Buh-bye blood

5 vials of blood. Gone. Off to the lab for testing for all manner of dread diseases. And some not so dread diseases.

But it got me thinking - how much blood volume have I lost to testing since starting to TTC? I mean, sure, it's probably not as much as if the ridiculous Americans would let me donate blood. Which I would gladly do, and used to do in England. Except here they think I have mad cow disease because of my residence in the aforementioned England during the period between 1980 and 1996. Even though I've been a vegetarian since 1988. And you'd think if I was going to get sick I would have started showing some symptoms by now. But I digress. I've had the HIV and other dread disease tests done 3 times now. The first time, it was more than 10 vials, now it's down to 5 as I don't have to repeat things like varicella and Tay Sachs testing. I seem to have done 13 cycle day 2 blood draws (didn't have them done on unmedicated cycles) and 14 progesterone checks. Don't know how many betas. Don't know how many mid-cycle estrogen checks (well, I could count them up, but I don't want to scare myself). Then bloodwork for the laparoscopy. Oh, and there was the immune and clotting testing - that was several vials too.

Let's just say, it's probably a whole leg full of blood. If not a leg and a half

I expect a good arm full will go to Big New Clinic, as I know they draw a shitload of blood for the coculture work. As well as all the estrogen tests. Sigh.

In other news, my trusty BBT thermometer finally died the other day. Yet another reminder of how long I have been doing this. It was actually my second thermometer, as the first one went screwy after only a month or two. But this one had lasted over 2 years, so it was my trusty friend. I decided to buy a regular digital thermometer yesterday, as I have no plans to be doing the old temperature charting for much longer, but I went to Walgreen's as it was close to where I went out for dinner. I hate Walgreen's, by the way. Always have, always will I imagine. Anyway, I paid $7.99 for a crappy useless digital thermometer - when I got home and tested it, my temp was apparently 95.3. Yeah right. And this morning it was 96.7. I never have a 96 temp in the morning. Never. So clearly Walgreen's brand of thermometers are a bunch of crap and now I think I'm going to have to go back to CVS and buy a real BBT thermometer again and stop messing about. And it's all because Big New Clinic doesn't use BCPs and wants you to monitor for your LH surge before doing the coculture and before starting lupron or estrogen. While I could rely just on the ovulation pee sticks, I'd much rather have the backup of knowing I got the right date because it was followed a day or two later by a nice temp rise.