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The Groups
Game Day!
Get this: I woke up at 6:30am and went for a fucking TWO hour walk. I am da bomb. Waking up and feeling inspired to exercise is not something that comes naturally. This month I have been in training to make working out an (almost) every day thing. It is such a pain in my large ass to be bothered with it, but I can not deny how wonderful and (dare I say it) beautiful it makes me feel when I am done. I live for the zaps of nerve tinglies I get in my thighs. (I have this whole visualization where i imagine pockets of fat popping and melting away.)
What is even more genius, if I do say so myself, is that I am soooo PMS inflicted at the moment. How the hell did I manage to wake up (without an alarm, people), put on a sports bra and go for a walk? The sun wasn’t even out. But you know what was cool? I got to see it pop above the horizon. I was the only person awake in the world. Stunning.
But I digress. I am declaring today, for no reason whatsoever, game day. I was cleaning out some of my randomly bookmarked pages & I found some games that cracked me up. (in truth only the pig game is old, the other games are ones I found from the same site.)
For your Weekend Enjoyment:
and
Photo Friday: Before & After
So the TRUE before was a photo that didn’t turn out so well. That was of GM’s white car covered in pollen. ugh. achoo, achoo.
There is a during photo uploaded in the photo friday pool, but here is the after. The beautifully clean car, you guessed it, in the rain. Not 1 hour after we got back from washing the car it began to pour. Of course.
The photos were taken by my phone…which gives me an idea for next week’s theme. hmmmm.
Counting down to the 100,000
Because I am not so plugged in to blogiversaries and such I always seem to miss doing a snoopy dance when one hits (wait, does blogging about infertility merit a snoopy dance?). However I have sort of noticed my stat counter over to the right. It is getting a bit close to 100,000 hits and for some ridonkulous reason that makes me feel like I am loved & liked & adored & READ.
Thank you, all of you, for coming here. Whether you stumbled here from a random google search for “farting + IUI” or from a link on somebody else’s blog. Many of you decided to stay with me for the ride. (but most of you got the fuck out of poonani-ville, & I honestly don’t blame you for it)
What a fucking crazy ride it has been so far, eh? I’ve been going back over my old posts in order to categorize everything (so fucking scary how many posts end up in the “bitching” + “infertility” box) and sometimes I am taken aback by my voice when I first started writing.
Seriously- go back to like your first 30 posts and I dare you not to be charmed by your own true self.
If you find yourself logged on & the counter is AT 100,000 PLEASE, please tell me so in the comments. Balloons won’t drop or anything, but I might fuss over you a bit.
***** YAY!! SO glad it was someone that I know that landed on the lucky 100,000. (I was worried it might be a random googler.) Congrats (wait, is that too full of myself?) to the foxy and amazing Sophia! Let the internet balloons drop and the sirens blare.
Leave the Mah Na Mah Na song alone already.
According to my google research, this song was written in the late sixties by some Italian composer. Originally used in a soft core porn before it ever made its way to where the air is sweet on sesame street…the song has a history.
However most of us associate it with our childhood. And with muppets.
The mah na mah na song is something that is near & dear to me. I LOVE that it is making a bit of a come back. I am all for a new generation of muppet lovers (and perhaps Swedish porn lovers) having this song in their cute little heads.
And while I don’t know if Henson (or the German company that now owns Henson) had anything to DO with this new selling out of muppet soul, it still bugs the shit out of me. First there was Miss Piggy schlocking her wares for Pizza Hut (selling pepperoni pizza! ahhh!). Then there was Kermit trying to convince us to buy a Ford.
And now the mah na mah na song is featured on not one, but two commercials: Big Lots! and Saturn. In my ad zone both Saturn and Big Lots! have purchased ad time when the game shows I watch with GM are on. So there is no avoiding them. And as much as I try to stop myself I SING A FUCKING LONG. (or scat along, or mumble along…whatever.) The music instantly makes me feel happy & peppy & young.
Then, as soon as the ad/s are over, I have this awful taste in my mouth. It tastes like charred plastic and felt…burning muppet aftertaste.
Conversation with GM
Yesterday, in addition to getting the records in the mail, I did two other progressive things. (& may I just say that DOING something towards something is a very, very good thing for me.)
1) I called every OB/GYN, fertility, ultrasound type place within thirty miles of my house. I need to find a place that I can have local cycle monitoring done (see how I am just moving forward with the assumption that I will be selected to be a donor? I so get a gold star.). The local baby clinic is the top choice for a couple of reasons: I am already plugged in with them as a patient and they already have my records. Plus, I have a page with the cost breakdown and they list “cycle monitoring” in its own little group…making me think I can go that route ala carte. Unfortunately they are pretty much it for me.
There is one other fertility place in town. It was while I was on hold waiting for a not so sparkly type to verify that they would do monitoring that I remembered that I had already had a dab of interaction with them. They were a clinic I had called before I moved to F. And they were the clinic that made it VERY clear that they would not, do not and would never ever “treat” a single patient.
So bottom line- I have a place that can monitor my cycles.
2) I felt I needed to bring GM up to speed. For some reason I wasn’t sure how she would feel about my wanting to be an egg donor. I’m sure it was wildly unfair of me to assume she would be against it when she was so fucking amazing about my using donor sperm…but I just didn’t want to get into a TALK at this junction. Anyhow - I told her that I was trying to have the “baby treatment” (her term that I have adopted) in the Northeast as it was less money and a good program.
