Monday, October 25, 2010

 
well, I can report something: that messing around in random fashion with a middle-aged woman's hormones makes her stack on weight. or maybe it's the doughnuts...anyway despite riding for an average of an hour a day and swimming for 30 minutes most days, I am officially fat - well over my "panic weight" and moving up the scale. nothing fits and I wobble when I walk.

127.5 pounds may not sound that much, but I'm not tall. and I am so not good at dieting. first step will be cutting out the toast and jam and doughnuts. maybe that will help. but that requires me to stock the house with fresh vegies and fruit, and to be honest, it's driving me crazy how much time I'm spending on medical stuff again - all Friday morning for one thing as I had to bring my mammogram forward, a transfer tomorrow - yes, tomorrow, don't know what time yet - and all Wednesday morning for an ultrasound (breast) and being poked about by my surgeon. and yes it has occurred to me that it's not ideal to have the tx one day and see the surgeon the next - what if something's wrong? - but I have decided to proceed as I am trying to act like I don't have cancer. which I don't.

tried to cut out the morning coffee this morning - got past the soy latte from the bakery on my ride, but weakened when I got home. at least a homemade coffee has fewer calories. and I don't know if I'll be able to pull long weekend rides without a cafe coffee. or get any writing done in the afternoons when I go on my 2-day-uni-finishing escape later this week. but meanwhile, will try to get by with a cup of tea this afternoon. or at least a smaller coffee than usual. caffeine is soooo addictive.

also, in the tmi department: progesterone pessaries are made with cocoa butter. at least my bits will be nicely moisturised. ick.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

 
now, I find this interesting: fevers can be linked to spontaneous remission. the idea is, I think, that the infection kick-starts the immune system.

off to do some reading up. and to try not to think about how I'm about to suppress my immune system.

 
just read back through a lot of my posts around the time we created the embies (early december 02) and the tx in Feb 03. can't believe how much detail I recorded and obsessed over - my temperature, everything I ate. strangely, not thinking of all that stuff now though I suppose I will be careful over food - quite possibly cut out dairy again and definitely peanuts, along with the usual pg recommendations. I will certainly not cut back on my exercise.

is it because I'm older, because I'm blase, busier, or is the the perspective of having had cancer? a bit of all, I guess.

 
I return w. the delightful news that my endometrial lining is 7mm. or cm. who knows. suppose it's mm.

which explains the weird dreams and general fatigue I have been feeling. oh the joy of hormones. not even pregnant and it's knocking me about.

actually, as the dr startled me with the news that she could be doing a transfer as early as next MONDAY (a week before I thought it was possible), I may already, technically, be pregnant, as the dates always begin two weeks before "conception", at the beginning of the cycle. such minutiae I have learned in my IVF career.

had coffee with a longlost uni friend (and once or twice, lover) yesterday. he has a five year old daughter and MS. in fact he would have been diagnosed about the same time as me, maybe a bit later. like me, he has had to wait five years to see how things would go. he is basically OK, though on medication and clearly not unaffected. so they are thinking of another child. as he put it "do it yourself grandparenting" has both advantages and disadvantages. as long as you're set up (meaning with a house and sufficient resources), mid 40s doesn't look so old anymore. and even if it did, what could I do? snap my fingers and become 25 again? hah!

Saturday, October 09, 2010

 
I guess I expected some great declaration on his part, or a blank refusal.

Instead, we have a kind of muddling-along falling-into-it progress into a second attempt, in which I have to be on my best behaviour to prove we have a future together. and I am not, apparently, allowed to treat it as a redemptive exercise, though I am allowed to ask that things be different this time.

but I can't stop seeing it that way. that though I am so much older this time, and that though it will be more exhausting than before, that maybe this is his chance to treat me better, to take care of his pregnant wife/wife with baby as he should have last time.

if. if, of course.

so I am on low-dose oestrogen for ten days, bizarrely enough after five years of blocking all oestrogen from my body. hell, I can't even spell it properly.

then the joy of a second internal scan, then maybe 15 days after that we can try for a transfer.

and it is costing $900 a time to try, plus 1400 that we get back from Medicare.

and one of the inventors of IVF has just got the Nobel Prize for Medicine. yay. doubly so as it has annoyed the Vatican. Like China protesting about the 2010 peace prize going to a Chinese dissident, that tells me they made the right decision.

and apparently IVF in Australia produces about 56% boys. A. says he wants a brother. I, of course, would rather a girl. but I know that I will be happy with either.

exhausted, sleepless, regretting the loss of the life I've built up as the mother of "just the one" over the years. but happy.

is that not redemptive?

there are eight embies in storage. at one a time, that will take until at least mid next year to get through, depending on how each transfer goes. my one wish is, if they don't work, for them not to work upfront. no miscarriages. please. and I'm not even planning to do a Down's scan. no abortions, either.

expect I'll be back on here a lot more than before. I may even hunt down the old IVF forums, though all my cycle mates will have moved on long ago. in the amazingly personal and private emotional work to be done, there is this: others are going through it.

(which puts me in mind of the recent moments I've had, reading about a child who lost his eyes to cancer, and seeing a woman with a missing leg and I think arm, I didn't stare, at the pool. an easily concealed prosthetic breast? that's naaarthing...)

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