I made the mistake of asking the blood tech to try my right arm. Wrong wrong wrong – always tell them, “Whatever works best!” No blood on first try. Switched to left arm, same vein as yesterday… got it.

At the ultrasound today the first measurement was a 19.5mm follicle. I blinked in surprize. 19.5 means trigger time. She measured the rest on the right: 19.5, 19.5, 16, 18, 15, 19, 17. And my left: 17.5, 18, 19, 18, 17. Definitely triggering tonight. I’m a little bit annoyed with the 15 and 16 – hello, stay with the others please!! – but all in all this looks like a very nice batch. Total on the right was 11 with 8 being of a mature kind of size, total on the left was 8 with 6 of them big and fat. I’m still guessing 17 or 18 retrieved. I hope. Come on, eggs. I have done everything I could possibly do for you this time, please please be mature and ready to fertilize.

Since I’m an ICSI patient I will probably be the first retrieval of the day at 7:30 on Tuesday.

I got there really early in the morning for a Saturday, walking in the building before 8am (when they start doing scans). I had my blood drawn first – did I mention how I hate getting my blood drawn on weekends? Sigh. But I survived and she did actually get it on her first try, though I nearly yelped. Then quickly I was in an ultrasound room, chatting with the nurse and u/s tech.

Things look great. She counted 18 follicles this time total – 10 on right, 8 on left – which is only one off from Wednesday’s scan. And, other than a couple that were a little smaller, all of those were measuring the same size: 14-15.5mm. I was/am positively giddy about how my follicles are looking… you can’t get much better than that. Maybe I’d have asked for a couple more in there, but even though there’s less follicles total this time I really think these might be better quality than last. There are less small ones, and I am getting acupuncture treatments. Who knows if that will do anything, but maybe. I got 6 embryos last time and I’m really really hoping I get 6 again this time… though I know for me that is a high goal, especially with less follicles.

The nurse said she is thinking 2 more days of stims for me, which means trigger on Monday evening and retrieval on Wednesday. With my follicles the size they are today I highly doubt they’re going to be ready to trigger by tomorrow, and neither does she, but they’re having me come back in tomorrow just to check on their growth. Later in the day I got a voicemail today from the Dr himself. It cracked me up a little, because normally its the nurses who pass on boring information like “come again tomorrow.” The nurse said that I’m a “special case” and that they were sending my ultrasound and lab results to him so he could look them over and call me… but I didn’t think he would actually call me himself.

He said my E2 is 1500 today. Sheesh, that sounds so low! I know it’s not, but my previous cycles have almost all had much higher E2 (which is why they’re always so concerned about me!).

Then I did have my acupuncture appointment. My acupuncturist moved to a different office, which felt a little weird (because it’s a new place, unfamiliar). She was very pleased with my progress in the cycle. One belly point really made me jump when she put it in… like an electric shock. I don’t think I quite fell asleep this time, but I almost got there. Then she left me and the massage therapist came in. Right away there was definitely a clear difference between this and the spa massage. I could feel him finding all the muscle knots and trying to work them out. He spent a long time on my back, which I liked. But yeow, did some of them hurt. It wasn’t just that he was doing deep tissue, but there were many spots where he just touched them with his fingertips with light pressure and my muscles spiked. Pretty sure I had some huge knots. I do think they felt looser by the end, but it was not what I would call a relaxing massage where you fall asleep or anything! A few times I really had to work at breathing steady. I do think it’s what my back needed, it’s been a mess lately, and I hope it all relaxes and stops aching soon. Or I’m going to need another massage. LOL (A gentler one!)

And now it is nap time.

My dad says I am weird. (And for my dad to say that makes it a little scary.) He thinks it is weird that I enjoy having surgery. Seeing how he has never had surgery himself I am not quite sure how he would know if he would like it or not, he’s just assuming. But me? I’ve been there. Many times. Not that I mean surgery like “cutting into my foot” or “drilling holes in my brain”. I am pretty sure neither of those would be fun, though of course, like my dad, I’ve never had either of those things happen. But egg retrievals? Oh yeah… been there, done that.

