One woman’s tale of love, depression, IVF after 40.
Or should that read; I visited Laparoscopy and all I got was this lousy infection?
It is over a week since my lap. Even now I am not even sure if I actually had the suggested d&c.
Newly post operative, post-illness and post-sanity Lifeslurper now attempts to dive headlong into the Christmas spirit by composing this yuletide re-work of a classic. To be sung to the tune of Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport….no just kidding…to be sung to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas.
Note to all critics (especially those who have previously savaged my attempts at lyrics or poetry) go easy! To Lifeslurper’s kind readers, by all means make suggestions for improvement.
Merry Christmas to all! Wishing postive results for those still waiting for one, and great health to those now on their way to parenthood!
The Twelve Months of IVF
On the first month of IVF,
My fertility clinic sent to me
A bill for thousands of dollars.
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. Continue reading ‘Joining the French Whooping Legion’
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. Continue reading ‘All boxed up’
Call off the search and rescue people!
Remember me?
I am still here. Thank you for your cards and flowers.
Continue reading ‘Public Service Announcement from Lifeslurper’
Well it is now official our low low chances of IVF success are now so low they are almost non-existent.
Sometimes it is really hard to not feel like a totally useless waste of space.
Old, fat, infertile, not working, and now hardly walking.
We are on the eve of the twelve month anniversary of our first dealings with a fertility clinic.
Four failed IVF cycles are the most obvious souvenirs of almost one year of official up close involvement with ART. These occurred between January and August.
Are we wiser? Hopefully. Are we more informed about IVF? Partially. Are we poorer? Certainly. Are we any closer to becoming parents? Well, there is no real answer to that one.
The other day the coordinator of my fertility clinic’s recruited donor egg program phoned me. This was a call intended to provide a quick answer to my earlier email regarding the importation of frozen eggs from the United States to Australia. I had only recently heard of a Queensland clinic’s relationship with an American donor oocyte ‘bank’ and wanted to know if my own clinic had similar arrangements. The response was a resounding “no”. The science experimental, results poor, conflicting with State legislation, transportation difficult and so on went the points against the idea of frozen egg importation. Somehow this spiel segueyed into a statement on why so few donor eggs are available in this country, and there it was for what seemed the kazillionth time since I was first introduced to ART: women are waiting later to have babies.
Can I state for the record now: Lifeslurper did not wait to have babies. It was not a conscious decision. At no time did I think “hmmmm….I will relax and have fun now….waiting until I am over forty, then I will think about babies.”
Being the farm bred gal I am, I know that chook eggs can be tested by simply being placed in a bowl of water. If they sit on the bottom they are fine. If they rise to the top they are no longer fresh. Why isn’t an equally uncomplicated test available for my own eggs?
Free range hens tend to lay their eggs in a multitude of hiding places around the farm yard. There is always a chance that these won’t be discovered until they are past their best. What is left of my eggs have largely remained hidden in my ovaries for 44 years. Very little is known about them, and no one seems to have a definitive view of the situation: fresh or not?
Questions over whether we will ultimately get to attempt pregnancy through the use of donor eggs adds a whole new dimension to this uncertain and never ending complex maze of confusion that is ART. The fact that simple information on the process of seeking and receiving donor eggs is hard to obtain only serves to ravel the issue even further.
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