Acts of NHS January 24, 2012

I am bored. Everything is boring. Satsuma is still playing ‘did-she didn’t-she, will-she won’t-she’, and it’s very boring of her. I haven’t lost any weight at all for a couple of weeks, which is boring too. My job is still being boring as all hell. The telly is boring. Books are boring. Knitting is boring. Ladies and gentlemen, I am losing the will to live, here.

Anyway. I got through to Miss Consultant’s secretary (an actual person! Huzzah!), who confirmed that I had indeed been put on the waiting list for a follow-up appointment with Miss Consultant (huzzah!), but that the clinic, now, no longer booked its patients in for appointments itself (what?), but rather, the waiting list was forwarded to the hospital’s main booking centre who would do the booking and letter-sending for them (the fuck?). She gave me the number of the booking centre, and now I feel exactly like I’ve completed level 1, killed the boss, and now am doing it all over again only with more bullety meteorites being flung at my head for longer. On the other hand, I am on the waiting list. I haven’t been flung into the NHS oubliette yet. *sarcasm* I am a mere tadlet more relaxed now *sarcasm*.

It’s been two months since I had surgery. I was looking at my scars in the shower yesterday morning. The so-called (lying liars from Lie-Land) soluble stitches never dissolved, so in the end I cut them loose with the sewing scissors and picked them out with tweezers. Don’t look at me like that. I had to. They were digging in so hard they were cutting my flesh. The one in my belly-button damn near overlays the one from the previous laparoscopy I had in 2007. The stitch-holes from that had pretty much vanished, leaving a fine white line from the main incision, so now my scars look like this:  :ll:

No doubt the redness will also fade in another few months and the whole thing will be discreet and unobtrusive.

The other scar, the one just above my left hip-bone, was stitched with unnecessary vigour and the loop of thread holding the incision shut had pinched the flesh up into a little bulge even before my healing person began to object to and swell around the stitches. The ‘soluble’ (hahahaha) thread therefore simply sawed into me like cheese-wire and left me with this: IlI , instead of this: :l:. That particular stitch was a fiddly bastard to remove and all, I can tell you. Anyway, two months later, it now looks like this: ilI , which is a minor improvement, and still itches, which isn’t. I’m not pleased.

(None of the above will make sense to you if you get my blog-posts by email or reader. Sorry).

A finger-drumming kind of post, with no updates. January 21, 2012

Item – Still no letter regarding post-operative appointment with Miss Consultant. I clean forgot to ring the hospital up again on Friday and re-harangue the answer-phone. Damn.

Item – I still haven’t ovulated. Satsuma, darling, do we really need to start this again? I thought we’d got this covered. It’s day 26. I’d prefer it if you got it together by day 16. You know, ten days ago. Yes, of course I’m fretting, you tiresome gonad.

Item – And the uncertainty and delay is not good for one’s sex-life. There’s only so much ‘well, we really should, because I might be ovulating’ humping a couple can take, after all. Especially when you add migraines and job-stress and family worries and the fact January sucks to it all. We both just want a nice cup of cocoa and an early night with a book. So badly. I am convinced Satsuma is just waiting until there’s not such a thing as a living sperm left in my person before popping. No, no, wait, that’s not sadistic enough. She’s waiting until there’s an almost vanishingly tiny chance that any sperm are left, and then she’ll ovulate, and then we get to spend the two-week-wait almost totally absolutely sure there’s no point in avoiding coffee and booze and liver and brie, but not quite.

Item – So, yeah, I got nothing. Waiting and grouching and waiting and grouching and waiting so on ad infinitum.

Item – I noticed quite a few of my Gentle Readers have unsubscribed recently. Well, yes, it is very boring round here at the moment. Sorry about that. I will try to get my head out of my depressed arse and try to be witty, at least, even if I can’t provide plot momentum and interesting drama. But not today. Today I am still sulking.

Item – On which note, I have the house to myself today (H is at a conference), so I am going to drink coffee, write emo poems and listen to radio documentaries about astronomical phenomena in literature. To the kettle, bat-pals!

My head exploded and H genned up January 17, 2012

I didn’t call Miss Consultant’s non-answering service today. I had a !@£$ing bastard son of a bastard’s barstard bastard migraine instead. Welcome back, hormonal sleep-deprived skull-crusher moments. What did I ever do without you? Why, get up and go to work, of course.

