Categories: to-be-categorised
Tags: explanations, IVF, injections, hormones, scan
Date: 22 October 2009 08:00:36
*Disclaimer - this post was not written this morning, I am deliberately posting these entries on different dates so that I can be fully open about this IVF stuff without people knowing exactly what is happening when. It's a self preservation thing, with all of the injected hormones I become a bit of an emotional wreck, and am saving myself the pressure of people curious to know outcomes before I'm ready to tell.
As the drugs begin to take hold, I start to have regular scans, to check firstly that everything is as it should be, and then later on to check in addition to that how many eggs the hormones have made me produce, and how progressed they are.
TMI?
So, when I said scan, you probably pictured the kind of scan given to pregnant ladies with the gel on their tummies and a device magically picking up pictures from inside of them by merely touching the outside of their skin?
Maybe you've had one of these scans? I have, in the days I was still using the NHS instead of having to cough up thousands of pounds per cycle, they made me sit with all of the pregnant women and wait my turn, to see my empty womb on the grainy black and white screen (no, I didn't get a photo).
The preparation for those scans involves drinking as much water as your bladder can possibly hold and then trying not to go pee before your turn comes in the queue. These scans are different. These scans are internal scans. The preparation this time means trying not to drink very much beforehand, and making sure you go to the loo before going in to the scan room (no queues this time, not NHS, see). Then going behind the curtain, undressing from the waist down, grabbing a sheet to maintain some decency, sitting right on the edge of the bed, and then placing your feet in the stirrups and finally lying back.
The instrument used to scan doesn't look entirely unlike the chest-burster from Alien. It is covered in a Durex and plenty of lube, and then inserted, well, you can guess where... it's then manoeuvred around to find everything they need to see, which for some reason always involves pushing it up against the left wall of my womb, whist simultaneously pressing down on it from the outside. Yes, that bit hurts.
TMI?
Today's scan was fine, at least I assume it was, I'm carrying on with the treatment anyway. I take it they'd tell me if it was all wrong..?
In addition to the scan I learned how to use my next lot of medicine, which involves a certain level of alchemy (breaking the top off glass ampoules, dissolving magic powdered hormones, and attaching a tiny needle to an already full syringe), I start this tomorrow morning.
Oh, and in case what will be two injections and two pills every morning was a bit too amateur, I've been given a third (steroid) pill as a last minute thought by the fertility nurse in case it might help. No consultation to the consultant (shouldn't his title mean that he should be approached for some opinion?), in this part of the universe, the nurses rule.