reality.

Meeting with the reproductive endocrinologist in T-minus three hours. I'm nervous. Not about anything in particular. There's nothing particularly anxiety producing about an IVF cycle that isn't supposed to actually end in a baby. Daily injections, but I'm going to have to start them soon anyway. All of these invasive procedures required that I go off of my oral blood thinners and start on the sub-Q stuff, so in about three weeks I should probably start getting those injections, plus Lupron for a couple weeks, then daily injections of follicle stimulating hormone to make my usually placid ovaries go into overdrive and mature ten plus eggs, which after several days and one injection of hCG, will be sucked out of my engorged ovaries with an aspiration syringe. Doesn't sound like it could be much worse than high-dose prednisone and I'm guessing that when I'm dry heaving on a hospital floor at three in the morning after four or five doses of chemo, I'll be dreaming of needle pricks and hormone-induced psychosis.

If you can't laugh, right?

I bought a couple of wigs last week. They're very cool. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Doesn't sound like a bad idea now. But as I look at them sitting on their fake heads in my room, a short cotton candy pink bob, long black hair with dark blue streaks, and shoulder length electric blue hair, I can't actually see myself feeling up to wearing them while being isolated, either in the hospital or at home. Maybe I'll be in a blue hair mood at some point during recovery, but who knows. I don't even wear a bra when I feel like crap - am I really going to feel like dealing with wig tape? Probably not.

So BF and I went to the fabric store the other night and picked out a bunch of great fabrics to make into headscarves. I got enough of one very cute flannel to make some pajama bottoms out of too. BF looked at me as I was showing him head scarves online and said "You know you're really going to look like a cancer patient in one of those, right?" I guess I won't be a part of the "but you don't look sick club anymore". It doesn't really change anything though. I'm sick either way.

This week has been especially difficult. My hands have been really bad and I think I have pneumonia. I had a CT in the ER on Saturday night, but it's impossible to tell if it's pneumonia or just what my lungs look like without comparing two CTs side-by-side. So I'm trying to get in to see me PCP, but you'd think I was trying to make an appointment for something fun because I can't even get through to the receptionist.

All right, I'd better go get the little man out of his jammies and away from the TV so that he can go to my mom's to be spoiled and I can go downtown to be prodded.