Turning the page

Well, ooooookaaay. I am feeling much, much better now- a bit battle weary but more my old self than not. I attribute that largely to two things. Firstly, we are going on vacation somewhere hot and sunny on Tuesday for two weeks, the prospect of which is undeniably cheering (despite the endless moronic commentary that I will get pregnant from all the relaxation).

Secondly, we have the preliminary makings of a Plan. Or I should say I have the makings, because at the moment E. is preoccupied with about ten million other things, all of which to his mind are considerably more pressing. Like in which box did he leave that particular piece of vital wiring and gadgetry.

I am sure he will catch up with me eventually, and that's fine. Because the plan I am formulating is so audacious, so logistically complicated and so jawdroppingly expensive that I need a chance to work up my sales pitch. There are moments when I have trouble believing myself that what I am about to propose could work- and I am not yet completely certain it will. But it is strangly soothing to me to have something to focus on-the mechanics of unfankling a hugely knotted ball of treatment fishing line.

What is clear at this juncture is that we will try again. The bottom line is, we do want to have a child. Adoption remains problematic for us for reasons discussed at length in earlier posts. So if IVF is a way to achieve having a family, then this is what we will do. True, I've done some bitter flailing and teeth gnashing in coming to accept this. Being unexplained doesn't make it easy, and up until now, it was very compelling to simply carry on secretly thinking that there was nothing really wrong with us.

However, failing to get pregnant despite undergoing IVF kind of puts a new spin on that one. Kind of hard to ignore that as Exhibit A in the ongoing "Truly Infertile or Just Unlucky?" inquiry.

What is also clear- to me anyway- is that I do not want to go back to the O.C. again. In retrospect, it did make sense to do our first attempt there. Because the doctors kept banging on about how we just needed to give our chances a little boost, how we were excellent candidates for IVF. And compared to the alternatives, it was relatively inexpensive. Plus at that point, we did own a place to stay in town, which made it convenient.

But it's also left me with a number of questions. Had we gone somewhere much better, with a higher success rate and standard, I might have a slightly different attitude to the aforementioned Exhibit A. As it is, I am still thinking, "OK, I didn't get pregnant. But the clinic was crap."

I mean, I was mentally trying not to slate them too much when I was doing the cycle, because I didn't want to bite the hand that might impregnate me, so to speak. And they weren't entirely without good points- for example, some of the nurses were quite sweet and the process itself was fairly straightforward. But taking a step back, there was a lot wrong. I mean, I basically chose my own protocol, for fucks' sake. And Dr Billy Fynn was an arse. In particular it annoys me that he managed to find the time to phone E. to chortle over those "outstanding semen analysis results", but he couldn't interrupt his fucking golf game for five minutes to simply phone me to say he was sorry, and would we at least like to come in to talk it over? Not. Acceptable. Plus, pee sample in the mail. Need I say more.

So, all that remains is to extract my medical records. And then that particular chapter of our infertility chronicles will be closed- for my part, without so much as a backwards glance. Stick around though, because I think the next chapter is about to get very interesting.

Comments

[Toni]

Ooooo...come here...we've got a couple of great clinics here in Chicago!!!