its downright little house on the prairie around here

you guys want to hear something funny? i'm trying for the bfp this month ONLY using opk's, clomid, charting, epo, flax seed, sperm friendly lube and timed intercourse. how frikking quaint is that?

greetings and salutations

firstly, a big old thanks to ms dmarie for nominating me as a rocking girl blogger. i am a girl, and on occasion, i do rawk, especially when i'm in the tub, and no one's looking (and i should be doing something else like getting ready for clinic).

i'm waiting to O, same ol, same ol. shuffle shuffle shuffle. hopefully i'll o soon but if not it's hard to call august a total loss since that sycophant loser al.berto gon.zales finally decided to cash in his chips. if only he didn't follow such a scorched earth policy regarding the constitution. still, i hope the door don't hit him where the dog shoulda bit him. seeyabye.

i have to study and i don't want to. le sigh.

oh dear

someone recently found their way here via the following search term:
eyes rolled back not breathing head injury

to them i would like to say: less with the googling and more with the calling for emergent medical help. k thx.

lucky? maybe.

am i 'lucky?' maybe, maybe not. my husband got activated by the reserves. that is unlucky. but he got activated to charles.ton. that is very lucky. we have been living together here in the boggy heat for the past two weeks or so after living apart for nearly a year. things have been a bit rocky, but i'm hoping for a rightening of ship and a smoother course soon.

anyway, back to the question of luck. my lil sister is pregnant with twins. they will be the first grandchildren on our side, and i think the first grandchildren on the father's side too. suffice it to say the relatives have about lost their collective minds. and since both our parents and her hubby's parents are divorced, there's twice as much crazy to go around. my mom wants to come over to j's apartment, stay for 3 mos, sleep in the room with the babies at night, and take care of all the night feeds. my step mom wants to 'drop by' at some random future date after they are born and hang out for a while...no leave date specified. her hubby's step mother has decided it is very important that my sis should cloth diaper, and frequently mentions several diaper services in j's area. she also thinks j should start keeping kosher, just for good measure. and because of all the divorce-step-etc relations involved, everyone wants to come but if this person overlaps with that person j's little apt will start resembling southern lebanon. it's like some Lsat problem writ large: a wants to visit, but will not come if b is there. b will come if and only if he can sit next to c. etc. etc. etc. right now she is working on a schedule to accomodate everyone's visitation requests. "you're lucky" she says to me "because when you get pregnant you'll be in the area and can just send everyone home."

am i lucky? i guess. i don't feel lucky. i certainly don't envy her position with the constant buzzing of relatives circling overhead, throwing down flags, staking claim, protesting she's playing favorites with this relative over that one, bartering, whining, and generally carrying on. on the other hand, i would be giving birth about the same time as her if i had not miscarried; within the same week actually. it's hard to consider my self lucky on that front. i'm not in her position because i miscarried a wanted baby. i guess if i manage to get pregnant and stay pregnant sometime in the near future (knock wood, ptu ptu ptu), i'll give birth while still in school so i'll still be in the same state as the majority of the relatives. no doubt, this will make it easier for me to send them all home. on the other hand, as we all know, there are no guarantees. i definitly don't envy her position, but i don't think i'm lucky that i'm not in it. there are good sides to it, but ultimately it's where i find myself, not where i wanted to be.

today is day 1 of clo.mid.

your a$$vice, please

apparently, there's a big public health problem out there that i was formerly completely unaware of. if you guessed snor.ting ad.vil, you are exactly right! i'll be honest, i was completely oblivious of the ad.vil snorters, before starting a blog. don't get me wrong, i love me some ad.vil. love it. feel blessed and grateful to live in a time and place where it's available. don't know why people would choose to snor.t it, but hey, it's their nostrils and their ad.vil. i just wish google would stop linking us!

my temp dropped to day and i have a feeling AF will show up tonight. so, the 2nd IUI was a bust. i'm pretty sure i didn't ovulate after the shot, either because they had me trigger too early (boo on the clinic), because i forgot the powder in the car for 4hrs on a hot day (boo on me), or just because (boo on ... uh... the irony loving powers that be?).

anyway, i'm here in SC for the next month, and so will not be able to do an IUI. too expensive and logistically complicated to get both of us up to DC for the monitoring etc. i could take clo.mid this cycle w/o doing an IUI. that would be my third clo.mid cycle. at my clinic, you only get 6 cycles of clo.mid before they move you on to bigger and better things (HA!). i don't want to 'waste' a clo.mid cycle if the odds are low bec of no iui. on the other hand, it would be hard to let this cycle go by with nothing but well timed intercourse (HA again! [derisive snort] well timed intercourse...HA i say![chuckles under breath]). what do you guys think? your a$$vice greatly appreciated.

