I am having a horrid week. I have been snappy and short tempered about the most insignificant things. And even though I know that it is medication making me react like this, and I feel totally powerless to control it. I have been wandering around the house all week, feeling really listless and blah, and I can’t find the energy or the motivation to get any work done. I think about the only thing keeping me sane this week has been chatting with friends on the MSN – perhaps because it is easier to maintain a facade when typing compared to real interactions.

No doubt my drug induced hormonal state is contributing to this, but lately I am feeling like continuing on IVF is like banging my head up against a brick wall. We have been doing this now for over three years to try and have a second child. As Angel gets older, it is getting harder to want to start all over again. As it stands, with over a four year age difference, I know if we were successful with the next cycle, that kids born this far apart will never have any common interests and are more likely to torment each other than to keep each other company.

I remember a quote from somewhere that said the definition of ‘Insanity’ was: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. No wonder I feel like I am losing the plot.
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Clomid gives me all sorts of fun. The most common side effect I get from being on Clomid is a strange visual aberration that alters my visual perception of the outlines of objects. Things entering my field of vision appear to have multiple outlines, particularly under artificial lighting conditions which is most disconcerting I can tell you. I have been calling it my ‘Mouse Tails’ for years, as it is exactly like when you have the Mouse Tails on. For Windows, Go to Start Menu > Control Panel > Printers and Other Hardware > Mouse/Pointer Options > Tick Display Pointer Trails > Select Long > Click OK. Now imagine that everything in your field of vision has things like that following after it when it moves in front of you! You can see why I dont drive at night when I am on Clomid. My friends like to make fun of me when ‘my Mouse Tails are on’, by waving their hands in front of my face a lot. Sometimes it is so bad, I get vertigo or feel like I am going to be sick from the overload of non-image forming visual anomolies. When I told Dr IVF about it, he laughed and says ‘You normally have to pay a lot more for your drugs to get that sort of effect!’ Which is cute, but not particularly helpful.

Ovidrel or Profasi shots make me a little quiet or easily tearful for about a day or so. A little melancholy really and prone to popping on soppy chick flicks if I have some time to myself. Oh, and the progesterone often causes me to get a pimple or two on my chin which I hate, because I am very fair, and they stand out dogs’ balls! Could be worse, not particularly inconvenient and certainlly not as problematic as being unable to decide where the edge of a table is!

Dr IVF, always asks me about my mood when I am taking Progynova? Not sure why? I reckon I could take that stuff forever and it doesn’t knock me around at all. Obviously lots of women must report being twitchy on Progynova or he wouldn’t ask about it, but it doesn’t bother me much at all and I have never noticed any side effects at all.

But Puregon is a different matter entirely. For the last four days, I have been injecting myself with Puregon which is a follicle stimulating hormone derived from the pickled ovaries of geneticaly engineered chinese hamsters or some such shit. By day two I feel like I want to go postal at anyone who comes near me…… for any reason at all…. God dammit, I will find a reason….. or even better, for no reason at all! I feel like a viper sitting in a corner, watching the world through narrowed eyes, thinking, “go on…. poke me…. I dare ya!” I spend all day fighting the overwhelming urge to lose it with my gorgeous little boy for the most insignificant of infractions, like forgetting to flush the toilet/leaving a dirty plate on the table or for not putting his toys away. And if you think I have the energy to keep it reigned in by the time Hubby walks through the door, you are kidding yourself. It is absolutely open season on husbands during Puregon weeks. When I am on Puregon, he could come home from work at night with two dozen tulips, Verve Cliquot champage, diamond jewellery and tickets to Bora Bora, and my response would be “GET YOUR FUCKIN’ FILTHY SHOES OFF MY CARPET!!!!” I have been growling around the house all week, finding little things that just piss me off! I hate feeling like this, from the moment I wake up in the morning, I can feel this hideous rising bile, and I just want to rip heads off something! Anything really! Not fussy!

This being the case, you would think Hubby would have learned by now, and be particularly attentive to how his actions affect me this week…. you would think….

I went to see Dr IVF today and I had no idea what I was going to say to him when I got there. I wanted to quit, and tell him how I had had enough of all this shit, and I didn’t think I could face it anymore. The ambivalence that I have been experiencing after my recent unsuccessful treatments is really disconcerting. I seemed to have anaesthetized or numbed myself against the full impact of my emotions. How did that come about anyway? I know it is some sort of mental self preservation trick that your brain plays on you, to save you from the full import of your emotions. I feel rather heartless for not being upset that the cycle has failed, especially when everyone expects you to be messy. I was really uncomfortable when Hubby kept trying to comfort me over the weekend, like he was trying to elicit the response he expected in order to make himself feel useful. In the past, his primary role (other than his 10 minute contribution in the Mastabatorium) was to provide emotional support when things didn’t work out. And lately, I feel like I just dont need it.

Dr IVF once told me that I was one of his biggest problem patients, and that he worried about my case quite a bit. That was over a year ago now, so no doubt I am top of his list by now. Its an ignominious distinction that I would prefer to live without. Today, I didn’t know if I wanted to jump back on the rollercoaster, all I can see are the downsides, and no benefits in sight. But he took charge from the moment I stepped in his office, and asked if I would let him take another crack at it. I didn’t exaclty voice any enthusiasm for it, but didn’t express any barriers either. So the Readers Digest version is that I am doing another pick up cycle, which means I will be in for surgery again end of next week or early the week after that. Before I left, Dr IVF said the most bizarre thing ‘God must have something special planned for you.’ and when I asked him why, he said ‘Or He would have made you pregnant by now’. I dont like the idea that this whole thing is predestined. I think I have always thought of it taking a gamble. Follow all your instructions, and roll the dice, see if luck is on your side sort of thing. The fatalistic ideology he is talking about unnerves me somehow, maybe cos I dont think God looks kindly on heretical lapsed Catholics like me. I dont know, and I am sick of thinking about it.

I start my injections tomorrow, and then the fun really starts…
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I did my pregnancy test this morning, and was feeling pretty good about it. We had three eggs coming down and two nice blastocysts transferred back (FET) so maybe one in five isn’t too much to ask! And I hadn’t had any unwanted bleeding this time, so I thought I was at least in with a chance. But….. another negative. (Sigh) You know, I can’t seem to muster the energy to be upset about it. I dont feel like crying, I dont feel like talking about it, I dont even want to have to think about it, in truth. I left the test in the bathroom for Hubby to see eventuatlly, I just didn’t feel like telling him.

The hard bit is that now, we are at another crisis point again. No embryos left in the freezer. Which means another pick up surgery if we want to keep going. If I go ahead, that will be my third egg collection this year, and my fouth general anaesthetic in less than 8 months – that can’t be healthy. And I am not sure I want to anymore. At the moment I am just so SICK and TIRED of the whole thing. I feel like I haven’t had space in my brain to think about anything else for the last three years, as all my mental energy has been focused on IVF. But I really am stuck between a rock and a hard place. Keep going or give up. Put up with all this, or no more children – full stop. I dont know what I want to do at this point, and I am exhausted just thinking about it.

Nothing seems to work, the list of procedures just keeps getting longer, and I can’t see a (+)ve at the end of the tunnel.
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