Naturally, today was a day at work I didn’t want to miss because I have Too Much To Do and Not Enough Week To Do It In. And I will no doubt have massively inconvenienced my colleagues and made extra work for them as well. Tomorrow will be horrible.

Bugger.

It’s all my fault for cheerfully announcing to my boss that I don’t seem to get migraines any more, isn’t that cool?

Hahahaha.

Last night, I had a sulk, and a cry, and a talk with H, and a temper-tantrum, and a row with H, and another cry, and didn’t get to sleep until after 2am (no idea how long after 2am – I was refusing to put my glasses back on and look at the clock at this point). H tells me that it was round about then that he thought ‘May is almost certainly going to have a migraine after this. I must remind her to take the soluble ibuprofen tabs with her tomorrow.’ Alas, eheu, he forgot to remind me, and then I was stuck on a very crowded broken-down train for 40 minutes, unable to see anything on my right properly, with everyone’s scritching head-phone leakage feeling like someone scraping the lining of my skull with a tooth-pick. I still let the pregnant lady have my seat. Yes, I do want a freakin’ medal.

At least I wasn’t sick on British Rail property. For once.

While I was lying down with a pillow over my face with the radio on extremely quietly (to distract me from the whole eye-socket-on-verge-of-shattering thing. It sort-of works. It’s better than total silence. In total silence, I can hear the blood pulsing in the ear on the worst side, and it drives me frantic), H was having coffee with an acquaintance who has just adopted a toddler.

They shared a few ‘yeah, spending your 30s trying to get/stay pregnant sucks arse‘ anecdotes, and then this kind person passed on all sorts of tips, advice, insights and things-to-note about adopting from social services in this country.

It was useful. It was interesting. Yes, we are thinking about adoption, more and more often. In Britain, you can’t adopt while still pursuing biological children – this makes perfect sense to me. Adoption should be THE goal in its own right, not the consolation prize for failing your nth IVF cycle – so H and I are not quite there yet. Or we may decide it’s not for us, and remain childless (and I would totally get five cats and a pet raven (oh, come on! What’s not to love about a pet raven? I promise I won’t call it ‘Quoth’)). But possibilities always seem more possible once you know someone else in your own city who has already done it.

Did that make sense? No? Well, don’t blame me. I had a migraine earlier today and I am entitled to be muddled for the next 36 hours.

A kind of desolate blank January 15, 2012

Item – It has been a week since I last blogged on this here blog because nothing is happening. Nothing. It’s January, it’s gloomy, my job is irritating the living shit out of me, Satsuma seems to have gone into hibernation, H’s job is irritating the living shit out of him, etc. It’s boring boring boring. Dreary dreary dreary. Meh.

Item – Also, there is still no sign of the letter offering me the appointment for the follow-up-to-the-surgery consultation with Miss Consultant. You know, the surgery that happened in November. So tomorrow I shall have to spend my tea-break trying to get through to anyone at Miss Consultant’s office who a) isn’t the cleaner or a passing patient who fancied answering the phone, b) isn’t the answer-machine (I swear to God they take the tapes out of that thing just to burn them unheard on the roof, giggling all the while), and c) has a clue who I am, how to find my record in the system, and is prepared to tell me the date of my next appointment at once without trying any ‘we’ll send you a letter’ shenannigans.

Item – Re: Satsuma having gone on strike – well, right up until Thursday, which was day 17 of this cycle, I was clearly producing No Oestrogen Whatsoever. Which is weird. For me, at least. Normally the Signs of Oestrogen are apparant by day 11. Everything that happens that isn’t like what usually happens is of absorbing interest to me, because I have now not eaten wheat for a month and a half, and I want to know if there’s a point. Is there? Do I feel better? Will it take longer before noticeable changes are noticeable? How about now? Anything? And now? Anyway, Satsuma seems to have remembered her duties (note use of word ‘seems’) and we now wait to see if I ovulated last night, or will do so at some point in the next week, or whether she really is hibernating and this is merely a yawn-and-roll-over.

Item – As for the weight-loss thing, well. Bitter McTwisted seems to have taken the veto on wheat to mean that chocolate, being wheat-free, is perfectly acceptable, as are potatoes and rice, and I have not lost a single pound. No, wait, that’s not accurate. Over the past two weeks I have lost and regained the same two pounds every four days four times over. The end result is the same, but the anxst is doubled.