false hope v. prolonging the inevitable

i'm scared to pee on another stick. *if* i ovulated 36hrs after the trigger (like a regular person would) the neg at 11dpo/dpiui is quite damning. BUT if i o'd 2 days later, as seems possible or even likely, than the neg was only at 9dpo. in that case, a neg is somewhat acceptable.

my temps are still up but we stirrup queens know how fate likes to f*ck with us. testing tomorrow would be cd13/cd11 which seems late enough in either case to get a definitive result. if i wake up with low temps i won't even have to test. on the other hand, if i wake up with elevated temps and don't test, i can hang on to hope even if it's not warranted. which is better, false hope or early despair? i can pick one or the other tomorrow. it seems like false hope is better in the short run and getting the despair started with already (if it's going to come anyway) is better in the long run. i know testing doesn't affect the outcome...but it will affect the kind of morning i'm going to have tomorrow.

equivocating over a pee stick. does it get much lower? at least i haven't bothered with the means-nothing-2ww-are-my-boobs-sore crap. well, its tumbleweeded on through but i make it keep on tumbling. is that twinge a bfp or af on her way? how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

LE SIGH.

meh

bfn 11 days post iui (cant say post O since not sure when i ovulated). if ovulated on friday (as i suspect i might) then i'm 9 days post O. well, who knows.

meh.

curiously google directed someone to my blog with the search term 'kids snorting ad.vil.' (without the period, of course) i'm not sure why. i'm not sure i ever stated a position on that (nor even much considered it.) however, since google seems to think i know something about it let me state, categorically, for the record, i think it is a bad idea. ad.vil is for eating, not snorting. i'm not sure what the benefit of immediate release ad.vil is either, but if someone would like to let me know, i'm open to new ideas. my guess on it is kids will snort anything that can be crushed, and ad.vil happened to be available. ah, the joys of youth.

i'm at a conference in tam.pa this weekend, where, curiously, it is not as painfully hot as charleston, even though tam.pa is further south, and also located in the so-called "sunshine state". tam.pa is only 90 degrees whereas chucktown is, like, 4 million degrees even in the shade.

in sad news, inandoutofluck recently recieved news that she will miscarry her much wanted and hoped-for baby. please go on over and send some blog love to her at this awful time.

i has a hard day at work today

today was a toughie at work. the first part of the day went well, if slow. its a nice change not to be slammed the second you walk through the door, but when it's slow the day sort of dragggggs on. you are much more conscious of the passage of time. and then around 4pm i got slammed anyway. i had a patient that was a 7wk old status post a fall out of father's arms on friday (today is sunday) and down a flight of stairs, largely on her head. she was transfered to our facility from an outside hospital on friday after a ct scan showed a mild brain bleed. she was kept over night and discharged home on saturday after a follow up ct scan showed no change. all of our head injury patients get iv lines placed. all of them. it is better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. children die for want of iv access. anyway, this baby was a tough stick on friday and it took multiple attempts for them to place the line. of course, when she was sent home on saturday, they pulled the line.

today she came in for increased lethargy and vomiting. mom reported vomiting 12x in the past 8-12hrs. basically, nothing was staying down. mom also reported that she was getting over a gi bug. so then the consideration is gi bug vs exacerbation of head injury. either way, the baby was getting an iv placed. i think it goes without saying, that putting a line in a 2 mos old is not easy under the best of circumstances. and these were not the best of circumstances: the baby had vomited most of the day and was probably quite dehydrated. it was even harder today considering that all of the best places were used up on friday. i'm pretty good at placing lines, but i tried twice and couldn't get it. another nurse tried once and couldn't, and finally a third nurse with the 4th stick total today placed the line. i wish i could say it is unusual to have to stick so many times for a line, but it isn't in a baby. newborns have veins the size of threads, which you are trying to thread a catheter into, and older babies have slightly bigger veins which are generally completely obscured by their fat pads. anyway, the mom just cried the e-n-t-i-r-e time we were placing the line. she bawled straight through. i know it is hard to see your baby get stuck, but that was really hard to take.

