BabyGate 2009 - Part 2

I had been suffering through my sugar-free diet (or, as I call it, my meat and fat diet) for 3 weeks. David drove me to the HCG test; a quick procedure at an outpatient surgery center. Our insurance company agreed to pay for part of this $800 day, and we were ever so grateful to them for finding it in their hearts to do THEIR JOBS.
I asked a few times if the test hurt, and everyone assured me it wasn't so bad. Just a little cramping, sometimes. So while I sat in the little waiting room area, wearing an open-back gown, I texted David out in the lobby and read trashy websites about addicted celebrities and their pets. Feeling no pressure. The curtain separating my room from the next room was camouflaged and had a picture of a deer. I love Florida.
They called me into the "surgery" room, the brightest room in the WORLD. I laid down on the table and the nurse came in to do the procedure.
"Hey girl!" she said. "She" is Winnie. I like her. She is very funny and makes many uncomfortable processes bearable and almost fun. Like the time she had to give me an internal ultrasound so she could confirm I had PCOS. She announced I had the cutest little uterus in town, and then remarked that my cervix looked like a smiley face. She then offered to let Dave see my smiling cervix. He looked at me like a child who stares at his mom after his best friend asks him if he can sleep over. "Can I mom? Can I?"
Winnie chatted and giggled with me as she set up her tools for the HCG. "...and they forgot the cheese! After all that, they forgot the cheese!" The other nurses were laughing at Winnie's story, too. Then, I got hot. I got hot, and started sweating. The procedure began and holy shit, EVERYONE LIED. No big deal my ASS. My entire stomach clamped down and my insides felt like they were going to explode. The whole thing lasted only 3 minutes, and in that 3 minutes I re-thought my entire life, including all forms of hair waxing as well as high heels. Nothing else ever has the right to cause me pain again.
As soon as it was over, I sat straight up to look at the X-Ray screen to see if everything was OK. Part of the pain was the panic that my tubes were broken. And before I could express my relief and joy to see that everything was fine, I decided to try and schedule an epidural in advance in case I ever actually experience labor.
Days later, my doctor was glad to see my XRays and scheduled my first fertility cycle. Fertility cycle. It was so weird to say that. It was so weird to live it. I was NOT a girl who drank excessively, smoked, or lived an unhealthy lifestyle. I wasn't sick or overweight. I was just a normal girl. And here, I'm dealing with a fertility cycle.
It included an oral drug and a big, fat, shot. I had to order all my own medicine from a crazy pharmacy far, far away and it came WITH THE NEEDLE!! AHH!!! I peeked at the needle and it was nearly 4 feet long. My first reaction was to go eat a candy bar, but damnit if I couldn't even do that. So I put it in the cabinet and ignored it, even though it whispered my name and taunted me everytime I walked by ("Errriiin! I'm goonnna stick yooou!"). I took the pills and went to the doctor about once a week after that to get ultasounds. During these ultrasounds, the nurses measured the size of my follicles.
What's a follicle, you ask? (Oh come on, you know you're curious.)
Follicles are the little bags of cells that keep the eggs all warm and comfy inside the ovary. When you have PCOS, cysts replace the follicles and they call the eggs names and spread rumors about them on Facebook. It's very hurtful to the eggs.
So as the day approached for my first ultrasound, I hoped and prayed that I would be one of the girls Pam the nurse told me about. The girls who responded to the first round of fertility drugs and got pregnant right away. I hoped...