As usual, there is a lot going on.
The Blue Mountains holiday was fantastic- perfect weather, relaxing, great food, excellent company, challenging and satisfying walks and beautiful scenery.
I have been insanely busy since our return, (between 7 and 9.5hr days outside) dealing with house and garden maintenance: mowing, netting, mulching, harvesting, weeding, pruning, de-cobwebbing outside of house, washing all windows inside and out, and yesterday I began the annual ‘oiling the deck’ project. Then there’s been washing, ironing, filing, bill paying, cooking, cleaning etc et al. I am back to working out at pump class twice a week, which I am so happy about.
M is hassling the RTC to give us an application form so we can fill it in and start our three month wait for the traditional surrogacy project. They finally said we can just print out the old form and use that, they have decided not to make any changes after all. *tears out hair!!* Guess I need to get on and do that this week. The lawyers have finally sorted themselves out and M ought to sign her agreement this Friday. Ours will be coming shortly I imagine. M has also seen Dr Stuckey, who is happy to do the artifical insems and gave M a few blood tests and what not. The psych contacted us while on our hols to tell us he’d been ill and his report was delayed. I am hoping that is done in the next week or two, and we can wrap this whole thing up and send it off to the RTC with a bow in time for Christmas. M has done the lion’s share of prodding people along this process, and DH has done the rest of the negotiations and phone calls (apart from the lawyer) for which I am extremely grateful, having reached the bottom of my own barrel some time ago.
We will all sign off on the final counselling session for the donor egg scenario on Jan 16th, but we are putting the cycle on hold for a while because the new NaPro Dr I saw on my return from hols wants me to try her protocol, which precludes being on the pill and/or IVF drugs. She seems to think I have a problem with progesterone levels being waaaay too low (which I have said for some time and tried to get anyone to be remotely interested), so we will give her theory a run for a few months. In her opinion, with my current levels I won’t be able to carry a donor embryo either, so I need to get this sorted now. Given that in eight years it is the only diagnosis I have had, I think it fair to play out her treatment plan for a while. Maybe 6 months. I don’t know yet, we’ll have to see how it rolls.
DH and I are doing the creighton charting system, which has been very tedious. I am hoping it gets to be more second nature and less agonising over “sticky vs stretchy vs damp- with or without lubrication? etc ctc”. The redeeming feature is that I only have to chart mucus and not temperature and it is SO lovely to have a holiday from that annoying fucking thermometer!!! Tomorrow is “peak +3” (or 3dpo) and I go for an E2 and P4 blood test, repeated at peak +5,7, and 9 (if I get that far, which I never do). After Dr Hurworth reviews the results, I phone her on CD 1 and she’ll talk me through the process for the next cycle. This includes more monitoring bloods, but also progesterone pessaries and HCG shots, plus TV ultrasounds to track the follicle as it grows. No one has done this for me (outside of IVF) and I am more than curious to see what is going on. I can’t remember the doses of everything, it was all too overwhelming at our session with her- I just could not pick my jaw up off the floor when she said of course there was something wrong, that diet and meditation and visualisation and relaxing wouldn’t fix, and that she thought progesterone and HCG would help, and completely understood how traumatised I must be by having to tell my story over and over and she didn’t make me say ANYTHING- she just read my notes!!! I have no idea if she actually can fix this, but by God it was just like a breath of fresh air to feel like I was being really heard for the first time in eight years. I was so unprepared for such a radical approach, I could barely take in much of what she told me, LOL. Luckily DH was there, so he took good mental notes.
And then on Friday we went to Busselton (me for hair cut and DH for anaesthetics conference) and planned to stay for dinner at my brother’s house to celebrate my niece’s 6th birthday, but I crashed the car instead! Probably won’t find out until Thursday whether it is a write-off or not [thank god for having comprehensive insurance]. I think the other person’s car will be a write off. It was entirely my fault (although I just literally did not see her until impact), and neither of us were hurt in the least. She was really nice about it, we were both in shock, and I had a shit of a day dealing with insurance companies and an on-line police report, which took forever to finish.
And that is the short version of everything, firstly to save you from having to read a book, and secondly because I don’t really want to relive any of it very much! (Except for the holiday, which sadly seems like aeons ago already. I do hope to post a very small selection of the approximately 700 photos we took. When I can find the time…)
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