Sep
11

Greetings From the Land of the Uncomfortable and Neurotic!

Friday afternoon I developed a wicked lower backache, and my cramping ramped up from “twinges” to “uterine vice grip.” Sitting in my desk chair became increasingly unpleasant, and I was forced to flee work early in order to spend an evening on the couch watching Meerkat Manor. There was no spotting, however, and I didn’t want to bother the clinic over what was probably nothing.
Saturday morning was better, but by afternoon I felt awful. Curiously, it was similar to post-retrieval pain. Or last-day-of-stims pain, even. I was bloated, and my undercarriage felt stabby. I started to wonder whether it was my ovaries that felt so unpleasant, and to my shame, found I just couldn’t tell. It could have been my ovaries, or it could have been my uterus, killing my embryos. Maybe I didn’t spend enough time with my hand-mirror as a youth, but I find it difficult to distinguish various undercarriage-related sensations. When I had my last kidney stone in February, I was at first convinced the pain was some kind of cramping related to my then-recent miscarriage. Kidney, ovary, uterus, cervix—it’s all the same to me.
Sunday followed what was becoming a familiar pattern: fine in the morning, late afternoon spent entertaining my own less-charming seven dwarves: Whiny, Shaky, Crampy, Bloaty, Weepy, Cranky, and Stabby.

It may seem bizarre that I didn’t call the clinic through all of this, but you should see the instruction sheet specifying that the weekend on-call number is FOR! EMERGENCIES! ONLY!!! Besides, I figured there was nothing they could do, and I have a pathological fear of over-reacting or inconveniencing someone (Er…see this post). Also, I was feeling so happy to be pregnant, so grateful and sunny and optimistic, that some strange, hitherto unknown part of me didn’t want to spoil my mood with more information.

Yesterday, however, the clinic was open and the pain was back and I managed to get in to see a nurse that afternoon, right at the time of day (2:00) that the discomfort starts to increase to unpleasant levels.
And, as I was beginning to suspect, I seem to have developed a mild case of OHSS.

It is quite unpleasant, I must say. The backache makes it very difficult to sit at my desk at work, and if I overdo it at all, I pay a heavy price. And by “overdo it” I mean “run two errands.” Last night we went to the bookstore and then to Target, and I went from moderately uncomfortable to almost unable to walk with astonishing speed. The other casualty of the OHSS has been the relative calm I had managed to maintain through Sunday: though I tell myself that any unpleasant undercarriage sensations are merely my over-stimulated ovaries, it is hard not to panic at back and pelvic pain in pregnancy after three previous miscarriages. After all, they didn’t do an ultrasound, relying only upon their years of clinical experience to make the diagnosis. Who’s to say the pain isn’t the result of tiny devious gnomes that hopped aboard the transfer catheter and are even now gnawing on my cervix and plotting the demise of Science Baby/ies?
The nurse suggested I take a few days off from work, but I have no vacation time left and just finished using FMLA to cover my myriad IVF appointments, retrieval, and transfer. I am terrified of asking my boss for more time.
“Well,” the nurse suggested, “Maybe you could lay on your left side during your lunch hour!”

Again, I must ask: what do these people think we do for a living? For one thing, lunch “HOUR?” Ha. Ha, ha, ha. And for another, what am I supposed to do, recline on the floor of my cubicle?
“Hi Alexa, I was just bringing you…Oh. Are you ok?”
“Oh yes, I’m fine! I’m just taking some Me Time. Or…I lost an earring.”

The upside to yesterday’s impromptu clinic visit was that I managed to score another beta. I asked the lab tech to draw an extra vial of blood, assuring her that I would convince the nurse to run the test. Which I did, and I’m not too proud to admit that I begged, all Oliver Twist-like. But the results are in, and my beta at 13dp3dt was 426. The doubling time was just over 44 hours, which is perfectly fine, but didn’t stop me from googling “increasing doubling time hcg miscarriage” for an hour and a half last night. I certainly know how to have a good time!

Just as there is no crying in baseball, there is no logic in early pregnancy—when you are in pain, you worry. When you are not in pain, you worry, because what if the pain went away because the embryos are dead?
I keep reminding myself that people stay pregnant all the time, and I am doing everything I can, and there is no reason yet to think this won’t work out. I am taking progesterone injections, progesterone suppositories, baby aspirin, 2000 mg of Metformin, twice daily Folgard, and Prednisone. I am eating plenty of pasta, which early studies show is very popular with embryos.
I am still pregnant.

384 hours and 50 minutes until the ultrasound.

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