Flotsam

This morning on my way to work I was listening to a very sad story on NPR about four dolphins who washed ashore, each with a fatal bullet wound. The agent in charge of the investigation was being interviewed, and several times in the course of the brief segment she opined that it was possible the dolphins were simply in “the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Ahem. Am I missing part of this story? Did these dolphins interrupt an armed robbery in progress? Was it a case of mistaken identity? Were they flopping happily down a street in a tough L.A. neighborhood when they found themselves the unintended victims of a drive-by shooting?

No. THEY WERE IN THE OCEAN. Now, I am not a marine biologist, but I have always thought that the ocean was the perfect place for a dolphin.
I predict that sales of Kevlar bathing suits will go through the roof this summer.

The plagiarist mentioned in my previous entry deleted the offending parts of her post on Sunday night, and sent me an apology. So that’s that, I suppose.
Scott was very upset by the incident.
“I feel like I should DO something,” he kept saying on Saturday. He wanted me to post a link to the offender. I declined. He wanted me to post a withering comment on the poached entry. I declined again, and extracted from him (with some difficulty) a promise that he would NOT take matters into his own hands. This promise was honored until approximately 15 seconds after I went to bed, when he left an angry comment on the plagiarist’s website (the comment has since been removed, thank heavens). I woke him up, furious, at 7am on Sunday.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I wanted to defend you.”

This was sweet, in its way. It would have been sweeter if, in the comment, he hadn’t gotten the name of my blog wrong. Sigh.

Thank you all for assuring me that I was not overreacting. I am not sure where this pathological fear of overreacting comes from, but it has gotten me into trouble before. Trouble that involved sirens and a house full of firemen, believe it or not.

{insert flashback harp music}

One morning during the summer before I left for college, I was lying on the couch eating Haagen Dazs out of the carton and watching a 90210 marathon (my life hasn’t changed much in the intervening decade, as you can see), when I noticed the air smelled a little…funny. I wandered around the house searching for the source of the smell, and when I looked down the stairs leading to the basement, I saw the air was hazy with smoke. I had another bite of ice cream and wondered what to do.
Now if this had been a movie, the audience would have screamed at the befuddled, spoon-licking heroine to CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT.

But she would not have listened. After all, surely that whole “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire” thing is overstated. Surely sometimes there is just smoke–harmless, ordinary smoke of unknown (but benign!) origin.
Or perhaps the haze I had seen was dust. Basements are notoriously dusty.
I didn’t want to be reactionary. I had a reputation for being a tad overdramatic, and I knew that if I called my mother and told her I thought there might be some kind of fire, she would assume that I had been frightened by the smoky scent of a neighbor’s mesquite-flavored potato chips. I put the ice cream away and called a friend.

“Oh, did I wake you? I can call back…Are you sure? Well…don’t be alarmed, but there seems to be some smoke coming from my basement.”

Her (loud, screechy) advice was to call 911, a notion I dismissed out of hand as being unduly alarmist. Besides, I was unshowered and wearing pajamas—the last thing I needed {Ed. Note: Besides a FIERY DEATH} was neighbors gawking while the street filled with fire trucks and a local news crew descended upon me, splashing pictures of my unkempt self all over television.

I went upstairs to wash my hair. By now, smoke was beginning to seep up through the vents. Out of deference to the severity of the situation, I skipped the conditioner. While I was getting dressed, I called my friend again to ask if the fire department had unmarked cars. You know, someone they could send just to take a look and determine whether firefighters were really necessary. More screeching ensued.
I then had the brilliant idea to bypass 911 and call the local fire station directly.

“Hi. There seems to be some smoke coming from my basement and it’s probably nothing but–”
“Okay. You’re going to need to hang up and call 911. Get out of the house.”
“No, no, no—I just wondered if–”
“MA’AM. MA’AM. You need to hang up this phone and dial 911.”
I hung up.
His “get out of the house” comment was worrisome. What if the house exploded? That possibility hadn’t occurred to me. I saw an imaginary fireball exploding before my eyes, sending gory Alexa-shrapnel splattering into the neighbors’ hydrangeas.