Item – When I was three and old enough to have friends to tea for the event, my mother made me a double-decker bus birthday cake. I think, basically, she made three rectangular chocolate sponge-cakes, stacked them on top of one another with a ‘cement’ of butter-cream, and covered the whole thing in pink icing. It should’ve been red icing, of course, but turning the whole batch scarlet took rather more colouring than she’d bargained for, so my particular bus was resolutely, camply, sugar-pink. And the wee faces of the passengers lining every window were smarties. And I loved it. I am no better a baker now than I must have been at three (unlike my dearest Hairy Farmer Family Wifey, who is a Cake Goddess), but used to amuse me to think that when my own sproglet turned three, I’d make him or her an ineptly pink double-decker-bus cake with smarties on. After all, if I’ve remembered the cake all these years as the height of cake genius, it’d be a tradition worth insisting on. This weekend, the weekend when I should have been making this stupid bloody cake, I made vegetable soup, two portions, one for me and one for H. And later I will cook trout, two portions, one for me, and one for H. And that’s it. No third. No three-year-old third whose birthday cake should be the Great Big Stressy Thing for this weekend. Instead, I stressed out about laundry, specifically, my tee-shirts, and H’s socks. And no-one else’s anything.

Item – And then H wonders why I am so AMAZINGLY FUCKING BAD-TEMPERED this week.

My uterus becomes public property January 8, 2012

I went straight back to work on the 3rd of January. A great many colleagues were still on holiday, but damnit the students weren’t. So I have just spent a week being run off my feet. See, my job has two parts to it – the actual, this-is-my-job part, which is very geeky and technical and is, frankly, the part that I enjoy; and the well-everyone-has-to part, which I am only supposed to do for 10 hours a week because I am senior. I did the everyone-has-to part for 20 hours this week, because there was no one else to do it. Was there anyone else to do the this-is-my-job part? Well, no, because it is technical and skilled and takes training. So what do you suppose has happened to my in-tray? Exactly. ARSE.

It’s not just that I keep being made to do more hours at the boring part, that bugs me (I think it falls under ‘and any other duties as instructed by the line-manager’ in my contract, so I can’t make an almighty you’re-screwing-with-my-contract fuss). It’s that certain of the colleagues I end up doing the boring stuff with, are, eh – how to say this diplomatically? – competence-disadvantaged. Also, un-diplomatically, lazy. Sitting on arse watching May redo the task they just said they’d finished (hah!) and talking to said May about, ohhh, how much they love Strictly Come Dancing lazy. So there.

Anyhoodle. Explains blog-and-commenting-and-email silence this week. TOO EFFING TIRED. Thank you.

What was I actually going to talk about?

Oh yes. Well. My uterus has pretty much gone public, these days.

H and I had been sharing bits and pieces of information with various family members in an as-and-when please-stop-asking-me-questions I-am-NOT-going-into-details OK-thank-you-we’re-all-half-dead-with-embarrassment-now sort of a way.

It wasn’t satisfactory.

And, it would get fed back to us garbled. I mean, Lord, I very recently had a friend recommend that I get a stitch put in my cervix next time. Which is a brilliant technique and a fabulous invention for babies that are over 12 weeks gestation and still alive.

And then there was the whole will-be-indisposed-for-Christmas thing.

H, said I, let us give over this on-a-need-to-know-basis strategy. OK, so most people don’t need to know anything, but being people, they gossip and speculate and given that Cute Ute The Despoiler (her new offical title, you know) is making a normal, discreet sort of life-style pretty bloody impossible (hah! You said ‘bloody’! Funny! Hahaha!), it’d be simpler to just say ‘May has endometriosis. It hurts like being actively mauled by a bear. She/we will not be joining you camping/in the sauna/for dinner/ever. Don’t know what we mean? Google it. Hell, google it with the safety search off and look for images. Dare you.’

