It’s that time of the year.
Being a glass half empty kind of a gal, I have to do my best to not view the year as being over by the time we pass June. It is a yearly ritual. Something I blame on too many years spent as a student*, viewing the world and indeed my life in terms of the calendar year. In the latter half of the year I tend to dismiss the months remain as the fag end of the calendar, making my own silent vows to make better use of my time in the New Year.
Since infertility and ART reared its ugly head in my life, I have become rather time obsessed. I am not suggesting that IVF has assisted me in making better use of my time. Sadly, the real result seems to be an acute obsession with passing time that seems to lead to even more time wasting than my old ways.
Continue reading The new life starts here!
Watch out world! Lifeslurper is writing a book.
Now before you all go out and pillage local publishers for showing such poor taste, please note this is only a pipe dream. One of those many things that infertility and the ensuing IVF treatments prompt me to recall.
Creativity is extremely important to this little brown duck. Yet I freely admit that the daily grind has assisted me in largely losing touch with any real forms of imagination. I associate creativity with beauty; imaginings that can find a simple form of beauty in the most mundane of acts, places and people. Continue reading Lifeslurper’s nom de plumage
One of the many complicated emotions that flood the psyche at the end of an unsuccessful IVF cycle is that of failure. This runs deeper than the vain attempt to become pregnant, and the ultimate failure: not having a baby. Having little to show for our infertility labours is damaging to the confidence of any person going through IVF treatment. Going back time and time again to face certain failure is crushing. It starts to bleed into all aspects of our existence. Continue reading Hardly working for ART
Post Cycle Anxiety Disorder?
Teddy Lifeslurper wondered if the Crinone brand extensions had been a wise choice.
Is there such a thing as ‘post cycle anxiety disorder?’ If there isn’t already then I have just coined a name for what is probably a common condition.
Five spectacularly unsuccessful IVF cycles down and some strange things have been happening. I feel different to what I did before, and here was me priding myself on my ‘superior’ knowledge of self. I am at a loss to really describe the situation with any clarity.
I have become vague, worse than what usually occurs a few days in on a stimulation cocktail of FSH injections and Synarel nasal spray. I am word searching all the time. I speak and not only the words but the entire topic goes completely from my mind. A mind as empty as my womb. What is happening? I have seriously been wondering if I had some kind of breakdown or if I am heading straight from IVF to Alzheimers.
Sure, I live with depression, but this is something else. I have a sense of panic in most things I do, even the most simple of tasks. Feelings of being overwhelmed when deciding what to cook for dinner, which lane to drive in, and which supermarket register to line up at. Actually, I feel a complete loss at most things these days.
It is easy to blame IVF for everything. I know I do blame IVF for most things. Here at the Lifeslurper Spa Resort it has become a favourite comment; borrowing from the old ‘letters to the editors’ featured in newspapers of yore, before the days of online comments when it was popular to include the line; “…of course, I blames the government” somewhere in the body of the letter. Here we say; “I blames the IVF!” as a response to any event such as when the tea bag supply runs low, or when a light globe blows. It is quite convenient to have a handy scapegoat ready.
Yet something more seems to be amiss. Continue reading Post Cycle Anxiety Disorder?