Stimulation, Ho!

Apparently you were all VERY intimidating, because as of this morning my lining was thin and and my ovaries dispirited and cyst-free. Well done, everyone! Three (very soft, due to my persistent headache) cheers for Lupron! Long live the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis*!
Though I had no cysts, I did get the standard “Are those entirely-too-many follicles in your ovaries or are you just happy to see me?” eyebrow raise, which always annoys me a bit because don’t they have other patients with PCOS? Surely it is not necessary to cluck over my follicle-studded ovaries every time I have an ultrasound—what do they think the “P” in PCOS stands for, anyway? At least they were able to locate my left ovary this time, though it had sneakily migrated below my uterus. The ultrasound was followed by a supremely embarrassing moment when the nurse removed the probe and the condom that had previously been sheathing it remained…engaged.
“Oh dear!” she said, pulling it from my apparently vice-like vagina. No, I wasn’t nervous at all, why do you ask?

I have been instructed to start stims Sunday morning, at which time I will be taking 75iu of Bravelle and 75iu of Menopur. I will go in for an E2 check next Wednesday, and then ultrasound and E2 two days later. Those of you for whom the last two sentences were but a rhythmic nonsensical babble will be heartened to know that tomorrow I will draw up the second installment of Your IVF Primer (Stimulation: or, Who Left These Grapefruit in My Pelvis?), so that you can continue to be bored to tears with the rest of my readers. I am always thinking of you, you see.

Tonight I am going to celebrate by making carbonara and watching the Top Chef I missed last night (Spell check would like to know if by “carbonara” I mean “coronary.” Uncannily prescient, that spell check). Carbonara generally involves the use of my trusty Bacon Shears (read: pair of scissors from IKEA), but tonight I will be eschewing the Shears in favor of my new knife. I had considered myself rather bad with knives, and was further convinced that knives weren’t much use for cutting difficult things like meat, anyway, but as it happens I just had a terribly dull and ineffective blade. (I don’t know why I was so surprised by this, as my knife, like my Bacon Shears, hailed from IKEA). My brother, who is just finishing culinary school (and has curiously turned down my offer of an internship position as my personal chef) gave me a new knife last week as a belated wedding present, and imagine my delight to find that it cuts things without any hacking or sawing at all! So formidable is my new knife that when cutting an orange I need only bring the blade close enough to glare forbiddingly at the peel, which obligingly splits apart, cleaving the fruit into a series of even slices. True story.

*I used to refer to this as the Axis of Evil, but perhaps I was hasty in my judgment