The Tide is High

I have to begin the tale of our trip to the RE today with a bit of background history.

When I was in my freshman year in college, I lived in a big girls' dorm on campus. There was a girl on my floor with some dumb nickname like Snoopy or Flopsy, and she used to always take her portable stereo in the communal shower/bathroom area. There she would play pop music at top volume, which everybody knew was simply a ploy to disguise the fact she was having sex with her boyfriend in the shower.

So one night, quite late, I go into the bathroom, and Poopsy Thingie and whoever she's currently banging are in the shower, as usual. The big room is filled with steam. The stereo is blaring out Blondie's "The Tide is High." It is then that I notice that one of the stall doors is shut, but there is a lake of blood coming from out of that cubicle. The floor is covered with it. The blood is running into the grooves of the tiles, there is so much blood, and Blondie is wailing that the tide is high, she's moving on, she's going be your number one. Number one.

To cut a long and rather gory story short, a classmate was in that stall, in the middle of attempting suicide by slitting her wrists. She was ultimately "fine" in the end, but to this day, I cannot hear that song without imagining that very unpleasant scene and the aftermath. I cannot bear to be in the same room as Blondie's voice.

Fast forward to the present day, and our appointment with the RE this morning. This was our follow-up consultation to talk about where we were at, and the next steps, based on all the tests we both had over the last few months. We sat down in the waiting room, unraveling ourselves from our many layers of outerwear. And what do I hear echoing from the office sound system? Christmas carols? Harpsichords? The Mormon Tabernacle choir?

No. Blondie, fucking Blondie, singing "The Tide is High."

I leaned over to E. and muttered it was a bad omen. He had never heard that story though, so he didn't get it. He made that funny Scottish noise in the back of his throat and went back reading his car magazine.

As it happened, the news wasn't particularly bad. Nor was it particularly "good". My HSG results were, as we knew, normal. Previous bloodwork indicates all is normal with hormone levels and so forth. And interestingly, E.'s latest sperm test revealed his swimmers to be much improved, as compared to the last substandard morphology result. It was, in Dr Ticktock's view, entirely normal.

And so it is there we came to that diagnostic cul-de-sac. I knew which way we were headed. I had been expecting it, but then there it was, all wrapped up and shiny with a big bow on top. Merry Christmas. A diagnosis of "Unexplained."

Or should I say "pigeonholed"? Since that is the word Dr Ticktock used. OK. We have been officially "pigeonholed" into category 'Unexplained'. In my mind, I imagine E. and I folded up like little bits of paper, filed, contorted, in a big row of small square wooden boxes. Pigeonholed.

I need some time to digest what followed on from that. I will post about it once I have had a chance to consider, reflect, and Google until my eyeballs roll backwards in my head, and my fingers wear down to stubby nups.