First of all, the “starting to feel it” has evolved into “definitely feeling it.” The ovaries are starting to ache just a little bit. It’s not pain, just bloating. Pressure. A little tenderness. I am not fond of pants right now. Standing up is a-okay…. sitting down causes the waistline to cut in right there and it rather feels like someone gently squeezing a bruise. I am feeling the right more than the left, which makes sense when you consider that the right is the side that was operated on, pieces removed and all. I don’t want to be all whiny, because honestly it’s not that bad. Actually in a way it makes me slightly giddy. Things are rolling right along, and that makes me happy. But anyways, I feel them, it’s getting a little worse each day, and I’m really looking forward to having all those eggs sucked out so that things can get back to normal in there. And so I can wear my jeans again.

Back to the giddy. The giddy is definitely part of the reason I like this surgery. I want to know how many is really in there, I want to find out what fertilizes. I’m always anxious when waking up from retrieval, but I like getting info. I like waking up knowing that now they can finally give me some concrete numbers. I’m all about the numbers.

But for me retrieval has another aspect to it. They go out of their way to make you feel well taken care of. I like getting tucked into bed and covered with heated blankets. People ask me if they can get me anything, and I get wheeled around in a bed. Getting the IV put in sucks, but the medication is pretty awesome, off to dream as the world fades away, like nothing is of any importance at all. I’m lucky, waking up from retrieval doesn’t involve pain or sickness, just a heavy sleepiness. And then of course I get to go home and sleep for the rest of the day.

All of that combined equals Hell yeah, retrieval, woo woo! I happily skip-hop along through the back room at work, knowing that retrieval is tuesday…. or wednesday. Either way it’s soon.

::

I have done two of my stims injections myself. Just wanted to say that, so I have record of it. Den has been working hellish 14-hour days at work the past few nights, so I sucked it up and jabbed myself. Which I have never done before – not the full needle of stims, 1cc of fluid. And you know… it pretty much felt the same. It stung. It always stings. But I just breathe through it and it’s over.

The only one he cannot miss is trigger. We’re doing it intramuscular again. This time at least I’m not worried about it, since I survived it once just fine. I’m figuring out that most things in life sound a lot worse in your head than they really are in real life.

::

Appointment in the morning. Holding my breath.

Then I go to work, and from there go to my acupuncture and massage appointments. I have permission to sack out and do nothing the rest of the afternoon…. just be limp noodly. Sounds perfect to me.

Somewhere today I abruptly turned the corner from “feeling fine and hopeful and happy to be where I am” to somewhere close to “angry, bitter, and wanting to throw things at the happy pregnant woman walking down the street”. Just like that, flip is switched.

I’ve been trying to isolate myself lately – staying off the baby topics, away from the pregnant chit-chat, away from the happy happy. I’m doing it because, first, it hurts and I don’t like hurting. Second, because it either gets me thinking about what I don’t have, or about what I will have; it gets me imagining scenarios and either getting really hopeful or really depressed, and honestly neither one of them is what I want right now. I cannot be that person right now. I don’t want to be angry and bitter, that is not what I want to carry around with me.

I know – or at least I hope very much – that one day this burden will lift from my shoulders and I will be able to open the floodgates and let all the joy in without the overwhelming bitterness. I had a brief taste of it in April, what it felt like to walk the world as a pregnant person again, as a happy, joyful person. It helps knowing that is waiting for me.

::

I remarked to myself and to my therapist that this IVF feels so very much different from #3, the first one I did after Devin. The desperation is missing. The desire and longing are still there, always, but I don’t have that needy, urgent desperation digging fingernails into my back. For IVF #3 I was 9 months out from Devin’s birth. I think it was long enough that I felt so driven, so needy, but not long enough to gain any patience. Now I’m 18 months out. I just feel so much calmer, about everything. Calmer about my situation, calmer about the grief, calmer about the IVF. Even the lead-up for IVF #4 felt desperate, with Devin’s first birthday coming up. I had set an invisible, arbitrary goal. And I was failing.

