May
17

Is There an Award for Lengthiest and Yet Least Illuminating Blog Entry?

Nine days to go, and I am itchy. I have three mosquito-bite-looking things on my arms, but the itching, it is all over. My ears itch. My face itches. My toes itch. I don’t know what is the matter with me, but I have come up with a few possibilities:
1. I have dry skin
2. I have a flea
3. I have Lymphoma

Guess which one kept me awake last night in a Google-induced panic? Go on, guess.
I have been itchy on and off for the past few weeks, particularly when stressed, but now it seems to have intensified. The bite-looking things showed up yesterday, and last night I could barely sleep, what with the itching. I am very suggestible, which doesn’t help, as the more I think about itching, the more I itch, and the more I itch, the more I am certain I am dying of cancer, which ONLY CAUSES MORE ITCHING.*

But things are not all bad. Meteorologists seem to think it won’t rain on my wedding day. Technically the wedding is inside, but we plan to take all of the pictures outside in the park, so I have been hoping for clear skies—If “hoping” means studying satellite photos and weather patterns and shaking my tiny fist at the heavens.

Also, as mentioned, Schnozz was here for the series finale of Gilmore Girls, and we had a lovely, if somewhat melancholy, evening. We had tortellini and wine and streamers and celebratory tiaras. And this:
Cake
You are all weeping with jealousy, aren’t you?

Yesterday I saw Dr. Doctor to go over specifics of the upcoming cycle. We have read the same studies and thus agreed on dosages, so the entire appointment took about two minutes, after which Dr. Doctor said “Well, thanks for confirming your protocol with me!” And then we laughed and the resident observing genuflected and thanked her lucky stars she doesn’t have me as a patient.

So, in case any of you are interested in said specifics, here is the plan:
Day 3 (probably two weeks from tomorrow): Baseline ultrasound
Days 3-7: 5 mg Letrozole
Day 10: Ultrasound
Day Someteen: Another ultrasound, trigger that night,** commence the sexing
Day Someteen+2 (36 hours after trigger): IUI, probably even more sexing
Day Someteen+4: Start putting progesterone capsules up my Lady Parts

Never let anyone tell you infertility isn’t glamorous.

I will also be taking baby aspirin, Folgard, and my 2000 mg of Metformin throughout. I expect to start testing ridiculously early, possibly before the trigger has even left my system. Oh, what fun we will have!

The other highlight of the appointment was the nurses gushing over how much weight I have lost (12 pounds). This was particularly satisfying in view of my last visit to the clinic, the visit that shamed me into inspired me to said weight loss in the first place. It is sobering, though, to note that I have lost what the Weight Watchers website informs me is the equivalent of more than half a dozen cantaloupes, if only because I am still not anything approaching skinny, leaving me to wonder what I must have looked like before, and where did I put all those cantaloupes?

On a weight-related side note: Who, pray tell, is in charge of sizing for swimming suits? I would like to have a word with them. In fact, I would like to have a word with them while you sneak up behind their chair with a truncheon. My honeymoon requires me to have a swimming suit. The last time I purchased a swimming suit I weighed 97 pounds and the suit in question was a size XS J.Crew bikini that I had to take in two inches in the crotch in order to keep the bottom from bagging on my slender frame. I hated shopping for swimming suits back then, because they showcased my jutting hipbones and tiny breasts. Imagine my surprise*** to find that I have cleverly leapfrogged past any weight at which swim suits are flattering (is there such a weight?), straight into a weight that causes one-piece suits to resemble sausage casings and two-piece suits to make me hungry for Pillsbury crescent rolls. Admittedly, my rack was impressive, but oh, my Thighs! (They deserve the capitalization).
A few months ago, while out for sushi, my mother announced to the entire table that I had “Thunder Thighs.” Then, when there was an outcry (outcries in my defense from my cousins, the outcry of a wounded panther from me), she looked baffled and said “What? I didn’t mean it as a bad thing! She just has really big,**** muscular thighs!”*****

But back to the dressing room. As I mentioned earlier, I have lost quite a bit of weight. Why, just the other day I managed to pack myself tightly into a pair of pants with an “eight” on them! But apparently, swimsuit designers are of the opinion that I am a size TWELVE. Why would they do this? There you are, wriggling into a scrap of spandex in a tiny room full of mirrors, already in a vulnerable position, and they go and spring their inflated sizing on you! But I am now the proud owner of a not unattractive tankini, with a plunging halter neckline that I am hoping will distract onlookers from my lower half.

I have started having wedding anxiety dreams. They aren’t even creative wedding anxiety dreams, which shouldn’t surprise me as my dreams often give the impression that my subconscious got ahold of a Psychology 101 textbook. It’s embarrassing, really. Anyway, between these dreams and the fact that I find myself obsessing over the most ridiculous things, like shades of blue (don’t ask, I swear you don’t want to know), I can tell that my stress levels are beginning to rocket skyward. Yesterday I started and then abandoned a Wedding Wednesday entry that made exactly no sense at all, and I think that particular feature is dead. At this point, rounding up all those wedding topics just serves as a sort of petri dish for my neuroses. The entry contained a lengthy paragraph on place cards, for heaven’s sake, specifically as they relate to my shades-of-blue woes. I cannot tell you how deeply, deeply disturbing I find it that I even HAVE “shades-of-blue woes.”
Mind you, I am not nervous about getting married. After three years living together, I feel as certain about the Actually as I imagine a person can about such things, and I am giddy at the prospect of marrying the man I trust and adore. Instead, I am nervous about the wedding, which is a different thing entirely. Rationally, I know that none of this matters–whether the cake is dropped, or the champagne runs out, or my eyelashes come unglued–but I can’t stop running through the lists of things I have yet to do and questioning that which I have already done.

This post has gone on forever, and has veered from itching to ovaries to swimming suits to place cards, so I will stop now before even those of you who have made it this far throw up your hands in defeat.

I will be back this weekend to report on bachelorette parties and waxing, so check back frequently or studiously avoid this website, according to your preference.

*Further Googling has now convinced me that I may have a bedbug, which is so revolting I do not know what to do with myself. Thank god we are moving.
**Anyone want to take bets on whether the Actually will chicken out and make me do the intramuscular shot myself?
***Sarcasm
****Holding up her hands to indicate a large circumference!
*****In her defense, my Thighs are rather muscular, which I can only assume comes from having spent most of the last ten years living in third-floor walk-ups, as I don’t generally go in for “exercise” of the more traditional sort.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |