Our Last Chance Cycle will kick off soon. I have decided (with Wobbles’ approval) to do things a little different this time. I am calling on some extra help with the knowledge this might be a little controversial, and possibly a lot desperate.
It all probably amounts to too little too late as well.
Lifeslurper readily admits to being in need of an attitude adjustment when it comes to ART. Apparently, it is all that will help my elderly ovaries begrudgingly cough up some over cooked or sometimes even half-baked follicle producing eggs.
Without IVF we are stuffed. With it, we so far have nowhere. I am resentful. The fertility specialists tell us we have no hope, at the same time as they offer to sign us up for another cycle. I feel I am entered in a race that I am certain to have difficulty clearing the starting line. Continue reading The Cult of Desperation
It was never supposed to happen like this.
Today as my state and country observes a National Day of Mourning for the victims of the fires three weeks ago, I find myself launching head-long into a different kind of grief.
Perhaps it is something about disaster that makes us turn our thoughts to new life? However, here thoughts of a baby predated the fires, along with all of a dealings with fertility clinics. The fires helped me to feel that various daily concerns were petty and unimportant. Yet there is one unshakable truth. Our quest for a baby is an important.
This week has brought a stark reminder of how fraught with difficulty the desire to have a baby is for the aged and fertility challenged.
Continue reading Baby or Highway
Since moving into this crazy world of infertility treatments, I have caught a bad case of a related habit: the obsessive compulsive quest for information. It never ceases to amaze me just how many ways there are to make a baby (or not!)
Sure, if you are not fertility challenged there is one sure fire way to do this. For the rest of us poor deluded souls, there appears to be an infinite number of permutations on what seems to be a few standard ideas. Lifeslurper is slowly becoming convinced that endless array of ART protocol and medication names are put forward by fertility specialists, clinics and pharmaceutical companies the world over just to astound and confuse us the unfortunate recipients of these less than standardised treatment names and terms. Continue reading The agony of the agonist…a cycle by any other name
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?