In short order, this lead to:

1. H, having been cornered by a particularly nosy aunt of mine who wanted to know how I was, actually telling her. Aunt’s response: ‘Have you joined a prayer-circle?’, which was a tad WTF even for my family, but a vast vast improvement over justrelaxpropyourhipsupafterwardseatpineappleitwasn’tarealbabyanyway, so I’ll take it with thanks.
2. Me bawling like a very small child with a burst balloon because my mother was nice to me, and then spending two days in bed at her house rather than my house and it was fine. Except for the bit where I was retching so loudly they could hear me downstairs. Umm. Yes. Well.
3. H’s parents were told that we were not coming down on the 27th for the family lunch thing because I had got my period, and, err, no. Which was also fine (I think I have mentioned before that since we let my FiL know I take tramadol for it, he awards me massive kudos. He took tramadol once, post-surgery, and hallucinated extravagantly. If I need a drug that unpleasant every month, in his eyes I am Rambo).
4. When we did go down, my MiL and I ended up having a quiet ladies-only chat about the state of the innards and the progress (what progress?) of Project Grandbabies For MiL. And I was very blunt and open about it, for once, rather than dissembling wildly and trying to turn the topic to something less anxsty, like, oh, gardens! Weather! Books! Trees! Soup! So MiL now has a good understanding of the fact that a) H and I have been trying to have a child together since shortly after we got married nearly seven years ago (seven years? Jesus). b) The endo/adeno thing is horrible and might get worse. c) It may well lead to IVF. d) Yes, I am too old and too fat for NHS IVF unless my GP and Miss Consultant between them are feeling very persuasive as technically the money for my one round of NHS IVF was put aside years ago but there’s no guarantee it’s still there as the NHS is cutting services all over Britain. e) We can afford to go private. g) But it’s still jolly expensive (I don’t swear infront of my MiL (hence lack of ‘f’)). h) Losing all those pregnancies made me very sad and cross. My MiL, bless her, responded by saying it was all very unfair and hard on us, and then, double-bless her, started looking up homeopathic remedies to help me. I let her. I have as much faith in homeopathy these days as I do in Jeffrey Archer’s probity, but MiL is a fervent believer and it is pretty important to be able to feel you’re doing something half-way helpful when your family is being repeatedly kicked in the nuts.
5. Any day now, someone at work with an IQ above room-temperature and the ability to count to 30 without taking their socks off and borrowing a neighbour’s hands, will realise that I go off sick for a couple of days every month. At monthly intervals. See? I mean, my boss knows and her boss knows and her second-in-command knows and the HR liaison knows, but they’re all discreet and well-behaved. I’m just waiting for one of the Gossipy McYourBusiness clan to work it out. And then I shall, well, I shall tell them to google it. Images. With safe-search off. While eating.

In other news, H’s grandfather has been sent home at last, so clearly he’s feeling better, and is well enough to, we all hope, get some peaceful and pleasant time in with his friends and relations.

And (because it’s all about meeee, or, at least, this blog is), I do have the satisfaction of knowing I haven’t deprived him of great-grand-children. One of H’s cousins has got that covered. I’d've preferred it to be us, because we’ve been together since The End of History, we aren’t using contraception deliberately, and we’re a good ten years older than said cousin, but Mother Nature can be such a pill like that.

That thing my sister said January 3, 2012

On Christmas Day, during Christmas dinner, we all toasted absent friends. This of course included Diva, my youngest sister, who was spending Christmas with her father, my ex-step-father. And I remembered that ex-step-father and his partner had announced they were expecting a baby back in July. Or, they had announced it to Diva, who’d told my mother, who then phoned me up at work in a state of cheerful gossipy excitement to tell me all about it, and I had been typically infertile-step-child disgruntled about it, because, frankly, I was instantly consumed with envy, and because, very frankly, I dislike my ex-step-father and though Diva assures me he has mellowed a great deal since, he made my adolescence so almighty fucking miserable I don’t know if I could warm to him if he became the Dalai Lama.

Anyway, because, nevertheless, I am well-bought-up, and because it concerns my beloved Diva finally getting to be a big sister after being the family baby all her life, and because (and I have this in writing, despite disgruntle and envy, see above link-to-post) I wished my ex-step-father’s partner well, and I wanted the baby to be fine, I asked how they all were. Surely the baby was due any minute, if they made the announcement in July?

‘Oh,’ said my mother, ‘that’s not happening any more.’

What? Seriously? Seriously?

I think I said I was so very sorry to hear that, and that my heart went out to ex-step-father and his partner, and then I looked at my plate and tried very hard not to sob right into it, and felt miserably furious with myself for ever having been scathing about and envious of their luck, and, oh, poor Diva, no baby brother or sister for her after all.

