eye contact

As I sat in the waiting room this morning, I looked around at all the other unfortunates, and I sort-of wished the waiting room ettiquitte was different. I don’t have any infertile friends IRL (except for one that lives clear across the country) and if anyone would understand the craziness that is the evil HMO, it might be them. (On the other hand, I’m continually amazed at how other people just blindly accept the statements of their medical providers without questioning or challenging. And don’t crack snarky jokes to their wand monkeys. I’ve never witnessed that last part firsthand, of course, but given the nurse’s puzzled look this morning when I made some stupid quip, I have to believe it’s rarer that I’d think after hanging out with all you internets. So maybe they wouldn’t understand. But I digress.) So I sat there thinking how sad it was that none of us could make eye contact until I got called back for my date with the dildocam.

The date, it was not good. CD15 and nothing to show for it. The nurse (who also wasn’t making much eye contact) said that I could have a blood test next week to confirm that I hadn’t ovulated and then start Provera, or I could come back for one more check next week. I’m not holding my breath for that last ultrasound, but since I’ve already had the experience of missing a very late ovulation (at the old clinic) because the doctor counted me out too soon, I’m not really ready to throw in the towel. That said, I have no real hope that things will be different next week. And that’ll be it for oral meds. Nice knowing you - have a safe trip. But the nurse (not my favorite nurse at the clinic) didn’t seem too optimistic. I’m not either, but I could have used a little encouragement from her - at least enough to help me hold it together until I got back to my car. But no, it was another of those half-naked crying on the exam table kinds of days. And there were no fucking tissues in the room.

We’re already signed up for the next available injectables class in about 2 weeks. So ideally, we’ll hold off on inducing a period (if it comes to that) long enough for me to actually apply the ever-so-useful skills I’ll get from the class to our next cycle. It’s the clinic’s last chance, really. Once you get to injectables, it’s Repronex or nothing. And I don’t know that it’s the right drug for me. So I’ll try one cycle, and if that’s not the magic bullet then we’ll be seriously considering a move to a private, out-of-pocket clinic. And potentially skipping right along down the road to IVF. But I’m trying not to think about that too much today.

And in the meantime, they wouldn’t give me the results of J’s Kruger analysis. The one that will tell me if it even matters if we can get me to ovulate on schedule. The one that will help us decide what to do next. The one that was in my file, but couldn’t be released to me because of privacy regulations. I understand that in theory, but why couldn’t they tell me that two days ago when I called to request the results? I mean, I could have dragged J to this appointment. I could have brought in a written request that the results be released to me. I could have had HIM call for the results. But since I’m the patient at the clinic, I tried to take care of it. And look how successful that was.