Probably Wednesday

It is looking more and more likely that I will trigger tomorrow, and egg retrieval will be Wednesday. Today's follicle report was that the largest is 21mm, there are 5 at 18 or 19mm, 2 at about 16mm or so, and three smaller. The u/s technician measured the smaller guys at smaller than yesterday, so either she was measuring wrong, yesterday's tech measured wrong, or they shrank. Knowing my ovaries, they probably shrank.

Anyway, so that looks like maybe 8 mature eggs, not bad huh? Except there's a but. There's always a freakin' but in my life. My estrogen level is still pretty low to my thinking. 936 today. If I had 6 mature follicles, which I would appear to have, I'd expect it to be at least 1200. And with a couple of also-rans, I'd expect at least 1400. So I'm now worrying that some of the follicles will be empty, just taunting me, making me think that there was a chance of 11 eggs. So, we'll see what we see when they take the little buggers out. On Wednesday. Probably.

Back for another check tomorrow. We'll see how the blood draw goes. I asked if they could take it out of my leg today, and the nurse just looked at me bemused and repeated "your leg??" with a sneer of disdain (or was it disgust?) across her face. She said they only take blood out of the leg as an absolute last resort, if they couldn't get it out of the backs of the hands. I said I thought it would hurt less than the back of my hand, and couldn't we try it in preference to leaving me with a hand-covering bruise and a useless appendage? The short answer was no, but she was game to have a go on my right arm. So she tourniqued my arm so tight I thought my eyes might start to bulge out. She slapped and prodded. She got a butterfly needle and inserted it to the hilt in my forearm, saying that the vein was really deep. I was not thinking deep thoughts at that particular juncture, but more along the lines of "fuck, I'm a wimp, this hurts". But she managed to get some blood. The other patients in the waiting room seemed to be doing double-takes at the weird placement of my post-blood draw bandaid. But we did it, we avoided the back of my hand for another day. Which is something to be celebrated, at least.