Sometime after his first birthday I felt the grief and raging frustration settle down. It was spring. I remember looking around at spring arriving and feeling like something lifted from me.

All of 2008 is a cloud to me, a blur. I can tell you that I got my job that year, I can remember training and starting. I can remember meeting my boss for the first time. I can remember Christmas at BIL’s with BabyH. I remember March very clearly; some moments that month stand out in perfect relief in my memory. I remember laying awake at night staring at the ceiling, tears falling silently. I remember cleaning the entire house to the point of perfection. I remember helping Den paint, because we had lots of time, but our hearts and minds were shattered and all we could manage was to paint walls. I remember the memorial service, how I fidgeted and arranged and bought a new table just for that day to display his things. But ask me what I did between April and August and I honestly can’t remember a damn thing. I know I started working again at the non-profit in that time. I think I went there a few days a week. But what did I do the rest of my time? Where did I go? Who did I see? I remember nothing. Summer 2008 simply did not exist to me. It has been wiped out of my memory in a fog of grief and simply coping.

So spring 2009 felt like my new beginning. It felt like the sun had been gone for a long, long time, and I had finally opened my eyes and stepped back out into the world. I am sad to see the summer coming to an end; it hasn’t been long enough for me.

Next year I will probably have a totally different view of 2009, depending on how things turn out. But right now it feels so much better than last year, and as long as things continue in this general direction I will be okay.

I do love going to my grief group, but at the same time I need to take a deep breath when I leave. It is comforting to my grieving self, but a little terrifying to my trying-to-conceive-again self. When the time comes that I am pregnant again I am going to need to find a way to compartmentalize, so as not to let paranoia completely take me over. I will need to return to the land of “normal” – well, as normal as I can ever be, now. Unfortunately I can’t join that world of eager pregnant chit-chat until I am actually pregnant (and even then, maybe not). So I straddle the world of grief, edging my way to keeping one foot in, one foot out. The problem is, right now I don’t have anywhere to stand.

::

I talked with my SIL a little today. She saw my update on facebook and was asking me questions about my cycle. “As much as you’ve been through,” she said, “It’s still a little exciting. It’s… hope.”

Hope indeed.

::

I got there early this morning, time to get blood drawn before they were calling anyone back for ultrasounds. It wasn’t long before I was in an ultrasound room, waiting to be seen. I was eager to see what was going on inside, but not very tense about it. She immediately reassured me that everything looked good. I was distracted by relief so my notes are kind of spotty, but I had 9 follicles on my right ovary and 8 on the left. The biggest ones measured 10/11mm in size, and there were no tiny ones hanging around – they were all of a pretty consistent size. Lining looks fine.

This may be one of my smallest stims yet – I really appreciate that they’re all the same size and not one side more than the other, but I admit I’m a tiny bit disappointed I have under 20 follicles. Even with this menopur-only protocol I can still expect only around a 30% maturity rate, and less total eggs means that I’ll more than likely end up with less embryos than last time. All we can hope for is that a smaller stim and the acupuncture will make better quality, more mature embryos. I know, all I need is one good one – I got pregnant with Devin after a devastating cycle with only one embryo, I should know. But there still feels like there’s a buffer with more embryos – more to freeze, more chances to take. I have to constantly remind myself that my goal right now is 2 great embryos to transfer. Frozen embryos are extra.

I go back in on Saturday for another check-in with the ovaries. Judging by their size today and my past performances I’m leaning towards it being a Sunday trigger/Tuesday retrieval, but it could just as easily end up being a Wednesday retrieval. Saturday will tell the tale. It is also the ultrasound I am most worried about – my major overstimming was not apparent until my second scan when all the little ones popped up. So if I can get through Saturday safely then I’ll… start worrying about retrieval and number of eggs. Yeah, this worrying thing just never stops.

