Blech.  

So much for starting the new jogging routine this morning, which, admittedly, probably wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.  Probably for the best, actually.  

My throat’s still sore from the damned breathing tube.  I didn’t even know they used a breathing tube for this one, but when I woke up with the nastiest taste that’s ever been in my mouth and begged the nurse for something – anything – to take it away, she said that’s what it was from.  Glad I know that, because otherwise I’d be scared I’m coming down with Swine Flu.  (Speaking of, I should really go read the news to see if the Queens kids tested positive or not.  Good pandemic times in the old U.S. of A!)

I know this will come as a huge surprise to you all, but – I really want to move on to the next step.  I want to leave this crappy trip-and-fall-on-my-face behind and get past it.  I want to try something that works.

Um, yeah.  I guess that’s all I really have to say this morning.  Ready to try something that works.

Though I nearly lost it on the poor nurse who, after determining that my last period began in February, insisted that I pee in a cup.  Seriously.  ”Um, we already know I’m pregnant.  Sort of.  Have you read my chart?  I’m here for a D&C.  It’s not like the anesthaesia is going to hurt my baby.  Baby’s dead.”

“Yes, dear, but we still have to do it.”

You’ve got to be shitting me.

She wasn’t.  I peed in a cup.  And they did, indeed, determine that I was, in fact, pregnant.  And they took the necessary precautions.  Can I scream now?  How about now?

But I got through it just fine with the help of my good doctor.  He came up to me while I was still sleepy (read: “still completely looped”) and told me that he was more sorry than he could express that we had had to go through this again.  Said he’d call me with the results of the testing so I could move on as soon as possible.  He is a kind man.  It makes me feel guilty & sad that we almost certainly won’t be going through his clinic for the next step in our process.  I wish I could take him with me, or use him as my regular doctor.  As much as I wish things had been different, I do believe he gave me the best possible care at all times.  Not his fault that my eggs are faulty.

Which reminds me – as soon as the results of this testing are in, I’ll need to get copies made of my file – a file roughly the size of a Stephen King manuscript.  Seriously, nurses need to use two hands to hold my “chart”.  That sucker’s massive…

The boy is seeming more interested in a donor egg cycle than I’d feared he might be.  He seems to be right on track with what I’m thinking, and his odds’ calculating mind just loves the “live baby in 6 tries or your money back” concept.  I love it too, since it suits our purposes just fine – we will not have more than one child, so I have no desire for a bank of frozen embryos in waiting.  (In fact, that’s the only qualm I have about moving straight to a DE cycle.  I’ve still got those frozen embryos and it’s going to be weird to not have them transfered.  If I thought anyone would want to “adopt” ‘em, I’d be thrilled, but I don’t think they’re even going to want to do research with ‘em.  They’ll probably just get dumped if I release them, and I think I might have a hard time doing that.  Which is weird.  I don’t think they’re babies.  I don’t mind the idea of them being USED for something important like research.  I just don’t want them to be completely devalued even though I pretty much completey devalue them.

Re-reading that, I realize that it makes no sense at all.  Going to claim that I’m still loopy from the anesthesia and try to get a handle on what I mean by that statement before I say any more about it.  

I have decided to be really excited about using young-thang eggs for the so-much-reduced risk of trisomies.  How pleasant to not have to absolutely dread the mid-pregnancy testing rounds that I’d've been submitted to as a WAMA (Way Advanced Maternal Age) patient.  And, you know, given my ova-luck, if I’d produced a proto-sprog that survived past, you know, nine weeks, with my luck I would be one of that unlucky 2% of women my age carrying a baby with Downs.  Or in the unluckier 1% who miscarry a perfectly healthy baby after a testing amnio.

So three cheers for reduced risks there, with a just-past-the-age-of-consent donor, I can probably get away with just the non-invasive blood work!  And the boy thinks we should be up-front about donor status from the beginning so we don’t have to try to match my very rare blood type.  Which is good.  I think we’re going to move forward on this, and I think it’s going to work.  I really do.

And I know I made the right call with this D&C.  This took such a load of misery off of me, that I can barely express it.  Hope I never have to go through this again, but if I do, an early D&C was the way to go.  

I’m rambling here.  Probably still a bit more looped than I think.  Thank you all for your good thoughts.  I really am fine.  Better than I’d thought I’d be, actually.  Wednesday was such a shitty, fucked-up day that I thought I was going to be a wreck today, but I’m not.  I just want more coffee.  (Ok, and maybe some more of whatever that was in the IV, but I don’t think they sell that at the corner bakery.  The bodega one block over, maybe, but not at the bakery.)

On to my second cup of caffeinated poison for the afternoon…

Weird-ass scene, though.  Internal security came and interviewed everyone one at a time for like a half-hour to an hour each.  Then they talked with him for 2 hours.  Then they took off, saying they’d send someone back to help me close the branch down at 8 (and to, you know, make sure we weren’t all lying dead in pools of blood.)  So much for “removing him permanently”.  Word is, he played nice during the interview, and in the absence of any visible frothing-at-the-mouth, they’re afraid of infringing upon his rights by transfering (or firing) him.

It may still happen, or they may wait to see if he has another episode.  Whatever.  I’ve already put in for a transfer.  Crazy co-workers & Sprogblogger do not mix well.  I’ve, um, got enough shit going on in my life right now without that sort of nonsense.

Ahem.

So since it was a day to get absolutely nothing done besides watching the exits at work, I spent my day online.  Bad Sprogblogger.

I’ve been looking into donor egg programs where the clinics offer “shared risk for shared donor” cycles.  ie: 3 recipients split the eggs from a single donor, and you’ve got 6 tries.  No live baby, 100% refund.  

