13dpER

One week since freeze day. Sigh. I wonder if this really was the right decision? I'd have a beta result by now if I'd just transferred all the embryos, as LV Clinic does early betas. In fact, I'd be doing my second beta today. So I'd know what the score was and wouldn't have to wait until frickin' June.

But then again, if it was a BFN I'd have no additional information over previous cycles and still would have no clue whether the problem was my eggs or my uterus. So I do know that doing the CGH was the right choice. But you can't help but wonder sometimes.

Sigh. Not doing so well with the waiting. I feel so anxious to know about the embryos, which surprises me. I thought I'd be doing better than this. I am just as stuck and obssessed as with every IVF cycle, so there seems no escape from the constant worrying. Hopefully I'll be able to relax once I get the CGH results and just focus on the next cycle but this is just more of the same old torture right now.

In other news, I am down 3lbs since ER day. Which as we know is mostly water weight from the meds. But hey, not bad! The food and exercise stuff is going well and I am determined to be in good shape for June, whatever I end up doing.

Waiting, waiting

OK, you convinced me, I'll stay on the BCP continuously. The only reason that I'm worried is that for one cycle I was on them for 6 weeks, and had a much lower response (5 eggs) than the prior cycle (14 eggs) even though the protocol was the same. As the only difference had been double the length of time on BCP, I always blamed the BCP. Hence my worries about oversuppression. Although I was taking DHEA thinking it would give me like 20 eggs, so maybe that was just slowly damaging everything after the first initial success of getting 14 eggs after a cancellation. But going on and going off BCP probably will mess my system up worse than staying on for 4 weeks. And besides, who wants to be bleeding that often? But I will just hope for the best.

Oh, if only I could just blithely assume that I will be doing a transfer and not worry about my ovaries being oversuppressed! How nice that would be. But that would require removing about 3 years of infertility hell, and we all know that that can never be erased! God, I find myself becoming more and more anxious about the embryos. I couldn't sleep last night worrying and hoping I'd have 2 normals. Yes, lets face it, I've already ratcheted up my hopes beyond 1 normal to wanting 2. I can't stop myself! I keep thinking I'd have a much better chance of this working if I had 2 normals to transfer. But then also, what if I transfer 2 normals and it STILL doesn't work? I think the depression might just tip me over the edge at that point, although I guess CGH will have done its job in identifying an implantation issue.

I keep hoping maybe the CGH lab isn't moving and my testing will proceed without any moving delays. But even though it is a "separate" lab from LV Clinic, it is owned by them, and is in the same building. So I assume that they will be moving right along with LV Clinic, and I won't find out about the embryos for a while yet.

Sigh. Not so good at waiting.

Taxing

Taxes are done. Phew! I filed this morning. I am getting a giant refund, even bigger than last year's giant refund, despite the fact that I claimed less in medical expenses. Not quite sure how I got a bigger refund, but I'm not going to say no to it. The medical expenses annoyed me, of course, partly because of the hours of painstaking work tracking everything down. But that's my own fault due to a lack of organization. Actually, the fact that they were lower ALSO annoyed me, because it reminded me that after a year with NY Clinic I only managed to do 2 IVFs. I mean, OK, one of those wasn't their fault, due to the giganto cyst and Hep C nonsense, but still. In the previous year I managed to do 4 IVFs with Local Clinic. So, it's irritating and makes me wonder if I missed the golden egg during one of those periods that NY Clinic closed its lab down. I am having some anger issues with NY Clinic! And I'm annoyed with myself that it took me so freakin' long to get the taxes filed, when I was actually owed money. AND you can only claim $50 a night for hotel expenses when you travel for medical treatment, which is not exactly much when compared to NY prices. But, whatever, it's water under the bridge.

I emailed the nurse at LV Clinic yesterday, to ask about possibly transferring in May if I have a normal embryo or two. And unfortunately, I already missed the window for getting into the May cycle. :( So it looks like the next time I will be going to Vegas will be in mid-June. And unfortunately also, in order to make the cutoff for the June cycle, I have to start BCP right away, so I won't get to have an unmedicated rest cycle. Pooey. But, I can delay until cycle day 5 at the latest, so that's when I'm going to start them. If I take them continuously I will have to be on them for about 4 weeks, so I hope that doesn't oversuppress me if I end up doing a fresh cycle. Eeek! They said that I have to start BCP by May 6th at the latest for the June cycle, and if I have a natural cycle there's no way it'll be over with by then. There's a part of me that's toying with the idea of taking them for two weeks, to May 1st, then stopping for 5 days to have a withdrawal bleed, and then starting up again on May 6th and taking them for 10 days before having another withdrawal bleed. Does that sound like a good plan, or should I just take them continuously and not have to bleed so much? Decisions, decisions...

Idiot!

So where was I? Oh yeah, the lack of progesterone doesn't affect me, rock star uterus, normal luteal phase, blah blah blah. D'oh! I am an idiot. Of course doing an IVF cycle without progesterone is going to affect things! And I should know this, because I've done one before. On my first IVF, which was cancelled at trigger and converted to IUI, I didn't take any progesterone. I guess the RE had given it up as a foregone conclusion by that point, although I always thought he should have encouraged me to use the progesterone just in case the IUI might work. Of course, it was then my 9th IUI so I suppose he knew with a fairly high degree of certainty that nothing was going to happen. But still. No progesterone. I didn't have the mechanical damage caused by egg retrieval, but had the hormonal damage caused by lupron so I did not have a normal luteal phase. I had spotting on 9DPO and my period arrived on 10DPO.

So why would I think this time would be any different?

Because I'm an idiot, that's why. This time was no different. Today is 10 days post egg retrieval and the old hag is here. Right on time.

Other reasons for remembering I'm an idiot:

LV Clinic is moving to a new location at the end of this week. Including moving my embryos. So if they have any sense, they won't be doing any CGH testing for the next 2 weeks, and I should not therefore expect my results to come out within 2 weeks.

It's April 14th and I still haven't filed my taxes. I spent frickin' hours yesterday on my medical expenses, and am still nowhere near complete. Why do I think stuffing receipts in random locations throughout the house is a good filing system?

Message from cloud 8

Thanks guys! I still can't quite believe it myself. Five blasts in the freezer! It's more than I ever thought possible. Even if I'd have gotten 10 embryos I think I still never would have imagined 5 of them making it to the freezer, so to have 5 out of 5 is amazing. I am in a happy fog of...happiness.

But don't go getting all cocky on my behalf, now, and start thinking I might have 3 or 4 good ones. It's still quite likely that none are chromosomally normal, especially with my history. That's why we're doing the CGH after all, to get answers once and for all on my embryos. However, the good news has definitely increased my hope that I'll have one good one. And enabled me to have a little spark of hope for two. Not that I think two is necessarily achievable, but you know, one likes to have wild dreams every now and then. Can you imagine? Two normals? I might actually have a chance of....shhhhh....getting pregnant!

It seems like the most recent CGH results have come out in 2 and a half weeks (thanks Staci and Charlene!) so hopefully it won't be as long of a wait as they are saying. But, whatever, I can wait it out. I wonder if I'll be able to transfer in May if that's the case? I'll have to email the nurse about that. I could go to Vegas in May for an FET, because it'd only take 2 or 3 days presumably, and I can lie to my boss and say I'm going to Orlando to see friends over from England or something, but I don't think I can make it in May for a fresh cycle, because I don't think I can take so much time off work that quickly. So I guess I could start BCP as soon as the crimson tide shows up in preparation for either cycle, hoping for a May transfer, but I'd have to stop them again if there were no normals. I wonder if that would mess things up.

Talking of the old hag, I am not on any progesterone so I thought she'd be here by now. I guess I bought in to the theory that IVF damages the corpus lutea so much that they can't produce progesterone. I got one shot of progesterone right after ER and that was that, so I guess I must be producing enough progesterone on my own to sustain my usual luteal phase. The nurses made a big fuss of wanting to give me the progesterone while I was still coming around from the anesthesia so I wouldn't feel it, and then they couldn't for some reason - I guess they got busy and I woke up pretty fast. So then they were all apologetic about having to give it to me when I was...gasp...awake! I was like, please, I've given it to myself six bazillion times, I really don't mind.

And, I gotta say, I am quite liking this whole "no transfer" thing. I feel like I've already recovered from the IVF drugs and like I'm totally normal again. In fact, I was pretty much normal by Sunday or Monday. It's so nice not to have all the continuing side effects and stress post-transfer, trying to keep up being perfect and thinking positively so the embryos will implant, and all that jazz. It's nice to just focus on me, and trying to get healthy again, but being able to allow myself a cup of coffee or glass of wine at the same time.

Anyway, have a great weekend, everyone! Guess what I'm doing this weekend? That I faithfully promised to do a month ago? Yup, my taxes. Ya boo sucks. Somehow adding up those medical expenses is not something I'm looking forward to. I wonder why?!

OMG! OMG! OMG!

They froze all FOUR other embryos!

Yippee! It's the best news I could have hoped for. I asked if that meant all four expanded, and the RE said that two weren't quite completely expanded, but they were almost there so they decided to go ahead and freeze. He said three of them look good.

So that means all 5 made it, because one was frozen yesterday, and they will run the CGH assay on all 5 embryos. He said the results will probably take about 4 weeks, although I notice some people have been getting their results quicker.

OMG!

The call!

The headline news is that 1 embryo is ready to freeze today, and 2 may be ready tomorrow.

So far, so good. Then I asked how they compared to day 3. Apparently on day 3 I had:

Two 9-celled embryos.
Two 6-celled embryos.
One 5-celled embryo.

He said that one of the 9 cells is the one that is good to go today. The other 9-cell is a non-expanded grade 2 blastocyst and is one of the ones that may be good to go tomorrow. I guess once it expands. (?) Then he said that the one that was 5 cells is the other one that may be good tomorrow, and is a compacting embryo so isn't quite to blast yet. So I said "oh, so the 5-celled one is doing better than the 6-celled ones?" But he said that the 6-celled embryos are both blastocysts but are non-expanded grade 3's.

I guess a grade 3 isn't good enough for freezing. (?) But if we're doing CGH why not freeze everything that isn't clearly dead and see what comes out with the test results? Of course, I didn't ask him that point, as I was a bit confused by then. He said they'll keep them all in culture medium for another day and watch them in case they improve. It would be nice if they did improve. I think I'll have to go off and see if I can find out their freezing criteria.

My guess is that I'm going to end up with two - both of the 9-celled guys from day 3, although I hope my little compacting embryo puts on a growth spurt and catches up. But at least the one that is good to go today sounds healthy. I only hope that it really IS healthy.

At least they're all still alive today, so that's one good thing!

ETA: It seems like they only freeze expanded blastocysts. I found this on their website, so they seem pretty rigid on this and presumably won't freeze an embryo that isn't expanded. I guess that's more important than the grade:

Unexpanded blastocyst: A fully "competent" blastocyst, given enough time (an extra day) to develop in culture, will always expand due to the formation of a fluid filled center (blastocele). Failure to expand indicates "incompetence".

Care for some botox with your floss?

Forgot to say earlier -

I went to my dentist this morning for a cleaning, and they are now offering botox. Yup, my dentist went off and did some classes and got himself certified. But seriously, if I was going to get botox done, I would not be having it done at the dentist's office. I mean, call me rigid in my views here, but I'd rather have a dermatologist or plastic surgeon in charge who actually knows the skin and wrinkles and all that. Botox parties or botox wielding dentists are not for me. I mean, OK, I begrudgingly allow my dentist to stick a needle in my gums when I need to get a filling, so he's no stranger to injections. But on the outside of my face? Where people can see? Uh, no thanks.

I told the hygienist this, and she said that they've had one patient do it. So, yeah, I guess other people think like me and it's not going to be a big revenue earner for them. The dentist's assistant also had it done, and I'll admit, her forehead did look lovely and smooth. But I'm sure he did it to practice on her.

Although, now I think about it, if I had to be in the chair for a long time, say for a complicated filling or a root canal, maybe I could tell him to just nab a few forehead creases while he was at it. You know, while waiting for the composite to harden or whatever.

Nervous

I'm nervous. Waiting for the call from the RE, which probably won't come until later this afternoon. It's day 5 today, so I'll find out today how many made it to blast or look like they might make it to blast tomorrow.

This seems like a big test for me. I've never done a fresh 5 day transfer, so I don't know how well my embryos do going from day 3 to day 5. I know I haven't had any die off before day 3, but day 5? I have no idea. I've only had 5 that I didn't transfer fresh, and I know that at Local Clinic two out of four made it to blasts, one of which was good enough to freeze and transfer later. I've no information about the one embryo that I didn't transfer at NY Clinic because getting information out of them on anything is like getting blood out of a stone.

So anyway, I'd think I have a good chance because those that I didn't transfer were not great on day 3 anyway. But I just don't know. Is it selfish to want 3 or 4 blasts out of 5 embryos? Perhaps, but there's definitely a part of me that wants more than 2 to have survived. Somehow it seems that with only 2, I need a 50% "good" rate in order for one to be normal, which seems too high. I know it's not really 1 out of 2, it's 1 out of 5 or 6, which is a 16-20% normal rate. Gack. Even that seems like it's expecting too much.

Yup, nervous.

The new goals

Given that I now have 8-10 weeks before either the next fresh IVF or the transfer, I've decided to focus on a couple of different areas between now and then.

The first one is that hoary old chestnut, weight. I'm at my heaviest ever, and now have 50 lbs to lose before I'm at my ideal weight. Which is about a third of the way through the healthy weight for my height, so it's not like I'm trying for super-skinny. I'd decided not to diet this year, because I end up feeling deprived and then find myself bingeing, thus putting on more weight than I took off, and yo-yoing. Which we all know is not healthy. But not dieting didn't work either as I used it as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted. So now I am going to focus on tracking calories, but instead of trying to drop to 1200 calories a day, I'm going to aim at 1500-1700 calories a day. I found a handy web calculator which tells you how many calories you need to take in to maintain your weight at your ideal, which for me is about 1700. So even if I just tried to stick to that amount, I'd eventually drop down and wouldn't face the prospect of hard dieting and then trying to switch to a "new normal" way of eating. I'd eat the same way all along. [And if I did manage to get pregnant, I'd add 300 calories a day to that]. I'm going to give myself two years to get to my ideal weight (or 3 if I get pregnant), rather than the usual "I want to lose at least 2 lbs a week" mentality. That's the plan, anyway.

The second one is to have lovely clear skin. And not in the sense of acne and blocked pores, but rather in the sense of getting rid of hyperpigmentation. I have some hormonally induced dark splotches (which have NOT been helped by repeated IF treatment) and this year got my first "brown spot". And I've always had freckles. So I'm going to try out different brightening treatments to try to get that fixed. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them. I've been trying to be all organic, but I figure that this is worth a chemical or two. I bought some new products while in Vegas, and think I'm already seeing an improvement, but that could be partly wishful thinking. I've been told several times today that I look rested from my vacation (even though I think I look crap because I didn't sleep well last night), so maybe the skin thing is helping.

The third one is exercise. I have been happiest when I've been able to run regularly but these days have knee and back issues (not helped by the weight of course). So instead of launching into too much jogging, and hurting myself and pulling out after two weeks, I am really going to follow the slow-and-steady training plans, and try to run three times a week.

The fourth one is to try to not get fired! I have been slacking at my job because I'm desperate to change careers, and am just not motivated. But I'm going to try to accept that until I get my g/reen car.d and I am able to move, this is my lot in life. So I need to suck it up and focus more on my job, knowing that it is going to be temporary. She says while typing a blog post during working hours...

Home again

Quickie post - I've arrived home safe and sound.

Five embryos are still going strong and were biopsied today. As the RE and I were trading voicemails I never actually got to speak to him, so I don't know how they look or how many cells they have. I just know that they have 5 or more cells, as that is the criteria for biopsy. But then again, I don't need to know how many cells the embryos have or how they look. I am quite zen about it all, really. I mean, don't we all know stories of crappy looking slow embryos leading to healthy babies? The important thing is the biopsy result, not how pretty or fast growing they are.

Pretty happy that I have 5 still going strong today. :)

All about CGH

I wanted to answer to a couple of your questions on CGH testing, to the best of my ability (which is not great).

I'm not going to pretend that I understand CGH fully. As far as I can tell, it is exactly like PGD, except that they test all the chromosomes instead of just 8 or 9 that PGD routinely tests. However, because of this, the results take longer to come back than PGD. Initially, they were doing the CGH testing on the polar body of the (fertilized?) egg, which is a cell nucleus that is discarded in normal development. This enabled them to get the results in time for a blast transfer, and didn't involve too much damage to the egg/embryo/whatever. However, they weren't picking up all of the problems with the embryos, because they were only looking at the chromosomal make up of the egg, not the embryo, because the polar body does not contain the combined embryo DNA. So they switched, and now, like PGD, they remove a cell from the embryo on day 3, and test that. But because the results take too long to come back to enable a fresh blastocyst transfer to be done, they freeze the embryos and transfer any normal ones at a later day.

It seems about 25-30% of women don't have a normal embryo to transfer. Which is why I signed up for two cycles, so I can have two chances at producing a normal one. If you transfer a normal one, there is a 60% pregnancy rate, and a lower miscarriage rate than with conventional IVF, which is a much higher success rate than with just throwing embryos back in and hoping for the best.

And yes, taking a cell from the embryo can damage it. But most embryos can bounce back and just divide again to replace the missing cells. I've yet to find any information about whether any normal embryos fail to bounce back - I guess there's always the chance. Likewise, the thinking is that normal embryos will survive the freeze/thaw process easily and those that don't survive weren't normal in the first place. However, there is no guarantee on that score. There's always a chance that a normal one could be irrevocably damaged and killed off when it could potentially have become a normal baby.

It is presumably a great option for embryo selection where you have a large number of embryos, as it enables you to select the normal ones for transfer. So it's definitely a good option for PCOS-ers.

So, the question is, why do CGH with only 5 embryos? Why not just transfer all of them?

Well, in the main, because it is free. I am in a CGH study, so all it is really costing me is the flight for the extra trip to Vegas. Or not, if none of the embryos are normal. I will be getting information on the chromosomal make up of my embryos for nothing. I doubt that I would do it if it wasn't for the study, because I am cheap.

Secondly though, where you are a sad sack of a repeat IVF failure, it can be useful to figure out what the eff is going on. I have transferred 17 embryos. Even if I was 43, statistically I should have had a normal one in there somewhere. So why hasn't it worked? Either they are all hopelessly abnormal and I really should hang up my ovaries for good, or I have been transferring normal embryos and there is some sort of implantation problem going on that we haven't discovered yet. This testing will help us get to the bottom of that. I mean, sure, 5 or 6 embryos is not a great sample size. There's a good chance that all these embryos will be abnormal but have it not necessarily mean that all the embryos I've ever produced were abnormal. Hence the two-cycle plan. If we test over 10 embryos, that will give a better idea that my ovaries really are shit. Or, if we find I have one or two normal ones out of 5, and the cycle still doesn't work that gives us a large hint that we really better investigate implantation issues as thoroughly as possible before doing the final cycle.

I hope it will help give me some closure if all are abnormal. It is very hard for me to give up on this whole motherhood dream. And actual proof of the crappiness of my eggs would definitely help me not to keep plowing on hoping for the best.

Reporting

The results are in - of the 10 eggs, 7 were mature and 5 fertilized normally. The RE said that there's a 6th that may have fertilized but they're not quite sure yet so they're still watching it.

So actually I have the same amount of mature eggs and embryos as last cycle, although that was out of 14 eggs instead of 10. And possibly one more embryo, but I'm not going to hold my breath for it.

I won't pretend that I'm not a little disappointed with the number of mature eggs - I'd hoped for one or two more, given that 9 seemed to be of mature size, but of course it is what it is.

And here comes the scary part - I'm not transferring any. They will biopsy any that are over 5 cells on day 3 (Monday), and freeze any that make it to a blastocyst on day 5 or 6. Then they will do CGH testing on those that made it to freeze. And I will only transfer any that are chromosomally normal. There's a big chance of having none to transfer, but the RE is hopeful that I'll have one or two normal ones. Ha. I bet he says that to all the girls! And the results take a few weeks so we're looking at a transfer in June. Or another fresh cycle in June.

So now I go home, and leave my embryos in Vegas. I'm not actually going until Monday, as I wanted to leave enough time for a later ER when I booked my flights, so I will be heading out shortly for a Starbucks. Full caff. Coffeeeeee. And a cocktail may be drunk as well today, you never know. Wait, what am I saying? There will definitely be a cocktail!

The deed is done

OK, in your best Sesame Street singsong voices, count after me...

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...10!

We got 10 eggs. Retrieval was a breeze, and I'm now back in my room having a bowl of Weetabix. Snoozing will follow shortly, I'm sure. I'm a bit crampy, but nothing unexpected.

And yes, in keeping with the pink theme, they had me wear pink socks for the retrieval. My only surprise was that the gown was not also pink, but maybe they'd have had trouble finding me if it was, as I'd have blended chameleon-like into the background.

It's a lovely day in Vegas

Does not compute.

In my long and far from illustrious IVF career, monitoring ultrasounds have been a cause of stress. What with the poor response, uneven follicle development and runaway follicle growth I often get, I am typically left coming out of an ultrasound telling myself to suck it up, that life's a bitch, and I just have to deal with what I have. Which is often fairly shit, let's be honest.

But today it appears that I have 9 viable follicles out of a total of 14. Nine! I gained a couple. They range in size from 16mm to 21mm, so they're nice and evenly sized still. None of them decided to sprint ahead, and the bigger ones kept themselves from going crazy so the smaller ones could catch up. And everybody's a happy chappy.

Like I said, does not compute. These are my ovaries???

Trigger will be tonight. They will call me early this afternoon with the time, and then ER will be on Friday. I am, I have to say, quite nicely mellow about the whole thing.

The Pink Palace

You know, the more I looked around LV Clinic today, the more pink I noticed. The waiting room chairs are pink. The carpet is pink. The desks are pink. All the chairs are pink. Even the blood draw chair is pink. And all the walls. And the lino. And the counters. The frickin' exam table. Everything.

It's like being in a giant vagina.

Yegads, it would drive me nuts if I worked there. I longed to ask the doc or nurses if the next place is going to be quite so pink, but I restrained myself. Seems a bit rude, after all, to march in and start complaining about the decor when I should be caring about their technical expertise. But really.

But hey! I went to a show last night! I got out of my hotel room and forced myself to get out in public on my own. And admit to the hordes of happy holidaymakers that, yes, I was alone, by virtue of my solo-ness. But actually I spotted quite a few people on their own - I think it helps when you see a sold out show, as lots of parties are split up, so nobody can tell who is the loser freak and who is just temporarily adrift. I saw Cir.que du So.leil LOVE, which is set to The Beatles music. Loved it! I loved Love, in other words.

Oh wait, you wanted to read about the follicles? Well, this morning they are a few 18's, a few 17's and some of the also-rans have caught up a bit. So we are pushing it another day to see if we can get an also-ran or two in addition to the initial 7, and it looks like trigger will be tomorrow, for ER on Friday. But I will be back in the morning for another look-see just in case. I thought I saw a couple on my left ovary that he didn't count - it was hard to see as it was trying to escape out of the side of my body and of course the view wasn't great as there's lots of fat and bowel in the way. But, whatever. Que sera sera.

Still seven

Dammit, seven WILL be my lucky number even if I have to force it to be.

I have seven viable follicles. Interestingly (or not), they are not the same as the seven antral follicles, which were 3 on the right and 4 on the left. Now I have 4 on the right and 3 on the left. And a couple of also-rans on each ovary.

The good news is that they are very evenly sized, all 16 or 17 mm, with the also-rans being 10's and 11's. So I'm pleased about the even-sizedness, which is one of my major issues. Not so pleased that a gazillion follicles didn't miraculously pop up between the baseline ultrasound and today, but hey, I didn't really expect that anyway. I can work with seven.

I am to go back tomorrow for another u/s and an E2 check. He is thinking ER will be Thursday or Friday.

The clinic was interestingly shabby. Well, this is their last cycle in their current location, and they are moving to swank digs shortly so I shan't judge on the shabbiness. But the exam room was almost entirely pink. Pink walls, pink doors, pink cabinetry, pink floor, pink counter tops. Even pink paper to cover yourself with. It was a powdery profusion of pink. I'm not sure what it is about some gyn-related places that they think we need to have pink everything. Just because we're women doesn't mean we don't appreciate a bit of clinical gray or blue every now and then, you know!

Vegas, baby!

I am here in Vegas. Woo-hoo!

And hey, I'm impressed with YOUR ditties. At least they rhymed, which is way more than mine did.

I have perked up remarkably. I am currently running on fumes and too wired to sleep but I expect I will crash momentarily. Especially as it's after 5am Eastern Time.

I have no idea what I have with me. Literally. You know how you set aside a pile of stuff to take with you on a trip, and then when you actually pack you sort through it, jettison stuff you don't need, make sure you have enough knickers to last you, all that stuff. Yeah, none of that happened. I went into work to do the absolutely dire stuff that could not be put off for a week, then came home and ran about the house like a mad woman to make it presentable enough for my friend who is feeding kitteh not to think I am an absolute slob. Then at 3.45 I called a taxi. And THEN started packing. And my flight was leaving at 5.37 and since 9/11 I try to be a 2 hours ahead type of girl, so obviously that went out the window today. So basically the entire contents of the "maybe I'll take this" pile got chucked into the suitcase. I don't know if I have enough underwear, socks or t-shirts. I definitely don't have enough long sleeved things. I don't know if I have warm enough clothing. I didn't bring razors, and could only scrounge up a mini travel facial cleanser as I couldn't find the travel bottle I was going to decant my usual cleanser into. I'm sure there's other shit missing. Everything is wrinkled to shit. And I was going to pack oh-so-cleverly so as to leave room for the inevitable shopping that will ensue while I'm in a strange city with a week to while away on vacation on my own.

There was quite a lot of deep breathing on my first flight to Atlanta. Every time we hit a minor bit of turbulence or a pigeon in a 5-mile radius flapped its wings, my stomach lurched and the nausea returned. I was dismayed to find out that Delta does not provide barf bags in the seat backs, but luckily did not need to use one after all. Got to Atlanta and of course they changed the gate twice and every time I had to walk through the food court smelling all the greasy food, my stomach lurched all over again. I did manage to have a cup of frozen yogurt, which is almost the most substantial meal I've had in 2 days (I've been on the AT diet - or in other words the BRAT diet when you don't have bananas in the house, and are too miserable to cook rice so you live on applesauce and the occasional slice of toast). I went to the bathroom to shoot up before boarding, and whereas on previous airport sojourns I have carefully gone into a stall and balanced everything on my knee, this time I just shot up right at the sink area. Fuck everyone else if they want to look. I was too tired to balance shit. And I just don't care any more. But hey! Did you know that in the Atlanta airport they have a handy-dandy little sharps container mounted to the wall right by the sink! For passenger use! Suh-weet! So I felt less like a junkie than I think I would have done otherwise, because I was able to stand there and just drop the needles in as I went and kind of felt quasi-official.

And then went to wait at my gate, and after a huge bunch of bratty middle schoolers had to leave because their gate was changed, I slunk into a seat recently vacated by one of them and settled down to read my book. And was sitting quite quietly for a few minutes when suddenly the seat ejected me. Forcefully. To the right. I don't know if I shifted my weight or went to cross my legs but the next thing I knew, there was a loud crack, I'd fallen sideways, hurling my book several feet away while the crowd all gasped simultaneously and various people sent up cries of "did you see that?". Yup, I broke the chair. Or should I say, the chair broke under me. I restrained the (very strong) urge to mutter about having gained weight recently while my face started to grow beet red but several people all rushed to my aid muttering loudly about those kids that were playing on the seats and must have broken it. I'd like to say that I joined in with some witty banter but I was rather too stunned to speak. So this woman marched up and said "we must prevent someone else from sitting on this seat" and then yanked it off it's one remaining strut or weld point or whatever. While I was still standing there, mouth agape. Eventually I said "who knew?' - yah, witty, right? And thanked everyone and gingerly sat down on a different seat. Which thankfully did not break. And thankfully logic did return to my brain reminding me that airport seats are designed to take repeated batterings from people much heavier than I so I couldn't have just snapped it with the turn of a hefty thigh.