In less than a week I’ll be done with retrieval. Which both seems soon when I look at a calendar, and very far away when I feel my ovaries. The ultrasound tech did mention to me that having surgeries can result in being more sensitive to the pressure and other physical sensations during stims. I realized this is indeed my first stims cycle since my laparoscopy and tube removal.

I meditate to the image of my ovaries being strong and carrying the burden. I am thankful for my body and what it can do, even under such physical and emotional pressure.

My ultrasound is tomorrow morning and I feel a lot calmer than I expected to. I’m resigned to What Is, but not in a negative way. I think I’m learning how to let go a little – to just let the possibilities be until life shows you what path it’s on. Tomorrow isn’t THE answer, but the first of many. I have hope – but it’s a very reserved hope.

::

Today I was describing to my therapist what my new mondays consist of, since I am not working at a client’s office like I had been for months. I set my alarm so I won’t sleep all day, I get dressed, I eat, I shower, then I set my laptop up in my light, bright living room and get caught up on emails, phone calls, friends. Then I go to work for a couple of hours to get caught up and set my to-do list for the next day. And then I have my acupuncture appointment before going home and relaxing. I told her how much I love it, how I start my week with a deep breath, start on the right foot.

“Natalie,” she said to me, “I think you’ve learned how to relax!”

My next thing to think about is how to extend my routine and feeling of peace through the darker months, when I have weeks of no sunshine to bask in. This is my first step, and an important one, but now I need to figure out how to achieve it when the conditions aren’t perfectly ideal. And that has always been the hard part.

::

I am so damn happy to be off the pill. Everyone says how horrible lupron is – I don’t notice the lupron! But the birth control… oh my. I have felt like a veil was lifted from my head since I stopped those pills. I felt so angry, so frustrated for no reason. Now I feel so much less burdened. I feel like myself again.

::

I called my acupuncturist’s new office and booked a massage with the [male] massage therapist for Saturday. So Saturday I have work, then an hour of acupuncture, than an hour massage. Awesome. I hope this massage therapist works well for me.

It’s been three days of stims and I’m starting to feel my ovaries. Not a lot, but just… I feel slight pressure starting. That makes me nervous, with my history. It’s probably all perfectly normal, but the worry is there. Wednesday is my first ultrasound and I’m really wishing it was tomorrow instead. But at the same time, if I’m overstimming now I don’t think there’s anything they can do about it.

I mentioned this all to my acupuncturist today so she said she was going to aim not at helping me stim, but at calming everything down and bringing it all in balance, reigning it in. Which is good, very good. We chit-chatted a little about my cycle and such – I was in a chatty mood apparently. I feel like I’m getting to know her a little bit, I’m able to read her a little better, to joke a little and relax. I was thinking, maybe I did choose the right acupuncturist after all. She added some new ear points today, which buzzed funny at first, just like my first ear points did at my first appointment. Funny enough that doesn’t happen anymore. And actually the ear points are the ones that make me feel heavy and very tuned-in to my body.

One funny moment during my appointment. She uses this heat lamp thing over my belly to keep me warm (because my feet and belly are exposed, and I can get chilly really easily.) She extended the arm it’s on so that it was way above me, just enough warmth that I feel comfortable. So I had my eyes closed and my mind is going this way and that, I’m kind of drifting off. In my little half-dreams my face feels warm. I’m thinking about how my belly was warm, now I’m feeling a little chilly… but my face is feeling warm. In fact, it feels like…. hmmm… I open my eyes and startled, there’s the heat lamp right over my damn boobs, almost above my head. The stupid thing was slooowwwlllyy swinging around – I’d push it down, it swung back up. She ended up coming in and fixing it. But I still get a giggle thinking about opening my eyes to find the heat lamp right over my head!