Minx, uncertain but curious, being eight, then asked ‘did the baby die?’

And Trouble (my sister her mother), answered ‘well, it wasn’t ever really alive, so it couldn’t've died.’

I have a voice, I have been told, of steel and flint, when I am very angry but resolutely trying not to shout. So in my voice of steel and flint, I answered ‘that’s absolutely not for you to say. It’s up to the parents to say if they felt their baby was alive.’

Trouble said, ‘well, that’s debatable.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ I replied, steel and flint now with extra rail-road and don’t-fuck-with-me. ‘At least, not by you. You have no right to decide how people think or feel about their babies.’

And then I ate the rest of my dinner without looking anywhere at all except either at the plate or straight ahead. In case I felt the shoulder-seams of my cardigan tear as my skin flushed bright emerald green.

Trouble deals with being chastised in two ways. Either she bears a grudge and sulks for days before finally breaking out in an impassioned rendition of ‘Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll eat some worms (and die in agony and it’s all your fault)’. Or, she becomes unusually affectionate and good-humoured. I got the affectionate, good-humoured Trouble for the rest of the visit. I can only assume she remembered who exactly she was talking to and decided to let it go as I was clearly a tad unhinged by my own experiences. I can only hope she thought about it and realised I was, actually, right.

Diva’s tiny sibling was alive, because its parents told everyone it was there, and everyone was expecting it to join us. My even tinier, heart-and-nervous-system-free embryos that all tanked before seven weeks, were also alive (if pretty damn watery, bless them) because I knew they were there, and oh, so wanted them to stay. And that’s what matters. And it’s not debatable.

Let me explain, with many, many parentheses January 2, 2012

So, how did I end up at the In-Laws despite a cunning plan to get out of going to the In-Laws because of my uterus and its monthly Armageddon?

The original, pre-impending-menstruapocalypse Christmas plan was: Go to my mother’s on Christmas Eve. Stay until the 27th. On said 27th, go to the In-Laws’. Go home on the 29th. Spend New Year’s Eve barricaded in own flat, eating Potatoes Dauphinoise.

The plan-we-ended-up-with was go to my mother’s on Christmas Eve. Stay until Boxing Day (the 26th) because that was when my period was due. Go home. Stay at home until said period became bearable (say, around 29th or 30th). Then, go to In-Laws until New Year’s Eve, if they still wanted us. Then go home, etc.

Visiting the In-Laws was mandatory, in some shape or form. Do you remember I told you H’s grandfather was seriously ill a few weeks ago? Well, the hospital managed to do some minor surgery to make him far more comfortable, and we all hoped he’d be well enough to go home for Christmas, though we are all aware he’s in his 90s and there is no cure for being 90, or for his health condition, especially as he’s his 90s. (I’m sorry, I know I’m being vague, but I’m trying to respect H’s family privacy to some extent, also not make myself Totally Googleable with the identifying details). Anyway, a few days after that good news, we found out that he was still very weak, and therefore would only be transferred to a smaller, more ‘convalescencey’ hospital closer to home, rather than sent actually home home. And then, a few days after that, we found out that it was not only serious but terminal, and the surgeons had done all they could to make him comfortable, yes, but it was worse than we’d first thought and this was going to be his last Christmas. Hell, we don’t even think he’ll see Easter. So H absolutely had to go and see the In-Laws and visit his grandfather.

In the end, the Christmas calvalcade went thusly:

Christmas Eve, we went to my mother’s, and my niece Minx was delighted to see us, and there was much cuddling and giggling and playing of daft games.

