All boxed up

The last months have been strange.

Stranger than the average Lifeslurper months. Illness tried to do me in. Surgery was therefore delayed. A new Camp Wobbles was located. Current Camp Wobbles has begun the lengthy process of being dismantled, only to be re-assembled just over two and a half hours east of here.

IVF is still here, biding its time as the clear and ever present threat or promise to our lives. I guess it depends on how any given day is proceeding that shapes my view of ART as a curse or a blessing, with very little room between those two extremes for moderate thinking.

Slowly an era of sorts has been coming to a close.

In good old fashioned Lifeslurper tradition there has been no chance to savour change through gradual transition. It has all arrived at once and has left no time for celebrations, mourning, or good planning. Our time at what has been Wobbles’ and my first home together is almost over. As a new unsuspecting home off-loads its current occupants, we make vague guesstimates on just how many trips we need to make back to the storage company to buy brand new book cartons.

Earlier as Wobbles made a dent in one room, removing a small corner of books I asked: “How many boxes will you need?” “Four or five!” came his confident answer. ”Four or five total..or four or five more?” I queried. “Four or five more!” Hmmm….I took a mental inventory of the many many shelves left untouched. Eleven boxes were used for that session of packing that particular room’s books. That is leaving aside the books Wobbles wants to return to his work office to be transported to his new office, along with the thousands of other books that reside there. This also ignores the fact that Wobbles wants to leave out dozens of books which he is currently working from, and the fact that we ran out of boxes.

I will make my fourth or fifth recent return trip for the purchase of more boxes tomorrow.

The removal box supply acts as a lazy analogy for our lives; Wobbles and I always under estimate the amount and effort required to complete all tasks. A relocation for Wobbles’ work has taken over 18 months to come to pass. For a long time it seemed unlikely to happen after a sudden cancellation one year ago. Our IVF has taken us on four complete cycles, with only one seeing us to an embryo transfer. It has taken weeks to move beyond sudden illness, and even then I am still reliant on various sprays and puffers; miss a dose and the wheeze is discernable at five paces.

This hiatus from continual IVF cycles was supposed to be one of reflection, recovery, renewal and strengthening. Instead it has been a time of serious illness, stress, endless medical appointments, medication usage, medical testing, doubt, indecision, delays and even more limbo. Plans made have been physically impossible to go on with.

We started IVF already well and truly against the clock, or at least that is what everyone liked telling us. Our early IVF cycles encountered delays that should never have occurred. Finally, when we actively sought to put our own brakes on the process fate would appear insulted at our insolence and once again intervened with an even greater time delay, just to ensure we knew who has the reigns of this thing.

Over a month ago I was scheduled to have a laparoscopy and d&c, the first ever investigations into my baby making (or not!) bits. These are the very procedures that probably needed to have happened over a year ago, before we embarked on that first fateful cycle. No doubt they would have taken place had we had a fertility specialist who was caring and even diligent. As time runs on I fear that my age meant he never considered us as viable patients. There was no hope, and he wasn’t going to do anything that suggest we had any hope.

By the time we had grown tired (and very sore) from limbo waiting around with a huge ovarian cyst – our most tangible souvenir from that first horrendous cycle – and decided to move onto a another specialist, it seems our second doctor was pre-occupied with undoing the damage in the form Gigantor the ovarian cyst that would not die. In the short time he was our doctor, before he announced his retirement there didn’t seem to be the time to address the fact that no investigations had ever taken place.

Enter Dr. Loverley; fertility specialist number three. On our first appointment he admitted he was yet to read our history, which he did apologise profusely for. We signed up for our forth cycle. Months later when we returned for the inevitable failed cycle post-mortem I feebly mentioned something about “not knowing” what was going on with my insides. To which he referred to my laparoscopy…”what laparoscopy?” I questioned as he dived into my history looking for notes on surgery I had not had. We reminded him of our previous appointment when our history had not been read. He apologised saying that he had assumed that fertility specialist number two being thoroughly thorough had automatically performed the procedure as the starting point for any IVF commencing.

Again, hapless Wobbles and I had managed to fall through an IVF sized gap in our fertility clinics’ vague guidelines.

Minutes later we were being booked in by Secretary Loverley for a laparoscopy and D & C for some weeks time. We were shocked but relieved. How had we managed to travel this far along the IVF conveyor belt and not be considered for surgical investigations for our infertility? Had we just wasted endless amounts of energy, travel, money and hope on four pointless complete IVF cycles?

What about time?

The precious time we did not have when we started was certainly less now. Yet we know there is nothing we can do to get that back. We decided it was time to take back some control over our fertility. I launched on a program of acupuncture, naturopathy, and healthy diet. Then my back decided to really be a pain. Then I got ill.

Months on, here we are, the very much delayed Lifeslurper and her Wobbles, still wanting to have a baby. Still dedicated to the task, but even further from the starting line. We knew ART would pose difficulties, but not the kind of wasted effort, delayed and overlooked types of difficulties we have mostly endured so far. For me there is no way of estimating how many boxes are needed to pack up the sadness and frustration I now associate with my IVF experience. The vastness of the storage facility required would be too impractical for the warehousing time needed.

This week my delayed laparoscopy takes place. There is no risk that its usefulness will be underestimated. For the first time there is a hope that something will result in us having the tiniest hint of hope; hope that for once we are actually in this baby making business for real.

Now is the time to stop the vague guesstimates of how long we will be travelling back and forth to the fertility clinic to complete as many cycles as possible for the age of 45 arrives.

Now is the time for action, and for all ART limbo to cease.