dubious accolades: cycle 2, day 10

Another day, another early morning in stirrups while wearing half of a business suit. It’s a precarious existence I inhabit.

In any case. There I was. In half a lawyer-suit on top and birthday suit on bottom with a new nurse wanding me. This nurse has a lot of personality. A lot of distinctly Massachusetts South Shore personality. She is candid. And feisty. And apparently, full of compliments for me and my hardworking ovaries.

“Oh yeah! Super (pronounced soo-puh), look at this one <excitedly turns screen in my direction so I can see what look like pulsing amoebas bouncing around inside my pelvis>”

“Yeah, you did a wicked good job, right here (pronounced heee-uh), look at this!”

“Very, very good!” (All New England Rs)

I may have blushed. I may have been secretly flattered by her unceasing praise. I may have been so negative going in to this morning’s wanding that I had psychologically prepared myself for no follicles and a failed cycle. After all, absent the crippling ovary pain I experienced in my first cycle, I had (completely rationally) convinced myself that this cycle was unsuccessful. 

But it also got me to thinking <cog slowly turning. > Did I really deserve any credit for this? I mean, I have literally ceded all control at this point. My ovaries are no longer my own – they are but a Petri dish for the medical interventions of others. I take two Clomid pills, once a day, for five days and then, I wait. That’s it. That is literally all I do.

In the meantime, I engage in reckless, likely detrimental pursuits. For this cycle that meant continuing to exercise regularly – running, hiking, even going climbing at a local rock gym where one catastrophic fall graceful leap left me wondering whether I had both broken my right foot and forever killed any hope of follicle creation. But wait. There’s more! I’m a vegetarian; I eat gluten; I eat too much fertility-killing-soy; I devour vast quantities of sugar. I do not meditate, practice yoga regularly or engage in anything that remotely resembles “mindfulness.” On top of it all, I do this whole lawyer thing, which, on some days, could be described as high stakes life or death situations somewhat stressful.[1]

But more than my lack of credit for what appears to be, at least preliminarily, a positive outcome[2], there is something else that gives me pause in the effusive compliments piled on me this morning: what about the inverse of all of it? Like…what if it hadn’t worked? What if I had shown up with zero follicles or, worse, some terrible complication? A giant cyst? A third arm? Just as soon as I was rewarded for what is basically nothing more than coincidence and good luck, surely I would not be blamed for the nothing more than bad luck malfunctions of my body – err, right?

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[1] The opinions expressed here regarding so-called “detrimental pursuits” are not those of an upstanding medical professional and should not be taken as medical advice. The opinions expressed here are merely the wild rantings of one infertile woman who has spent too much time surfing the wild west of the interwebs and too little time heeding the informed medical advice of her wonderful husband – a very rational, clear thinking physician. And oh yes, the reproductive endocrinologist. He seems like a rational, clear thinking guy, too.

[2] For those of you playing at home: 4 follices, two on each side though the left two were “hiding.” (No, I don’t know what that means either). Unfortunately, they weren’t all mature – the biggest coming in at 14 mm, where 18mm and over is considered “mature.” So we wait two more days, rinse and repeat and, most likely, will have the joy of using the OVIDREL shot that has been chilling in our crisper. Nothing says love like C accompanying me to an early Sunday morning faint-fest-and-wanding at the fertility clinic’s remote, weekend location.