Christmas Day, my mother and her two talented and diligent sous-chefs, May and H, made a full-on proper with-sausages-and-sprouts-and-carrot-batons-and-potatoes-and-bread-sauce-and-gravy turkey roast for us three plus step-Dad, sister, niece, and a couple of old-friends-of-the-family (or, waifs-and-strays). And there was the traditional Christmas pudding, which we drowned in brandy and steamed for hours and still came out like rubber, at which point step-Dad confessed it had been in the cupboard for *cough*many*cough* years. Mum and I had wisely made an alternative pudding as well, because we had Had Our Suspicions. Then my uncle and nephew came over for tea-and-cake, and we opened presents around the tree, just like real families, by which point Minx had pretty much exploded with excitement, bless her. It was nice. It was actually, really, nice. OK, so the cooking-dinner bit drove me mental because I spent the entire morning chasing over the house trying to get my mother to tell me things like at what time did she want the potatoes done, but this is par for the course – my mother is a herd of squirrels all by herself. Add in my sister, small children, and my step-Dad’s habit of dealing with it all by Vanishing, and, well. Eh. It’s Christmas. Chaos and overdone turkey is normal. And, actually, really, nice. In a family’s-like-that way, not a culinary-masterpiece way, obviously.

Boxing Day, I did not get my period. I know. I know. I peed on sticks and they all said ahahahaha go away. So H and I were hauled along to a big family dinner at an aunt’s which I hadn’t even known about until, ooh, lunch-time Christmas Day, but which was also, in the end, actually rather nice (though I did have occasion to lock myself in the lavatory and roll my eyes at least twice). Also, my uterus got outed as Evil Overlord and Spoiler of Parties, not by her own self at all (thank fuckitty), but by H, who was cornered and interrogated by said aunt, and of course silence fell over the dining-table of a dozen-or-so loud and chatty people just as H said ‘endometriosis’, because life is like that. But I have a post brewing about the Outing of the Uterus, so begging your patient indulgence, I’ll get on with this recappery now instead.

By Boxing Day evening I was beginning to feel crampy and to spot, so when we got back to my Mum’s house, I was all for flinging the next part of the plan into gear – the bit where we fled back to our scruffy little flat and Endured. H was going along with this, because I have trained him well, but, as he folded his spare trousers and rounded up the discarded socks, he was being, not querulous exactly, but, anyway, our flat had no food in it, and my Mum’s house had lots, also heating and company for Hs, and if we were adopting a Total Openness And Honesty policy with regards to Cute Ute The Despoiler, did we really need to fold our tents, like the Arabs, nnd as silently steal away? I tried to explain that we did, because, well, because that was the plan, damn it. No changey the plan. Not coping. I want to run away and hide, OK? Also, ow. And I burst into tears. At which propitious moment (natch) my Mum appeared, and of course was concerned, and of course, being hugged by my mother while weeping (the CIA should try it as an interrogation technique) I sort of went ‘WAAAAAAAH my period WAAAAAAAAH being sick WAAAAAAAAH hurts WAAAAAAAAAH so humiliating WAAAAAAAAAAH wanna hide in batcave WAAAAAAAAAH!’

As a net result of this, I found myself tucked into a sort of nest made out of all Mum’s most frayed and battered towels, two hot-water-bottles, a duvet, a blanket, a lap-tray for the lap-top (audiobooks keep May sane) and an old gallon paint bucket.

The 27th I therefore spent at my mother’s.

H called his parents to say May had, err, got her period unexpectedly (lies! But, less awkward, for H at least, than saying, well, we knew we might have to change plans at short notice for nearly two weeks, errr, because, well, because we just knew, OK?) and was busy being sick in a bucket and taking tramadol (my FiL has a mighty respect for tramadol. They gave it him once post-surgery and it made him hallucinate and he now thinks it’s hardcore).

And we spent the 28th there as well, with less being sick, and more getting up in the evening and playing cards (while stoned on tramadol and diclofenac. Gentle Reader, I could not count to ten. I think I lost).

On the 29th, I felt so very well – and, yes, I know, this period sucked less than previous ones (w00t!) – that we went to the In-Laws. We’d missed the tiny-house-crammed-full extravaganza by then, so things were much quieter and calmer, and despite the your-bedroom-is-our-sitting-room thing and the no-sink-in-loo thing, all that, we managed quite well.

(Though there was the moment when my MiL saw me coming out of the loo with my handbag (purse, to you Americans) slung over my shoulder, and said, with a peal of laughter: ‘May! What on EARTH did you take your handbag into the loo for, you silly girl? Eh?’ and H, who was in the next room and overheard, swears he also heard the crunch as every single muscle on my face froze into a look of petrified horror and my shoulders hunched into a solid mass of AAAAAAAAAUGH).

Mainly, and importantly, H and I got to see his grandfather, and talk with him, and hold his hands, and let him know we loved him.

