Lifeslurper has just returned from her 87th kazillionth doctors appointment in recent months. I am talking general practitioner here, the type of doctor you go see about everyday stuff, as opposed to the fertility specialist you travel millions of miles and pay zillions of dollars to see about how to not make a baby.
The poor guy is not Dr Cutey MD – but a ring-in sent to play the part of Dr Cutey in Dr Cutey’s absences. Like in your stock standard soap opera arrangement where there is a sudden change of actor, the voice over will alert the hapless viewer to this news with the announcement “today the role of Dr Cutey MD will be played by a locum.” Let’s call him Dr Why. Until today Dr Why and I had never held a conversation between us, as during my most recent illness there was an ongoing difficulty making speech rather difficult; the now infamous cough. It was nice to actually be able to smile and say ‘Hello!” to Dr Why, the fellow who looked gravely on during my previous daily or alternate daily visits during what we will now refer to as ‘Another Mystery Illness.’ He had scratched his head, rubbed his chin and listened endlessly to my chest during all of those previous visits. With each visit I came away with prescriptions for increasingly stronger doses of antibiotics, steroids, and puffers. There were endless blood tests, a chest x-ray and multi-GP mini-conferences on what to do with me.
Back at Camp Wobbles, my wheeze had started around October 20. The cough started a few days later. A well worn Lifeslurper track between home and the medical clinic developed during the regular trips made in the ongoing search for answers. Staff at the medical centre would bring me water, checking constantly to see if I was alright. Other patients in the waiting room would mutter; “that poor girl….” I’d feel embarrassed and hopeless at the same time. I’d frequently get tearful, as well as breathless. I’d been here before. Mystery illness, lots of tests and medicine and no real answer. Add to this the pressure of knowing time for baby making is evaporating faster than my puffer medicine sprays. Pain was constant. Sleep nonexistent. Cough unrelenting.
I wet myself constantly. I coughed until I vomited, but it was okay as I wasn’t really able to eat. My entire body ached. One by one all the likely suspects; pneumonia, pleurisy (my old foe) where eliminated by rigorous testing. There were no signs of lung damage as a result of an early life spent as passive smoker, so my plan of taking on the tobacco giants in a landmark legal case was narrowly averted.
Despite a childhood plagued by asthma and bronchitis, and the adult discovery of malformed nasal passages causing a very restricted airflow, I have mostly coped with the inability to breathe properly. Week four or so of Mystery Illness saw one early morning discussion with Wobbles over the virtues of making a pre-dawn visit to our friendly local Accident and Emergency department of the public hospital. Ultimately we decided the effort required to get there was going to be far more damaging than staying put.
A few days later as the date for my laparoscopy loomed a couple of the local doctors hit on the idea that my symptoms were consistent with whooping cough. More prescriptions and a chemist asking “Aren’t you better yet?” meant in three or four days my cough was easing. The first date for the laparoscopy was cancelled. Rushed phone calls with the fertility clinic suggested that the surgery would be cancelled indefinitely, or at least delayed until their own doctors had examined me. Immediately I saw even more long trips, more appointments and more time lost – all so we could just get where we should have started off our IVF experience from the get-go, with surgical investigations giving some indication of what was (or wasn’t) happening with my aged girly innards.
Eventually fertility specialist extraordinaire, Dr Loverley gave me another month to recover. We leave just after 4 tomorrow morning for the long hike. As of two days ago Mystery Illness remains resolutely unresolved. I could see Dr Why was concerned before he even began to explain. My blood tests, as I had predicted, had been inconclusive for whooping cough. The big surprise came in the form of an ‘inconclusive’ result for legionella. I needed immediate re-testing. Lung wise, he felt I was safe for surgery. “You were really sick!” he confirmed what I had just begun to suspect. It hadn’t been just ‘in my head’, nor had I been a malingerer. ‘But you feel better now, don’t you? He looked at me intensely. The only thing I could say for certain was that the cough seemed to have gone away, so I must be better.
My goodness, I hope we are not turned away from the clinic tomorrow.
Travels along the way to IVF are long. Sometimes they seem longer than endless. Somewhere there will be a start for us. Perhaps that will commence after tomorrow? Yet we are well aware of the old adage that tomorrow never comes.