I also asked her about the massage therapists she’ll be sharing her new office with, and it turns out she does have a history with them and says they are really wonderful. She also gave me a discount card last week so I think I’m going to call and make an appointment. The female massage therapist is out for the week, so I might just try the male. I know, scary. I don’t know why I lean towards a female massage therapist when I obviously don’t care about male or female doctors, OBs, REs, whatever. I guess it’s the whole touching thing. Looking up my hoo-ha is one thing, but touching my back, dude, now that’s a little intimate. (Snort.)

She scheduled me to see her on Saturday, we want to make sure I get in one more time before retrieval. I work Saturdays until noon, and she normally only works Saturday mornings but she’s going to see me at 12:30. She also said that if I get any symptoms of OHSS, even minor, before transfer, then I need to call her cell and she’ll see me immediately. Want to make sure my body is nice and calm and balanced before transfer. She says she’s at the beck and call of my ovaries. LOL I like her, I like that she’s willing to work around what my cycle gives me. IVF is anything but predictable. And I’m really glad i started seeing her 2 months ago, so that she and I have a nice relationship by the time we’re at the big stuff.

Honestly I think I’m going to be disappointed when the cycle is over and I’m not going for weekly acupuncture anymore! Now that’s something I never thought I’d say.

Here’s the thing: I am terrified. I am terrified that we are going to walk away from this cycle with nothing and be staring directly at the end of the road. Unlike all my other cycles where we were determined to make it work no matter what, this time we know we will walk away if this goes downhill. If I overstim, we’re canceling and not going to ER. Waiting months would totally suck, but not nearly as bad as wasting an entire cycle on bad quality eggs. This has to work out right.

But even if it does there’s no guarantee. I talk about a 5-day retrieval in the hopes that this protocol will follow through again… but there’s no guarantee. I talk about statistics supporting the idea of getting pregnant this cycle when you take into account a FET or two… but there’s no guarantee. Those two situations are assuming a lot… assuming I get more than 4 embryos is a LOT for me. Last cycle was so amazing, so uplifting… now I’m afraid I expect too much from this one. What if I get pregnant and lose that one, too? What if I don’t get pregnant at all?

And then I start thinking, when/if I do get pregnant… how the hell am I going to survive it? I realize that by surrounding myself with loss it has both made things easier with grieving and harder with moving forward. Every news of loss is like a gut punch to me, because it is a reminder: no one is safe. How the fuck am I going to make it through 36 weeks without being a complete basketcase? Not that this is what I am most worried about right now, but in a way it works to take the edge off of the pregnancy desperation.

I just have no idea how I’m going to get from here to the other side of this… if I ever get to the other side. I just want to close my eyes and wake up when this is over.

I wanted to spoil myself a little bit and had an hour to waste before my massage, so before I left I tried putting on nail polish. Didn’t work. I kept screwing it up and my clear topcoat apparently needs to be replaced. I ended up calling up the spa and asking if they had a manicure appointment available. Hmph.

The massage was interesting, and she did more than I anticipated with the chakra massage. In addition to the guided meditation she massaged my back, neck, feet and arms. I really concentrated on just letting go of all thoughts and just being present, enjoying it. I visualized light glowing in my ovaries, healing energy nourishing them. On the other hand I wished she would have worked my back more. The other thing about the chakra massage was that it seemed a little too… packaged. There were 7 cards for the 7 chakras, each one with a specific scented oil. I guess the thing that got me was that it was produced by Aveda, the company/product that supplies most of the products for this spa. And I just couldn’t help wondering, this big corporation, how likely is it that this is something more than just a sales pitch to them? It looks cute and new-agey, but do they really actually buy into it? I highly doubt it. I don’t mind toeing over the line into new age type stuff, but I want someone who really really believes in what they do. I want the genuine article, not what someone at corporate thinks will sell.