and then as i was leaving we had a 4mos old come in by ems and that baby looked like crap. the color was all off, and she was bruised. mom says the story is she left the baby with dad, and when she came home the baby was lying in the crib not breathing, with her eyes rolled back. she reports that dad reports the baby fell off the sofa to the floor, he picked her up and put her in the crib. uh huh. sure. i'm going to go out on a limb here and say i don't think so.

trigger failure?

has anyone ever heard of an HCG shot failing to induce ovulation? i triggered Mon eve at 10p. on thurs am my bbt was 97.4. this morning it was 97.0. granted, it was 6am this morning after not much sleep. but still, 97.0 is a low temp, even for me. usu after a thermal shift my sleep deprived temps will at least be >97.5.

i know i gave myself the shot mon nite, and i know it's in my system because i took a dollar store urine hcg test both tues AM and this morning, and got the coveted double line both times. so, i know i injected something that contained at least some quantity of hcg.

i called the RE's office at wal.ter.re.ed and the physician told me that basically it is impossible not to ovulate after the hcg trigger. you can ovulate immature eggs that then fail to fertilize, but allegedly everyone ovulates after the hcg shot. well, i shot myself (HA!) mon eve and have not had an elevated temp yet. so, how can that be? she did not know either, but advised that i stop taking my bbt.

so, does anyone know? can a person fail to ovulate after a trigger shot?

i hate to recall this, but i did forget the unmixed ovi.drel in my car for about 4 hrs on a hot day...maybe i weakened it?

i guess if i somehow did fail to ovulate the iui might still work if i ovulate, say, today? argh, who knows!

and the 2ww officially starts...NOW!

when we got there this am (poor cl on 2hrs sleep) i talked with them a little about my less-than-spectacular follicular development. the np doing the insemination told me were she in charge of my protocol that month, she probably would have waited one more day for the follicles to mature and then had me trigger tues eve for a thurs am insemination. as i had already triggered monday eve, it was a moot point. maybe salt in the wound if you consider the 8+hr drive and all the missed clinicals for monitoring. and the 'don't worry, this could still work!!' didn't exactly fill me with enthusiasm either.

the prob with my RE clinic (an army clinic since cl is in the army) is there is no single provider i see each time, or even with any regularity. the residents rotate thru every month and the attendings rotate thru every 6 mos. the NP is the most stable person there, but her appts fill up very quickly and this month she had no availability on my cd11,cd12 or cd13. it is good care in that the financial burden to us is minimal. but it is bad care in that it is very very fragmented...i am a patient of the clinic, not of any specific person, so often it feels like i'm at the helm of a rudderless ship. and second guessing the IUI timing the morning of the IUI kinda sucks. especially because i also worried that maybe i was triggering too early, but it was cd15 already and, as the resident repeatedly stated, most people already have triggered by that point.

i guess if this cycle doesn't work we will just have to do things differently the next time. on the other hand, i don't want to write it off entirely because i did have an 18mm (which is completely reasonable to trigger with) and a 15mm that might have matured with the extra boost from the hcg shot. i also don't want to write it off too early because of all the effort we went thru. and also because of the associated bad karma...i had misgivings my entire last pregnancy (i say entire...it was 7wks long! ha!) and so when i did m/c part of me wondered if somehow my misgivings contributed to it. i wonder if scheduling appts NOW for next month's monitoring is prematurely writing this cycle off? its a tough balance between not getting your hopes up and not writing it off.

ANYWAY, it's done. the 2ww officially starts now. fingers crossed!

8pm, 550 miles to go...

poor cl! his flight out of SC was delayed, the connection missed. the airline offered to put him on a later connection; an 1105p out of atlanta. it was a really tough call..but if that flight was cancelled, he'd be stuck in atlanta at 1105p with no way to dc before tomorrow am and we'd miss the IUI. the way our clinic works, all IUI's happen at 8a, but the male partner has to show up by 7a. so, the question was, fly to atlanta on the delayed flight and hope nothing happens with the 1105 dc connection? or drive 8+hrs and get in at 4a. we are people of little faith, so he decided to drive...he's driving now. poor guy.

(i just checked and his flight out of atlanta is on time for an 11:05 departure. of course, if he were on that flight, it would be cancelled i'm sure.)

you know you're alone in the world when...