I never did call 911, because I was just that much of an idiot at age 18. Instead, I rushed outside with the phone and sat in my car, trying to get up the nerve to dial the number. A few moments later I heard sirens: the man from the fire station had saved me the trouble.
There was a small electrical fire in some sort of furnace-related motor in the basement. It was speedily extinguished and the firefighters brought in a fan the size of a Hummer to clear out the smoke.

I occupied myself hanging up the heavy coats they dropped on the floor, brushing the soot off them, and asking whether I couldn’t get anyone anything to drink. I may not be the best person in a crisis, but I can make that person a killer mojito.

Friday, June 8th:
Our intrepid heroine prepares for her ultrasound by reading back issues of Fertility and Sterility and fervently hoping for at least one follicle at 12mm—or some indication that she is responding to the medication.
At the clinic, she and her husband watch an educational video about injections. The actors are blonde and vaguely Swedish-looking. After the male Swede gives his wife an injection in the ass (not a euphemism!), the camera zooms in on his face:
“All done, honey!” he chirps.
“GREAT!” says his wife, giving the audience a manic grin.
When the film ends, our intrepid heroine and her husband are joined by a nurse who demonstrates the Follistim Pen and then instructs our heroine (who is feeling rapidly less intrepid) to pull down her pants and bend over a chair so that Mr. Heroine can practice injecting her with the 1 1/2 inch long, 22-gauge intramuscular needle.

As I brace myself on the chair seat, feeling the breeze on my naked legs, I begin to panic, just a little.
The nurse pokes at my rear with a meaty finger.
“Right here. One quick motion, like you’re throwing a dart.”
I can feel Scott behind me, obviously losing his mind.
“You want me to…” he stammers. “I’m really going to inject her?”
I know how he feels. I had assumed we would be practicing on a prosthetic ass of some kind. WHERE IS THE PROSTHETIC ASS?
I feel a tiny stab.
“Just do it,” I hiss, assuming that Scott has stopped with only the tip of the needle in my flesh. But no! All done, and surprisingly painless! I laugh in the face of pain! Or I will, as soon as I pull my pants up.

Scott leaves for work and I trot off to an exam room for my ultrasound, where I shed my pants yet again. Why do I bother wearing clothes at all, I wonder, climbing onto the table and resting my feet in the stirrups.
My favorite nurse comes in and the ultrasound gets underway. I have never had a painful ultrasound before, but when she pokes the wand at my right ovary, I gasp. When I see that ovary ripple into view on the gray screen beside me, I gasp again. It is a mass of huge black holes. Follicles! I have follicles! I am giddy with relief for approximately thirty seconds before I see the measurements—too large and too many—popping up on the screen.
“This cycle’s going to get cancelled, isn’t it?” I ask flatly. My favorite nurse sighs.

When I leave the clinic half an hour later I am trying, with limited success, not to cry. In the parking ramp I am blinking quickly and taking short, heaving breaths while I dig for my car keys. Motherfucker, where are they?? I empty the contents of my purse on the top of a trash can. My keys aren’t there.

I trudge back to the clinic. Have they seen my keys? They haven’t. I use the phone in the lobby to call Scott to pick me up—no one answers. Blink blink. Heave heave. My chin starts to wobble. I manage to reach my mother and beg her to rescue me. My favorite nurse has heard what is happening and comes out into the lobby.
“You’re having quite an afternoon, aren’t you?” she says sympathetically.
“Yeah,” I say, managing a watery smile before I dash for the elevator.

Saturday and Sunday, June 9th and 10th:
I have an abdomen the size of a Buick. My ovaries hurt. I call the clinic and ask about converting the cycle to IVF. No dice. I mention the pain and bloating and am told that this is to be expected. I start a ten day course of Prometrium to bring on my period and spend most of the weekend on the couch, watching television and making lists.
I get some preliminary wedding pictures, and looking at them improves my mood immeasurably. Schnozz and I watch synchronized episodes of Veronica Mars while we IM each other, mostly talking about Veronica’s hair (better when it was choppy). I finish off a pint of Oatmeal Cookie Chunk ice cream (highly recommended).

Monday, June 11th:
In a surprise plot twist, my mother tells me she is moving to Switzerland for work. She will be gone for three years. In Switzerland. The Switzerland that is in Europe. Far, far away.

