so it begins

Obligatory cycle update: CD1 today. Called the clinic to set up my CD3 stuff (labs and ultrasound, with saline sono and trial transfer next week, I think). I should get my calendar at my appointment on Tuesday and then I’ll know for sure, but it’s looking like ER the week before Thanksgiving, with ET over the holiday weekend. Unless they change my protocol before then, which is quite possible. (Current plan calls for 30 days of BCPs to help prevent hyperstimming, but I was just on the pill for 3 weeks, so maybe the extra 30 days is overkill? Don’t want to be oversuppressed, either. Will talk to RE on Tuesday. Also will try to find nickname for RE very soon.)

I think taking this cycle off (with the help of meds) was a good thing, though I wasn’t sure about it at the time. But this is the first CD1 in almost two years that’s been met not with depression, but with optimism. This is the start of something new. Something we haven’t tried. Something that could work. I’m trying not to be TOO hopeful, but I have to think it could work, or why bother with the tests and the needles and the bloating and the stress? So, I’m hopeful. Still trying to keep it reasonable, though. No conversations about the nursery or baby names or any of that crap - I can’t see that far ahead even on my best days. (Okay, I lied. I sometimes think about that stuff, but I know it’s dangerous. It’s too hard to talk about it. Too hard to admit it. Too hard to keep it from J, so I don’t make him sad too.) Instead we’re talking about trying to make it to Disneyland before I’m a walking pincushion, in case it’s my last chance on the big rides for a while. Because even if it’s not, it will still be fun.

Other Sunday tidbits
------
I feel better about the crappy tv show now that I realized it’s just a soap opera, and not even a good one. Makes it easier to stomach the preponderance of surrogates, the risky illegal procedures, and the general angst. Also helps me get over how the show isn’t even trying to tell an accurate story. If it were a drama instead of a soap opera, then some story lines among the central characters would carry over, but otherwise each episode would deal with one or two infertility storylines, and would wrap them up within the episode, as most of the crime shows do with their cases. I’m sure it would still suck if they did it this way, but for different reasons. But I think I’m over it now. Even without the infertility angle, the show is pretty lame and has to be sitting on the cut list right about now. Darn.
------
I did a bit more reading about the infertility musical, and I think it might actually be good. Or at least, it has potential. It’s based on actual experiences with infertility (as Jenn and Thalia both pointed out!) and they’ve just put up a song from the show on their website that seems appropriately snarky and poignant (and a bit cheesy, but I’ll take it). So now I sorta want to make a trip to see it. Seriously. Maybe in December.
------
I was flipping channels while I made lunch, and determined that Sunday afternoons on TLC seem to be the time for medical freak shows: Face Eating Tumor, 101 Things Removed from the Human Body, and When Surgical Tools Get Left Behind. Good lunchtime viewing, no?
------
Apparently, my attention span is such that I can only pull together a post of mostly-unrelated points. Sorry about that. I’m working on getting a draft of one of the papers to my advisor today, so I’m trying to focus my coherent sentences over there. Sorry to leave you with the leftovers of my writing abilities. But I’m hoping you’ll be more understanding about it than my advisor would be if I sent a draft that looked like this. (Though given how interested she is in my fertility process - and yes, she knows a fair amount about what’s going on - she’d probably find this interesting, too.)
------
Whoever came to my blog wondering if stealing sperm can get you pregnant - I guess that depends on what you do with it. And why you’d think I might have an answer is beyond me.