Sounds about right to me.  

Shady Grove in MD is one of the main contenders at this point, & if anyone’s heard anything good or bad about them, I’d love to hear it.  I spoke with the coordinator on the phone today, and she seemed really with it, able to answer all my somewhat techy questions without a break in her stride, and basically seemed easy to deal with.  

And you can’t beat their odds/prices.

Because at this point, yeah, I’m buying young-thang eggs.  What’s it to you?

And this is sort of funny:  I was looking on their donor listings, and they have potential “donors” answer questions like “Why do you want to donate your eggs” and NO ONE I saw said anything like “Because I’m healthy, young, and fertile, and you’re paying me $10,000 for one month of ovarian discomfort and I’ve got a kidof my own whose college fund needs plumping!”   It was all “I feel called upon to help others achieve the dream of motherhood!”  Hah.  I have to say, I’d totally choose any donor who ‘fessed up and told the truth.

I’m really ready for tomorrow to be over with.  I’m really hoping it goes well, and that I recover as easily as I did from the last one, though I realize that there’s more to be removed this time than last.  Still, I can hope.  And at least I know what to expect from the center & the procedure itself, which was the scariest part for me last time – having no notion what would happen once I took off my shoes.

Now I’m going to be waiting to get back the results from the testing.  That’s the next big hurdle in my mind.  Get that over with, so that I can start figuring out a concrete next step.   Have I mentioned that I’m ready to move on in my life?  Ready to stop dealing with conceiving a baby, and really ready to start, well, changing shitty diapers?  I’m ready to be frustrated with the lack of a good night’s sleep instead o the lack of a single good egg.  Ready to be bemoaning the insensitivity of people who diss my stay-at-home-momness instead of the insensitivity of people who assume I don’t have kids because I don’t want kids.  

Ready to move on.  Been here, done this.  Next!

Seriously, today really really sucked.  Not only because I got to schedule my second D&C this year, and then was left completely unable to control the streaming tears produced when my manager left a cup of flowers on my desk, but also because a co-worker who’s been getting scarier and scarier kind of turned a corner yesterday and started threatening us all with grandiose revenge and retaliation-for-perceived-slights plans.

He’s been sort of whacked for a while, but hey, he’s Russian (apologies to any Russian readers, but if you really are Russian, you probably know what I mean), he’s got a thing for the glory days of the KGB, and – most telling – he’s a male librarian, ferchrissakes, and even other librarians don’t expect normalcy from that combination.  Plus he’s been getting progressively wonkier for a couple of weeks, enough so that he finally scared the manager.  And then he flipped this morning, started claiming that “tomorrow you’ll all see how he really is.  tomorrow he’ll have his day”.  Which is bad, in that I think we’re all half-expecting to be under attack tomorrow, but good in that internal security is coming to “remove him permanently” tomorrow.

(I don’t think that means they’re going to cap him, but hey, it is NY.)

The boy offered to come in with me, but since he’s shaped like a bean pole, I told him he’d be a crap shield, (kidding!) and instead he should just keep his cell phone with him all day in case I start texting him frantic “CALL 911!” messages from under my desk. (serious.)

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’d much rather be thinking about postal-variety-crazy co-worker scenarios than what happens on Friday morning, and how sick is that?  (The windows are barred, so I can’t leap dramatically from the window, breaking an ankle, but able to hobble to safety, but I’m thinking that a barricade of library carts & maybe the safe would be a good way to blockade the office if we hear gunfire.  I’m also thinking that I’m going to be staying out of the office (only one exit) as much as possible, and finding lots of reasons to be working in the Romanian language section (all the hell the way across the library and sort of hidden from the front desk).  That Romanian section totally needs to be weeded.  A lot.  Really.  Like all damned day long.

Anything for a distraction, da?

Just another dose of “wow, you know, you really shouldn’t have waited this long.”

Just another instance of “wow, this sure sucks.  tough break, kid.”

Yeah.  Got the message.

I’ll have genetic testing done after the D&C.   If we decide to proceed with the FET, we might opt for some pre-transfer testing on those embryos.  My doctor is not a fan of pre-transfer testing, since the tests can be inaccurate, give false positives AND negatives, and we only have three embryos to work with.  I’m all for it, however, since  I simply don’t know how many more miscarriages I can take & still be a person whose brain I recognize.

Seriously.

Good news (good news?) is that he doesn’t see any way this could be a uterine issue.  The placenta is growing up a storm in there, as is the g.sac.  No nutrient blocking, no bleeding that might indicate a refusal to penetrate the uterine lining.  It’s not the womb of death, it’s the antique ova. 

The way I feel right now, I’m ready to move straight to a donor egg cycle.  FET might be cheap, but you know? Feels sort of doomed to failure at this point.  Cheap money-wise / wicked expensive sanity-wise.

Need to have some long talks with the boy regarding this.  He’s been closed-mouthed about all this, trying to respect my feelings, etc., but I need more input from him than I’m getting.

Doc gave me a card for a psychologist.  I tend to, er, wear my emotions on my face.  I think he thought I was going to have a break down right there in his office.   I considered it.  He says this psych. doc. is really good at dealing with “you know, the sort of year you’ve had.” 

Really?  I’m not sure it’s actually possible for anyone to help me feel ok about any of this.  I don’t know if I’ll give her a call yet.  I might let this play out for a few weeks, see if I can stop glaring daggers at everyone walking past me who seems to have a normal life.

At least the D&C is soon.  Hoping it’s as easy a recovery as last time.  No pain, no bleeding, no  long recovery period.  Hoping this will all be over soon.  Wishing I could wake up as someone else.