...you give your own self a shot in the ass.

my blisters have blisters

just back from an ultimate tournament in wild.wood new.jersey. it's a beach tournament and fun as hell but HOLY CRAP am i sore today. the insides of each toe are swollen and blistered. the irony is i hobbled all around today at my orthopedic clincal. i didn't dare mention that i spent the weekend at the beach playing ultimate, because that would imply that: a) i had free time and b) i did not spend my "free" time studying. since i could not name the divisions of the ulnar nerve below the antecubital fossa, i certainly do NOT have time to be playing ultimate on the beach. anyway, wild.wood is crazy...it looks like a carnival threw up on the boardwalk. nevertheless it was a lovely tournament and i will put pictures up as soon as my lazy ass gets around to it.

speaking of lazy...on thurs i had a 13 and an 11 and a smattering of littles. you figure 1mm/day minimum, 2mm/day average and 3mm/day possible because of the clo.mid. today i had 1 18mm, a 15mm and a 14mm and some littles. so, either the 13mm did the minimum amound of growing acceptable, or it arrested and the 11 powered up to the plate. either way, on the strength of the 18mm i'm triggering tonight for a weds iui. hopefully that one will be mature enough but we can't wait much longer because quadruplets are not my thing. for some people, maybe. for me, definitly not.

i'll take mine scrambled

i'd like to indicate, for the record, that i must have some anatomy in some very interesting places because no one can find anything they're supposed to on the first pass. so, to clarify for any of my health care providers that are reading:

1--where my my cervix?
i'll tell you straight up it's posterior. point the speculuum about 40 degrees south of where you think it should be, and you just might find it. i don't know why it keeps such bad company. usually i have this conversation after what seems like endless minutes in the stirrups, and great gnashing of teeth (mine, theirs). i think i should have it beforehand from now on.

2--where is my right ovary?
i know i have one, lets start with that. today it was located hanging out at dairy queen. who doesn't want a blizzard? best way to image it is to put the dildocam perpindicular to the hooha and set the phaser to 'stun.'

the news from the almighty divining rod was mixed. the best thing to see is one nice big follicle. i've got two mediums (a 13mm on the right and an 11mm on the left) as well as a smattering of littles. i'm going back on monday for another look-see, because the picture was too mixed to give me a definitive trigger date.

so, i have two problems (or slightly more than that). one is that monday is the next day i'm supposed to rotate with the orthopedic dr. of course. we are talking about someone who got thyroid cancer during her residency and took a grand total of 2 wks off. i lied about where i was today, because skipping clinical to get wanded is not acceptable. now i have to be late to the very next clincal with her for the very same reason. the nice thing is that the RE is going to see me at 720am so i can be out of there as soon as possible. the bad part is i'm still going to be about 1/2 hr late or more :(. my sis thinks i should tell her ahead of time that i'm going to be late, but that involves coming up with a plausible reason that i will be late, and there isn't any, really.

problem 2 is that i left the nov.arel powder in the trunk for 4 hrs today (HOT), because i'm not that bright. it isn't mixed or into solution anything but the box clearly says 'store at room temp' as does the package insert. so, odds that i turned a very expensive medicine into weak table salt? anyone?

you say it's your birthday?

Happy Birthday to Ms Jilly Sue!

playing hooky to get dildo-cammed.

le sigh..

meh. today i'm in a meh kinda mood. i'm a student, so all of my time is owned by other people. except when i'm at work, when, actually, it is still owned by other people. thursday afternoon is the great and powerful wanding, but it is also a day i'm supposed to rotate in the afternoon with the orthopedic dr. i thought about trying to shift the appt, but it has to stay on thursday and no time on thurs would be better than any other, unless it was a morning appt, but the RE clinic doesn't have AM appt's on thursdays so blah blah blah. i guess i'm going to call in sick and deal with the repercussions (sp?) monday, which is the next time i rotate in orthopedics. i have a derm clinic rotation in the same building thurs AM, which i'm still planning to go to. the derm people and the ortho people don't hang out much, but watch, i'll get caught by the ortho dr in the hallway or something. SO very 7th grade. i remember when cutting school was fun, like to go shopping or veg or pretend to be bad asses, or to have something more fun than a dildo cam...well...i digress.

i think this sentiment from mel is really beautiful: I still love you / when you don't appear / and remain only a dream


updated**************************
today i had to ask myself the following really thought provoking question: can i possibly drop one more thing? i thought i'd outdone myself by dumping both my water and my ketchup (a vegetable! ask reagan) onto the floor in one fell swoop. but when i knocked the open container of yogurt out of the fridge and onto my pants and all over the floor when trying to replace my poorly squandered ketchup (a vegetable still), i was forced to conclude in the affirmative. i've since declared myself a walking disaster area and i'm sending myself straight to bed, still ketchup deprived, even though its not yet 9pm. le sigh!!!