Then I had my manicure. First I’ll say that I’ve had a manicure before at one of those cheap places in the mall, and this was definitely better. She was very good with my nails, getting everything filed down just right, buffing it all up, using oil. And then she gave me a hand and arm massage. OMG! To be honest, I think that was just as good as the full body massage! She really worked the muscles, which felt absolutely heavenly. My poor hands are overworked.

And then we looked over and realized it was POURING. I mean heavens opened up and dropped everything. I was hoping it would ease up quickly, but no such luck. After I paid it was still raining hard. I walked around the building to my car, and that’s when I let loose a bad word as I realized I left my sunroof open. Again. It had rained this morning but then cleared up, still warm and muggy… I left it open to air out my car so it wouldn’t be 100 degrees when I drove home. Yeah. So instead I got to drive home sitting in a puddle. And then when I pulled into my driveway and pushed the button to release my seatbelt the metal buckle snapped up and took a gouge out of my freshly painted thumbnail. Oh I was pissed. I managed to press it down and rub it in so now it’s just a minor mark instead of a huge hole, but still. So much for being relaxed and refreshed after my day. Instead I walked in the house with a wet ass and chipped nail. (So I changed, turned on my meditation music, and took a nap. Screw this shit, I AM going to have a peaceful day.)

So now I’m on the search for a new massage therapist to try. Today – like other spa massages I’ve had – was nice, but I think I’m looking for something more. I’m going to have to start looking beyond the spa… I feel like what I need is a therapeutic massage, something geared more towards physical ailments and healing than an hour at the spa. Problem is I type “massage” into google and get over 20 local results. I know there’s a masseuse at the center where my acupuncturist is – I actually just received a coupon. So I’m debating. I don’t know how else to find the right one. I wish someone could refer me to someone local, but no one I know around here can afford stuff like that, and reviews online are few and far between (not that I’m sure I actually trust any of them). I don’t have the money to try 10 different massages – as much as I’d like to.

I think I’ve been spoiled. When I go to my chiropractor I feel like she has a magic touch, even though she only spends a few minutes with me. She knows exactly what she’s doing, she can zero right in on where it hurts, and it feels just beautiful. I also love her as a person, she and I chat and catch up. I want that kind of relationship with all of my care providers. I don’t think my connection with my acupuncturist is exactly what I want, and if I do another IVF I might try someone else. But, I still really love my treatments there. I told Den today that if I had $65 to spend on myself I’d probably chose to do an acupuncture session than today’s massage. Not that the massage wasn’t lovely, but there’s something about my acupuncture meditation that just clicks right inside me.

::

Meanwhile, second injection is done… this one stung a little bit, but not too bad. I have a bruise from last night’s injection, but it’s pretty small. I have the nerves that I always get at the start of stimming… “how can this little bit of liquid actually be doing anything at all?” You don’t feel anything for the first week-ish. I go in Wednesday for my first follicle check and am willing to bet there will be a bunch of them. Please send me no overstimming vibes… that’s my biggest worry right now. I’m on the same dose as last stims, so it should be okay. (But then there are never any guarantees.)

It’s hard to believe that in a little over one week I’ll be triggering. Just crazy.

This is my fifth IVF stims cycle. And yet today when I looked at the clock and realized it was time for my injection I felt butterflies in my stomach. I felt nervous – not about the numbers and results (I will never stop feeling anxious about that), but about getting an injection. I was thinking about how the menopur stung last time and how big was the needle? Just enough memory and just enough forgetfulness to make it scary.

I sat downstairs in the basement, ice pack pressed against my belly making me wince with the cold and the sharp tingly numbness. I looked at the needle with a mixture of nervousness and contempt on my face. Damnit. Stupid needle. Stupid belly. Stupid medications. And then Den jabbed me and injected it and… I felt nothing. Well, not nothing, I felt the needle. But no stinging. No nothing. That’s it??

Damn you’d think I’d be used to this by now.

