Still Reeling

I spoke with the nurse yesterday morning. She called me first thing Monday after I left the message on Friday afternoon.

After asking me how it was going and I was silent for a second, she offered, "Are you devastated?" I explained to her that, yes, I was absolutely devastated. In a very polite, honest, real tone, as if talking to a friend, I just explained everything to her. I didn't hold back. I explained to her how this was our last cycle, how frustrated I was to have spent $2400 dollars and not to have even had a chance, how we drained the last of our savings to do it, and how ironic it was that the fertility doctor was telling me to stay away from my husband. I told her that I didn't understand what happened from Thursday to Friday for the doctor to have changed his mind. She explained that she didn't think he thought the smaller follicles were going to grow like they did. After reading him the sizes over the phone she said he was like, "Wait, how many?" and knew by the tone in his voice that he was going to cancel. She said she was thinking, "You're not even going to give her a choice?" and that she told him he was going to have to call me. She didn't want to do it. "I am so, so sorry," she said.

She is a great nurse and I hope I didn't go overboard -- I don't think I did. But I just needed to feel heard and for them to know that beyond that medical chart of numbers and levels and ultrasound pictures, there is a real person who was effected by the news and decisions made and will be reeling from it for a long time. I know they know this, but I wanted her to hear the heartbreak and be reminded of the casualties that they might have become callused to by seeing this and having to do this every day. There was just no way I could put on a happy face and pretend I wasn't effected by it, with a "you win some, you lose some" attitude and talk about the logistics of the progesterone script I needed her to call in. There was no way.

We made a follow-up appointment for a couple of weeks from now where I'm sure I will have 101 questions. The first being, you guessed it, "What the crap happened?"

In other news, the pharmacy graciously agreed to take back my Ovidrel if I promised to keep it refrigerated over the weekend. As I was driving back to the pharmacy, I just cried. It wasn't fair that I was having to do this. It wasn't supposed to be like this. On top of it all, the pharmacy is right near the doctor's office, so all of the events of last week came flooding back over me. Just one week before, I was at this office complex, full of hope and excitement, and just like that, it was all over. Just 10 days prior, I had a phone conversation regarding starting this doomed cycle with the doctor in the parking lot of the same pharmacy as I was walking in to buy Follistim to start my cycle. And now, with returning my Ovidrel, I was officially ending this cycle in the same parking lot. I guess you could say it came full circle.

It's amazing to see what kind of drama you can literally buy yourself in just 10 short days.

I am back to work tomorrow after taking a couple of days off for my mental health and the always delightful sinus allergies.

I promise my posts won't always be this depressing. ;-)