Uterus Drano

I went to the acupuncturist last night, and she seemed suprised that I was doing IVF. Errr, haven't we had this conversation 4 times already? But anyway, she will work with me and try to get me in as good condition as possible before the procedure, so I was happy that she didn't give me the lecture again about waiting until everything is fixed before doing anything else.

But, being as it was cycle day 5, we had to have a long discussion about my latest period. I have to admit, when I first started going to acupuncture, the thought of talking about my period with someone was excrutiatingly embarrassing. But now I'm on my third acu, and have taken my pants down for people at the IVF clinic more times than I care to remember, it is just one of those things. So, can we talk periods? Would you mind, blogosphere, if I set down some rather TMI thoughts?

No? Good.

You see, the thing is, I used to have lovely periods. OK, at the time I didn't think so. I hated them, like any normal chick. But in retrospect, they were lovely. A nice red color, a good flow, no clots, stopped and started properly with no spotting. But then after a few years on birth control pills, they started getting lighter. I was pretty stoked at the time. I mean, who doesn't want lighter periods? And then they started getting more of a brown color rather than a nice fresh red. I didn't really pay any attention to this because, well, I didn't think about them at all really. By the time I started trying to conceive, and came off BCP, there was basically no red, just brown. I started getting black clots. Lately, I started getting what looked like sediment for want of a better word. Basically, it's nasty. It doesn't seem like a period at all. Its more like silt coming out of a very muddy river. With a bit of blood mixed in.

OK, that got rid of any male or non-fertility or baby inclined people who happened to randomly come across this blog. Sorry to gross you out, guys!

Anyway, according to Chinese medicine, all this is a clear pointer to Blood Stasis, which means that there's not enough blood flow to the uterus, so it stagnates and doesn't clean itself out properly. I had a very hard time convincing my first acu that I even had Blood Stasis. The second acu agreed that I had it, but apart from sticking a needle in a Blood Stasis acupuncture point above my knee every time I went to see him, we didn't really do much about it. The current acu is all about the Blood Stasis as being my #1 issue, and frankly, after the last period, I have to agree with her. Although, giving the previous acu's some credit, I did used to have other issues, which probably seemed more important to them, and which we've now mostly fixed.

But given that we now don't have enough time before the next IVF to fix me, she's going to have to work really hard on the Blood Stasis issue to make any headway. So she's giving me some strong herbs to clean me out. I said to her that she'd better make the formulation like Drano if we're to have any hope. So that's what I got when I came out of the acu room. There waiting for me on the counter was a bottle of Uterus Drano, or at least that's what we joked about it being - there's no actual label saying "Uterus Drano". Although come to think of it, if I ever go into the herb business I think that would be a good product line to have. I have no idea what's in it, and while previously with this acu I was annoyed that she didn't tell me what was in the herbal formula, now I don't really want to know. As long as it's vegetarian, which she assures me it is, I'm good to go. I'm supposed to make it into a tea twice a day, which I will gladly do because I am of course a desperate infertile.