That evening, I am opening a bottle of wine in an attempt to quell my terror when the phone rings. It is our landlord, with good news. Someone is interested in our apartment! They would be ready to move in July! (The lease on our new apartment starts in July, while the lease on our current apartment is not up until September. Very expensive.) But there is a catch: the potential renter is going out of town and wants to see the place before he leaves. Can we be ready for a showing tomorrow morning?
“Sure!” I say, looking hysterically around at the piles of cat hair in the corners and the unpacked suitcase from our honeymoon open in the center of the room.

Tuesday, June 12th:
Our intrepid heroine, having spent the night before cleaning the stove burners with a chisel, is too tired to go to work. It is 90 degrees—surely there is a danger of heatstroke. Better to stay indoors and read, where it is cool.
(The air conditioner ceases to function that afternoon).

Wednesday, June 13th:
Today I had an appointment with Dr. Doctor, who was flummoxed by the results of this past cycle. We are moving ahead with IVF, and I have a tentative retrieval date in mid-August.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am off to help Scott install a new air conditioner, and then sit in front of it eating cheese and drinking wine until it is time for the season premiere of Top Chef. I hope you all have similarly enjoyable evening plans.

Right Ovary: 16.5, 15.5, 13, 12, 11.5, 11.5, 10
Left Ovary: 17, 17, 12, 10
Lining: 6mm

Is this really so horrible? Yes, it is rather odd to have eleven follicles at least 10mm on day ten when I am only on LETROZOLE, for pity’s sake, but looking around the Interweb (surely the best and most reliable source of information) I see plenty of people who had more than three mature follicles at trigger. My clinic is concerned, obviously, about the largest four, all around 16-17mm. But how many follicles are too many? If I don’t take a trigger shot, will they all ovulate? What are the chances that we really would end up with high order multiples if we had plain old sex? (I’ve had three miscarriages—how likely is it that I would end up with too many healthy pregnancies?) What would you do? Would your doctor have cancelled? Could I somehow convert to IVF? Why is my lining so thin? What could they possibly do differently next time? Why did the nurse have to poke at my already tender right ovary SO VIGOROUSLY with her ultrasound wand? Why didn’t I ask these questions while I was at the clinic?

UPDATE: It is Saturday morning, and I am feeling much better. A little embarrassed at how I reacted, but better, nonetheless. Thank you all for being so kind. I have a call into the clinic to find out what I do next to end this cycle, because I do not remember, and I may casually ask them about the convert-to-IVF idea, which I fully expect to be shot down. Of course we will NOT be having sex—the fact that I even considered such a thing, given my terror of multiples, illustrates just how not-myself I was last night. Probably part of that was the pitcher of consolatory Margaritas. Speaking of which, I’m off to find some aspirin…

First, let me ask my inane reproductive question of the day:
Spotting on Letrozole–normal or not? I have quite a lot of cramping and bloating, which I expected, but the spotting baffles me. I finished my Letrozole yesterday, it is day 8, and still, the light spotting continues. My E2 levels should be rising by now, but then I know Letrozole inhibits the aromatization of estrogen…perhaps that would cause the spotting? Or perhaps it is a side effect of all the cramping? I could find no information about this via Google, and didn’t even find much about people spotting on stims. I would call my clinic, but they won’t tell me anything, rather they will insist upon having a nurse call me back, which is utterly useless as I am at work and the last thing I need is for the lead attorney sitting next to me to hear me discuss my vaginal discharge. Even I have my limits. And naturally, the clinic closes at 4 pm, making it impossible for me to call them after work. They might as well put it on their letterhead: “Really-expensive Medicine Center: Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You.”

But let’s move on.
I will have wedding pictures this weekend, and I am limp with excitement. Well, excitement tinged with fear about how the photos turned out. Will I be making odd faces that give me an underchin? Will the combination of my ivory dress and customary pallor conspire to make me look like the ghost of a murdered bride? Just how many pounds does the camera add? Only time will tell.

