Flotsam

When I arrived for my tests Tuesday I was informed that in fact it would be a three hour, rather than a two hour, glucose tolerance test. During my substantial time in the waiting room, I watched women and couples come and go, and found myself, a bit ridiculously, I know, jealous of almost all of them. The woman who left with a brand new Follistim Pen and a sheaf of instructions? I wanted to be her, needle-bruised flesh and all. Worst, though, was the couple there for a transfer. I eavesdropped as they discussed the details, huddled together in the chairs across from me, waiting for the nurse to call their name. When they emerged sometime later, the woman was walking slowly, a bit bowlegged, barely suppressing a grin, her husband rushing ahead to get the door and easing her out into the hallway.
Jealousy felt for people undergoing emotionally, physically, and financially draining medical procedures is not a pretty thing. I felt disgusted with myself. But it didn’t seem to alleviate the envy gnawing at my throat—the Transfer-Couple was not, after all, stuck queasily on the diagnostic tilt-a-whirl. They were moving forward, trying things, depleting their resources for clinic visits that might actually result in a healthy baby, while here I am, a new $500 bill in hand, and for what? Dozens of inconclusive blood tests and ultrasounds?
I returned from the clinic to find the Nearly in the kitchen making a sandwich.
“X and Y are having a baby,” he told me. I physically stepped backwards, trying to move away from the news. X is one of the Nearly’s best friends, and has been since they were just out of training pants. X and Y stayed with us last year, just before I found out that I was pregnant for the second time. They had some problems conceiving–Y was, the Nearly informed me “On hormones, or something” (injectables? He has no idea.) But here they are, pregnant! Due in May! We are young, the Nearly and I, and only a few of our friends have children. But the pace is starting to pick up, and I am finding it excruciating to hear that so and so is trying and then a few months later that so and so is pregnant, while I am still right where I started, plodding back and forth to the clinic, sticking out my arm for a blood draw, or climbing onto the exam table. My birthday on Monday was hard. Most people didn’t remember it, and I woke up that morning with the flu. I spent the day thinking about the year I had finished, feeling as though I had spent the past 12 months running on a turntable, my feet scrambling forward as I went nowhere at all.
Yesterday, when the clinic called (during the one hour I was not at my desk staring dejectedly at the phone), they left a vague message to the effect that my glucose tolerance test was normal. I think I lost it, then, and I called them back, shaking, and told the nurse that I spoke to–through clenched teeth–that I would need the actual numbers, please. She said she would call me back, but that if the doctor said it was normal, there was probably nothing for me to worry about.
Here is a partial list of things doctors have told me not to worry about:

1. Endometriosis (told for 10 years there was no point in doing anything for it other than remaining on continuous birth control pills)
2. My first miscarriage
3. Anovulation (told that as I usually had a cycle every 36 days I was “probably” ovulating despite not detecting it on my chart)
4. My second miscarriage

So…I wanted the numbers. The free t4 and thyroid antibodies aren’t back yet, but here are the results of my 3-hour OGTT:
Fasting insulin: 14.9
Fasting glucose: 79
1-hour glucose: 204
2-hour glucose: 84
3-hour glucose: 106
Dr. Doctor herself left me a voicemail message with the results. Even though my one-hour result was sky high, my other, normal, results indicate that my glucose tolerance is not impaired. Dr. Doctor also said that this means my high insulin levels are irrelevant, and can be ignored. I don’t understand this last bit, but am too tired to parse it at the moment. Also, my TSH came back at only 1.57 this time—perfectly fine. So I am doubting that my further thyroid results, which will be ready next week, will show anything.

“Basically,” Dr. Doctor concluded, “We still don’t know what is going on with you.”

I know that this happens, that people are “unexplained,” but with my string-of-pearls-wearing, Barbara-Bush-resembling polycystic ovaries and my multiple abnormal test results, I don’t feel like that is me. I don’t seem to fit neatly into a diagnosis, but I want to—I want there to be a reason that my body failed to care for the two embryonic charges entrusted to it. I want it to be something I can fix. As it gets closer to the time when last year I was pregnant, I am finding myself sadder and less optimistic than ever, and feeling like it would be…well, irresponsible for me to get pregnant again unless a doctor finds something wrong and makes it right. I feel that if I did get pregnant, and miscarried yet again, it would be my fault—my fault for not first making certain that my uterus is a safe place for a baby to grow.

December 3rd—the date of the 1st annual Barren Midwestern Cocktail Klatch—cannot come fast enough. Molly has informed me that there will be beverages served in the shell of a coconut. A blue-cheese stuffed-olive in my Martini is generally as elaborate as I get with a drink. Umbrellas, juices to lend a vibrant hue—I view these things as taking up space where there could be gin. But perhaps it is my self that wants a thing to be exactly what it is and nothing more that is getting the best of me, through all of this testing and uncertainty. Maybe what I need is to order something unfamiliar and frothy, served in the bowl of a shell, and trust that it will not make me sick.