I showed her information I had on the clinic, explained that I would be staying with friends and only gone for a few days. She absorbed it all and patted my hand. Then she got this stricken look on her face. “Does this mean that the baby has to be born in [Northeast]?” I told her no, that if I did have a baby it would be born where she (GM) could come hold my hand. Her response, “Good. We don’t want a Yankee baby.”
Right.
In other news there are good things going on here and here and probably getting close here and here. Good things ROCK and I am so ready for the pendulum to swing a good way for the rest of the spring and summer.
Records in the mail & Photo Friday Theme
So my (feels like) 8 pounds of medical records are now in the mail headed towards the Northeast clinic. Because I am lazy I just affixed a trillion stamps to the large envelope and put it in my mail box. (I did weigh it and did calculate how many 39 cents stamps it would need.)
However now I think everything thing I do from here on out will be judged and so I am worried that my envelope with a trillion stamps may raise some eyebrows. It may have some coordinator type people scratching their heads & thinking, “is this girl such a moron that she can’t haul her ass to the post office to send this in a business type fashion?” Or maybe they will take into account that I did manage to affix the stamps in an artistic sort of pattern. I had three different kinds of stamps and so I created a little stamp mosaic. That has to count for something…right?
man, it sucks to be a dork.
Now on to the new theme: Before and After This can be applied to anything: hair, renovations, the washing of a car or even the prepping/eating of a meal. Anything that has a before has an after. Ta da.
(& in case you haven’t noticed I am getting to the point where I need some theme help. If you are a creative type just boiling over with a photo theme idea please let me know.)
In honor of the birthday people…a meme
There a couple of awesome people (& some non blogging partners) that are having birthdays this week. In honor of you, here is a birthday meme:
Go to Wikipedia.
In the search box type in the month of your birth and the date (not the year)
1) List three events that happened on the day of your birth
2) List two “people of note” also born on the day
3) List one “person of note” that died on the day
4) List any holiday or observances
Paste answers here or at your own blog.
Next steps
So I called the Northeast clinic and spoke to a very funny nurse type person that I am looking forward to meeting…if & when that happens.
For starters calling the clinic is a bit overwhelming. It is massive & there are so many prompts and numbers and codes to enter before you can speak to the right people. Well, at least now I know the codes…but as I was pressing 7,then star, then pound, then zero I was thinking, “holy FUCK this is more secure than when I had to update GM’s address with social security!”
Here are the next steps:
1) I am to copy and mail my fertility related medical records to the donor egg office within the clinic.
2) On April 18th I will have a phone consult with the IVf Doctor. This consult will be to go over my chart, discuss whatever tests I need to have done or repeat (I think the only new tests would be a pap smear and another round of “I do not have crabs” type blood work.) Then we would discuss the protocol. I have been told that this clinic is super aggressive as they want shit loads of eggs. Works for me. They would then help me set up my local testing and would want to coordinate with my local clinic as far as how they will swap info.
I was told again that the clinic is gearing up for a “busy season” and that as soon as I pass these next couple of steps it will go “extremely fast”. What I like about this place is that everything is said in a way that assumes that I will be accepted as a donor.
What is weird (well not ‘weird” more like interesting) is that when I was speaking to the IVF nurse she had my file up on the computer and they had scanned in the photos I submitted. So I got a, “you have great eyes” comment. The comment made me feel a couple of things. For starters, thanks! But then it made me go into donor mode. It made me remember all of those times that I would call up sperm banks just looking for a comment such as, “the donor has great eyes”. And so I found myself switching gears with the nurse on the phone. I went from being my sassy self to being extremely aware that really everything I say from this point on goes into the mix. Suddenly I found myself saying, “ma’am”and trying to sound (whatever that means) smart.
It so sucks to be a people pleaser.
Just a few more days I can see what Sue has to say about the month of April…
Plan I in motion!
Loose transcript of a letter received in mail from Northeast clinic today:
Dear Calliope,
I have received your application to our program as a shared donor. Thank you for taking the time to complete it and returning it to me. I have read it and everything seems to be fine. The next step you would take is to schedule a telephone consult with one of our doctors.
After the phone consult and the doctor gives us the go-ahead, we will add you to our next donor list. Hopefully, two recipients will select you and we will call you and get your approval to move ahead. At that time I would mail you all of your preliminary testing requirements. I see you have already had an HSG - please send us a copy of that report. You will be responsible for making arrangements for your donor sperm. You will also need to have a facility in your area that does same day results for your cycle bloods and ultrasounds. We will go into this in detail when you call.
We are very much looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Nice donor coordinator person
ok. So Now I am so glad that I didn’t call before I got this letter. Obviously there is a bit of hurry up and wait…I mean I have NO idea how long it takes to be selected as a donor once you are on the list.
But shit- this makes putting that credit card in the freezer SO much easier.
I wonder what the phone consult will be about. Will it be going over my cycles or more psych type questions? Any ideas?
Guess what I remembered…
Picture this…it’s 10pm and I decide to go to bed early. I crawl under the covers with a silly grin on my face and embrace the glimmer of “sure thing” that the credit card brought me.
Then I remembered something kind of vital. Kind of dream crushing. It was a realization that had me go from stupid grin to worn out sobs: I don’t have a paying job. Meaning- what the fuck business do I have contemplating 10 grand worth of debt when I have no means to pay it off.
You know I actually (for like a good 9 hours) considered the credit card as if it was free money. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Sure I could theoretically charge an IVF. But what happens when I run out of savings to pay the bill? ugh.
Fucking dashed hope. blah
Just another one of life’s reality checks. Just another moment when I wonder if the Universe will ever let me kick the football.
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