Anyhoo. After creaming the rest of the plane repeatedly on the trivia challenge game (they were all woefully inadequate in their geography and cricket knowledge - luckily for me it looked like the trivia game was set up by a bunch of Brits), I started to feel better somewhere over Texas. Or maybe I felt better in Atlanta and just didn't notice because of the shock of the ejector seat. But here I am. The car rental guy was an ass who I hated, the room could be better and I really should be asleep but I at least feel human.

Blech

Just a little ditty
To say I'm still sicky
Trying to clean
And pack
And not throw up
Is HARD, people
I think it was a bug
That did me in
Not my dinner
Heading to the airport
In an hour (maybe 2)
Not packed yet

Sick

Well, here's a new IVF experience for me. I am sick. I have been up all night being a veritable fountain of puke and diarrhea. I wonder how this will help or hinder my eggs!

I think my dinner did not agree with me. Well, that's putting it mildly. It's something I've eaten plenty of times before - a frozen fake chicken thing [Quorn] with goat cheese and cranberries in the middle. It's rather tasty. I've never had an issue with it previously so either it was stored incorrectly somewhere along the distribution chain and melted and was refrozen, or I've just eaten too many of them and my body has now decided that I was a foolish bint for doing so. But I started feeling weird right after eating it and then the puking started at bedtime.

It kind of reminds me of the time I discovered that I can no longer tolerate peanuts. All thanks to prometrium, which I used in most of my IUI cycles, and I think because of the repeated use my body started to rebel. I'd feel crap every 2ww with a ton of nausea but I just thought it was a progesterone side effect. And then we had a hurricane, and I, being a good girl, had stocked my cabinets with granola bars and other hurricane standbys. So in the days when I had no power I would have 4-6 granola bars a day. All peanut containing. And then the puking and the diarrhea started. I assumed that, because we'd lost the water supply for a day as well as the power, I'd somehow picked up a bug from that. I went to the doctor who diagnosed generic gastroenteritis, and told me to build myself back up by having peanut butter on toast. Yes, literally. Who ever heard of a doctor prescribing peanut butter on toast? So I went home, had some, and more fountains of vomit and diarrhea ensued. Finally it started clicking, but I have to admit, it took having peanuts a few more times and several more incidents before I was able to admit to myself that my days of eating peanuts were over. Anyway, now all the RE's have me marked down as the girl with the peanut allergy and I have to have a conversation with every single nurse and doctor (or so it seems) about whether I'm about to go into anaphylactic shock.

Anyhoo. I've never quite puked as violently or as projectile-ly as tonight, apart from actual food poisoning incidents. And I don't think this is food poisoning because I've had that a couple of times and had really awful stomach pains along with it. This just seems to be my body emptying everything out. And I mean everything. I keep trying to sip water because I'm getting thirsty and I want my eggs to stay hydrated, but nope, that comes back up too. And every time I have diarrhea, that makes me puke. Or dry heave, depending on if I've had some water recently.

Ahh, fun times, fun times. And the kicker is that I have been trying to clear my desk at work ready for a week away in Vegas, and I don't think there's any way to miss work today. At least I've perked up enough to think about sitting up and whiling away the time on the computer so I do seem to be improving somewhat.

But, really. Can't a girl catch a break around here sometimes?

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ETA 7.45pm: still sick. I never made it into work, and I still feel like crap. So I don't think it was just me being intolerant of the food because when that happens I usually feel fine when it's been cleared out of my system. And I found that other people have had exactly the same thing happen, so it may be a bug. Fun, fun, fun. Now I have a shitload of stuff to do tomorrow before catching my flight. I hope I'm up to it! Ugh. HATE being sick!