::

I was in a really good mood this morning when I went in for my ultrasound. I think it’s been a long enough break since the last few cycles that I am feeling rejuvenated – this is a new cycle, not just rolling one into another. (Or maybe I’m just freaking psyched that I’m done with the birth control pill, which has been hellacious to my mood.) I just felt chipper. I greeted everyone at the clinic with a big smile and perky happiness. (Where is that coming from??) The nurse welcomed me in and showed me to my room, and basically said, “Well, you know where everything is!” And it’s kind of funny – I do. The desk, the exam rooms, the bathroom, the office. It’s comforting, in a way, the familiarity.

There was a Resident with the ultrasound tech again today, which again meant a much longer look at my insides than I would normally get during a baseline. It is still slightly unnerving when they linger, even though you know they are probably just showing the Resident something, but in the back of my mind there’s a tiny little voice wondering if something isn’t quite normal. I will say it was a rather fascinating ultrasound – my uterus looked very different than normal. And this is TMI (so please skip if squeamish), but you could see the blood pooling and shifting. I actually enjoy overhearing explanations to Residents. I want to just soak up all the knowledge I can about everything relating to this process.

I’m very fond of the ultrasound tech, she does all my transfers and most of my morning ultrasounds, and she was the one who did my scan and discovered the ectopic. As she was leaving the room today she stopped and said that she was really glad to see me. She’d “rather be seeing me in a mall instead of here, of course,” but it was always such a pleasure. And then she said I’d grown special to her a long time ago and she was so very hoping this was the one for me. She was so very heartfelt, I knew that she really honestly meant it.

My clinic may not be the best in the country, or the state. But they are well-researched. The doctors are willing to listen and try new things. They are all very professional and good at what they do. But most of all I don’t feel like “just a patient” there. Everyone greets me by name. They don’t need to reach my chart, because they already know what it says. Maybe they treat all patients this way; maybe I’m special since I’ve been around for so long. I really get the feeling that everyone at the clinic has a personal investment in my success – it’s not just a number, just a procedure. They get it. They know why they do what they do. And I love them for it.

::

After my appointment I headed in to work. I haven’t been overly talkative about my cycle, though I’ve mentioned it to a couple of people. But yesterday I had to tell my supervisors that I’d be late today, and then of course today everyone was asking where I was. I’ve never been secretive about my IVF in the least, but there have been cycles where I just didn’t say much. It’s a lot of complicated info for the normal non-infertile person, and with dealing with a new job, new coworkers, explaining Devin and that we were doing IVF, it was hard to know how much to say – how much I would be comfortable with and how much they would be comfortable with. I realize that some people just don’t want to know details, and that’s fine. I don’t want to be bothersome. And I didn’t know how many stupid comments I would get. It’s a vulnerable place to be in.

Last cycle and my ectopic I kept very quiet about it all. I realized later that it didn’t help me at all, I was struggling with a lot of fear and bitterness by myself, isolating myself. I also found out that they would have loved to have known more, to be more involved. So this this time when the time came, a question to either brush off or answer, I decided to answer honestly. I’m having an ultrasound to check that I’m ready to start my IVF cycle. I start the big injections. I’m nervous, tired, a little frustrated, but hopeful too. This morning when there were no customers everyone was just kind of gathered around, asking me a few questions about when and how, and giving words of encouragement. It was quick, everyone was soon talking about something else and customers were coming in and the day went on as it always does. But that moment stuck in my head, being surrounded by support. I am grateful.

::

When cleaning my office I found that I still have a gift certificate to a local spa. So today I called them up and booked a “Chakra Balancing Massage.” Shut up, yes, you read that right. I’m already doing acupuncture, meditation, why the fuck not chakra balancing. It’s all part of my “kitchen skin approach” this cycle. And hell, it’s still a massage and I will probably enjoy it anyways. So tomorrow after work I get pampered a little to celebrate the end of yet another week and the start of stims.

Here we go.