If nothing else, I am newly relieved that I was not married in the 1980s, and thus have some hope of looking at my wedding pictures in the future without feeling the urge to blind myself with a kitchen implement.
All week I have been glutting myself with reruns of Kate & Allie. This was my favorite show as a child, and I was curious to see whether it was as delightful as I remembered. As it happens, it has held up remarkably well.
Except in one respect:

I am embarrassed for them, just looking at this picture. And those outfits are less alarming than usual. I keep missing parts of the plot because I am transfixed by their wardrobe—Kate will saunter onscreen having donned a vigorously patterned sweatshirt with an elastic bottom that skims her knees, or Allie will sashay by in her bathrobe, which has shoulder pads, and I forget to listen to the dialogue. Even Scott was disturbed by the episode in which the women go dress shopping in preparation for Allie’s big date with a (very young) Kelsey Grammer. They try on several dresses, each more perplexingly hideous than the last, and Allie finally settles on a dress of blue silk with black tiger stripes, blousy sleeves, and shoulder pads. Scott sat frowning at the screen, while I shielded my eyes and cowered on the sofa, whimpering.
“What is she wearing?” he asked, sounding disgusted. And this from a man who still owns T-shirts from high school and hasn’t bought new jeans in five years.
In one episode, Allie buys a gift for a client, some sort of caftan she refers to as a “brunch burnoose.” It is, essentially, a large khaki sack, accessorized with one of those froufy silken ties that businesswomen wore with their powersuits. Honestly, it was the most bizarre item of clothing I have ever seen. I have been to brunch several times, myself, and have never donned such a garment.
I understand that fashions change. But in these troubled times, can’t we do away with relativism and instead agree that some things are just wrong? And that anything called a brunch burnoose is one of them?

When I finish typing this I will take my first two Letrozole pills. They are the tiny orange tablets in the picture above—the most diminutive looking drug in my protocol, and yet the one expected to do the brunt of the work. I am skeptical, but then I have never gotten used to the idea that nickels are worth less than dimes.

This morning I was at the clinic for my day three ultrasound and blood draw. I didn’t see Dr. Doctor, but rather the nurse practitioner who will be handling my monitoring. She was perfectly nice, but seemed mournfully unaware of how brilliant and delightful I am. She treated me, it must be said, like a patient.
Dr. Doctor had waved off the idea that I needed to complete the clinic’s injection training for the trigger shot.
“You’re a bright girl,” she’d said, “You don’t need formal training. We’ll have someone walk you through the process while you’re in for monitoring, and you’ll be fine.”
The nurse practitioner turned her nose up at this idea.
“Oh no, no, no,” she clucked, “Everyone gets injection training. You’ll have to schedule yours within the next week.” Then she made me take a sheaf of information on Letrozole, information citing studies I have already read, studies Dr. Doctor and I once reminisced about fondly as the sun set in the motivational poster on the exam room wall.
I miss Dr. Doctor.

But despite my kvetching about having to take time off work for Needle U, a little instruction might not be such a bad thing. When I picked up my meds this afternoon, I was slightly taken aback by the 22 gauge needles. I am not afraid of needles, as a rule, but these are awfully thick. And pointy. Probably that is best, what with the whole muscle-piercing part of the shot—I wouldn’t want a dull needle, I suppose. But neither do I fancy having a steel coffee stirrer plunged into my backside by my new husband. Truthfully, there is a part of me (the nerdy part) that is jealous of Scott for getting to do the actual injecting. I’ve never used a syringe, having eschewed heroin as a youth. I fully intend to mix the shot myself, at least. A girl deserves to have some fun. It will be like a science experiment, a science experiment involving expensive drugs and my ass! I feel like Mr. Wizard.

The pharmacist at Target was a boy of twelve or so who took over an hour to fill my many prescriptions, called my doctor twice to ask why I was being given a medication usually prescribed for breast cancer (the Letrozole), and then blushed when he handed me my bag.
“I don’t know anything about…all of that,” he said, gesturing at my Lady Medicines, one of which, to his probable horror, is to be inserted vaginally. “But if you have any questions, you could look them up online. Or ask Mary,” he finished, pointing to the female pharmacist.
Then he divested me of two hundred dollars and sent me on my way.

So here I am, on the precipice of my first IUI. A little nervous, actually. That it won’t work, of course, but also that it will. That is the most hateful thing about the cocktail of infertility and recurrent miscarriage—nothing terrifies me more than pregnancy, except the idea of never getting pregnant at all.