the car. Turns out that I left it in my tango bag. Phew! Things were amping up towards some kind of tearful tossing of my dog-eared La Nausea at some cereal boxes. Which would be awkward, since I have no cereal boxes at home and would thus have to go to the grocery store and do my throwing there.
Fortunately, the morning went smoothly from there. We mostly worked, but I had even slightly less pants on than usual, and I was blessed with a very special holiday visit from Batman and Wonder Woman
Batman in a cape, with a glittery fluff skirt, with a corsage, and cowboy boots. Batman is exploring and expanding his/her sense of identity these days.
Batman spent the bulk of her visit utterly riveted with the task of taking a single piece of candy from the candy bowl, walking it to me, dropping it in my hand... and repeating. Eventually she moved on from me to mom-boss. And with some additional coaxing, dared enter into Leslie's office (apparently a massively scary task from the trepidatious way she kept peeking in through the curtains before going on. Wonder Woman plopped down in a chair and yawned several times. Sock Monkey Adella, spent most of the time rolling around on the floor, very glad that she was - in fact - in a pantsless state of sartorial flexibility.
That was most definitely the apex of Halloween. I tried to keep it together for the evening rush of Trick or Treaters at my mom's suburban coven. I made it over there and helped set up and everything (although the decor was strictly David and 1000% awesome):
... but whether it be cold or 24 hour bug or hormonal side effects from all the stabbings, I was just wiped and ready for a cozy bedtime self-snuggle.
Resigning myself to my soporific sick-night stupor, I shuffled home. Once there, I threw on the Addams family and sort of watched it in between whirly head jaunts into the ether, and a very special self-stabbing interlude for which I actually did pause the movie. In my massive mulligan of last week, I've managed to tap one of the two 450 IU bottles I received for this little gambol. While the other bottle (started last night) should suffice for 12 injections of the actual dosage currently prescribed to me, I've also already tapped out six of the 12 injection syringes provided with the meds. Since they're specially scaled IUs for this med, I'm not entirely sure what happens on, say, Thursday or Friday, when I'm all out. Seems like I probably should just ad lib with insulin syringes... Probably. We'll see after my next blood test on Monday.
And that brings us to this morning...
In which I raggedly roused from a solo sprawl across the center of our bed, and commenced some tentative single-lady milling. The boyfrianceband is down south preparing for some wretched bike race or other out in Gig Harbor. He almost rushed home due to my reports of ague, ailing, and general physical malaise (still cannot decide whether it's the new injection side effects or a garden variety bug). Because he's sweet like that. Because I'm like a cat that goes away under a basement step to be sick (and because he already forewent fun activities last weekend to be with me on my first injection of go-go-gonadotropins), I told him to just go and have fun.
In honor of All Soul's Day, and the absence of my hubba-hubba-hubby, I channeled my inner Canuck and made a pre-dawn excursion to Winco for massive bulk purchases of their cornucopia of low price dried goods and frozen vegetamables. Unlike my precision strikes at Freddy's and Haggen's, this always entails several hours of comparison shopping, maundering, and indecisive cart hot-dogging. And of course, the return trip required several clever little brain-teasing twisters of pantry reorganization to accommodate the new grains and legumes and whatnot in the most space-efficient air-tight array. Which, in turn, required a break for dates and 90% cocoa Lindt Chocolate. A girl needs some energy. I may be off coffee (which is sad sometimes, I miss the dark bitter taste and the ritual intrinsic in the bubble and burble of a coffee pot), but I'll take my allotable dose of caffeine in the darkest, bitterest, most indulgent of conceivable forms, thank you. If I'd run out of chocolate, I'd likely have to mainline plain cocoa powder and this could complicate my injection regime.
Incidentally, the medications I'm currently taking are the same stimulating drugs that are used in full scale IVF. My doses are - at least when properly applied - significantly smaller to avoid the overproduction of ova that is an actual goal in IVF. But this means, when I get curious about some little detail of the drug, I might stumble into the TTC chat groups and find myself in a whole 'nother world. I guess I might be over the strictly-endocrinology hump into ART, but I'm still pretty much a light-weight uninitiated naif in the TTC world. I'm learning some slang though that will help me fit in eventually. So, the period in which one injects these happy drugs, is called the stim days. And the act of injecting shots is stimming (for stimulation etc. etc., since you're basically stimulating the crap out of your ovaries). RE (this is an easy one) means reproductive endocrinologist. I've also seen repro or endo, although that's more with people talking about their thyroid medications. There are plenty of other acronyms that are complete gibberish to me still. And, it's typical for participants to list their history of ART experiences as their signatures. Kind of disheartening, as these are usually people who graduated from several failed lower-dose interventions and have yet to find success with the big guns.
I try not to look at that too much. Yet. I'm glad it's there if I get to that same point. I'm "realistic" enough as it is. Same with whatever reports of really odd side effects or horrific experiences... that's all a ways off. This is my dress rehearsal. I'm just repeating this to myself. My chance to readjust my lifestyle for relaxation, weight gain (although I've been awful at that - despite eating more and taking medications that should cause bloating and resultant weight gain - I'm a pound lighter this week, which I blame on my theoretical lurgy), and cutting back strenuous activity, etc.
And over time - with several random midnight questions - I'm sure I'll pick up the rest of the lingo. Eventually I'll put together a dictionary even. Parents have their whole new world. I think TTC itself is a world unto itself.
Until then, back to the veggie chopping and vacant staring. With a little bit of toe-wiggling as I wave at the new month.
No comments:
Post a Comment