Shots, Secrets & Symptoms

Saturday, 1-2-10 (Day 4)

Dexamethasone (.75mg, oral pill): I'm starting to feel those strangely familiar and completely unstoppable hunger cravings that sneak up on me when I least expect it. And in the way of confessions, I may as well come clean and admit that I gave in today and had a gingerbread frappachino, and it wasn't caffeine free.

Caffeine free frappachinos do exist; but they have a strange cream base that just doesn't taste right. And the bottom line is that I had full intentions of starting off the new year right by taking charge of the cravings this little blue pill drives me insane with, yet somehow I only managed to make it to the second day of the new year.

I don't suppose Starbucks will grant my plea for a great tasting organic caffeine free frappachino, so I'll need to find a new outlet for frustration that doesn't come in the form of a high cost, high calorie, egg polluting drink.

Maybe I'll look into yoga.

Lupron (10units, subQ injection): For my first IVF cycle back in July, I proudly displayed my army of pills and potions on the bathroom counter for all to see, waking up extra early to administer the injections and pop the pills. Then, for my second IVF cycle I turned it down a notch by still proudly displaying my colorful collection of drugs, but waking up just in time to inject the pre-filled syringes I'd prepared the night before out of pure laziness, usually still in a sleep induced coma while doing so.

And now, for my third attempt at IVF, I've resorted to hiding everything. Nothing lines the bathroom counter on display for all to see. Needles, vials, pills, suppositories and cartridges are all hidden in secret compartments with locations planned and laid out precisely so that no one sees them, but I still remember to take them.

It's really starting to sink in that this is a secret cycle.

Other than my parents and my wonderful blog readers, no one in real life knows what we're up to. Right now it's fairly easy to hide, especially since I'm only taking one pill and one injection in the early hours of the day, but in a week or so everything will change. I'll start stims injections that are taken in the early evening-often when we are out and about-and then the two-and-a-half hour trips to and from Sacramento will begin. I work at the family business, so taking time off work without a proper explanation will be completely doable but hard, and hiding the location of our destination will be even more difficult, especially since the trips will be fairly sporadic according to my intense follicle count and monitoring schedule.

But instead of feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the upcoming chain of events that will include secret, out of town doctor appointments, hidden injections and no doubt numerous white lies, I'm actually thriving from the future drama and pure excitement of it all.

Sneaking around just may be a fabulous addition to an otherwise redundant routine after all.

Sunday, 1-3-10 (Day 5)

Dexamethasone (.75mg, oral pill): The plan is to keep only healthy, guilt free foods in the house so that when an attack comes in to play, I won't mess it up.

Starting tomorrow, of course.

Lupron (10units, subQ injection): Lupron supposedly comes with a whole slew of side effects to make life difficult, from nightly hot flashes and sweats to hard core migraines, and even disrupted sleeping patterns coupled with fatigue. But my nurse coordinator swears I'm on a super low dose, and therefore shouldn't be affected by any of this madness.

Despite the warning that any symptoms I experience would most likely be in my head, I remember feeling slight exhausted almost constantly during my first IVF, and for my second cycle I had a few hot flashes and an occasional headache. But this time around I've hit a new little mountain of a symptom, where I find myself waking up all night long.

I don't like it.

Sleep and I have always been best buds; I've never had trouble falling asleep nor have I had any problems staying asleep. But lately I'll be dreaming away, holding a frappachino in one hand and juggling a baby in the other, but just as I get the baby settled and reach over to take a drink of that carmel poison, suddenly it's all over. I'm wide awake-with no baby and no frappachino-and I can't go back to sleep.

I really shouldn't be complaining though, any symptom I've ever experienced throughout this process has been nothing more than super mild and short lived, certainly nothing I haven't been able to climb over. And besides, starting tomorrow I'll no longer be on birth control pills and officially cut my Lupron dose in half, most likely ending the insanity of our first mountain range once and for all.

At least until it's time to climb the next one.

"That first peak is the best place to pause and look back, to learn the lessons from the first climb. And it is the best place to examine the terrain ahead, to change your plans and goals, to take a deep breath and begin climbing again."

-Michael Johnson