And then we came home and did the Potatoes Dauphinoise thing. And now we wait. And plan another visit. But chiefly wait.

I tried. December 30, 2011

So, there was this 2000-word post all about Christmas chez May and H’s various in-laws and out-laws. Mostly written between various midnights and one-in-the-mornings, and, of course, marvellous witty and eloquent.

And last night I finally pressed ‘publish’, and WordPress grandly announced it couldn’t update my post. So I pressed ‘try again’ and it took me back to a nice blank ‘Add New Post’ page.

So I used Language Unbecoming To My Mother-In-Law’s Sitting Room, and went to bed.

Anyway, I aten’t dead or anything, but I do not have time just at present to re-write the bloody thing all over again, what with sofa-bed in In-Laws’ sitting room etcetera and so forth.

Hugs and good wishes to you all,

Your somewhat disgruntled May.

Seasonal bargain assortment of broken biscuits December 24, 2011

Item – So, Gentle Readers, here’s a question for you all. I have been trying, lately, from time to time, to reply to the comments you so thoughtfully leave me. And, err, should I? Do you come back and read these? Do you like that I comment on your comments? Do you find it interesting/amusing/worrying/tiresome [delete as applicable]? Or are you completely indifferent? Do you never read the comments anyway (you should, you know. My commentators are fabulous).

Item – I peed on a stick this morning (11dpo), and it is demurely negative. This concords with my inner Spidey sense, which tells me I am as pregnant as a brick. Heigh ho.

Item – Everything is wrapped and labelled and in boxes. We seem to have several boxes of chocolate left over. Ohh, what a shame.

Item – I have put on three pounds in the last two days. Put. ON. three pounds. It soothes my soul to blame this all on hormonal water-retention, as I usually put on anywhere between two and five pounds the week before my period starts, but still, AUGH. In the interests of Truth In Reporting, I have updated my ticker. In said interests I should also report I have done this so I can feel undeservedly smug when it has all come off again by New Year (post menstrual deflate and nauseated three-day starvation diet). And then I will eat the left-over chocolate.

Item – I am aware this blog, in the last year, has morphed from an infertility/RPL blog to a ‘Just how much do May’s periods suck, eh?’ blog. Sorry about that. The thing is, they really do suck so much. (If we go to the In-Laws together after the first couple of days are over, I will, by the way, TOTALLY be taking the wet-wipes and baggies to deal with the Unsavory Hands/no sink or bin in lavvie Issue. Genius idea. Why didn’t I think of it?) But the amount the first two or three days of my period suck, is not compatible with visiting family at all. At all. It’s not just a case of me being tired and in pain and tetchy, which would be manageable. After all, I am in that state from day 5 of my cycle until I ovulate. Yes, I am serious. Pain. Every single day. Until I ovulate. Endo/adeno is Not For Wusses (and alas, I am a wuss). The pain on the three Bad days can be so severe I can’t speak clearly, am dizzy, vomit repeatedly, cannot stand up without feeling in imminent danger of fainting (I have been known, at least once a cycle, to crawl to the bathroom on hands and knees, as standing up is so difficult), I cry uncontrollably, I sometimes moan or cry out, especially when trying to fart (don’t laugh. You have no idea). The drugs I have been given do, so far [frantic hunt for wood to touch] get the pain levels down to a six or seven on the Manksoski pain scale, heck, some cycles they’ve got it all the way down to 4 or 5, which feels like being lifted to Heaven on the shoulders of 14 strapping angels who all look like Johnny Depp, but I still throw up for the entirety of the 2nd day, and I still can’t eat, and when the drugs work well they make me very sleepy and somewhat drunk-acting, and I can’t wear ordinary clothes because the pressure of waistbands is excruciating, and I can’t walk anywhere at more than a shuffle, bent over, and I have to go change my san-pro every hour or two, and I can’t use tampons for the first three days either, because inserting one feels like I am stabbing myself through the back of the vagina with a red-hot halberd (I guess that’s the endo in the Pouch of Douglas).

Item – OK, that all, written down, fills me with horrified pity for the poor cow who… oh, it’s me. Arse. Anyway, the point is, the actual point is, I don’t want to go through that in my In-Laws’ tiny house surrounded by MIL and FIL (also recovering from surgery, ohhh, this things come not in single spies but in battalions), and BIL, and H’s aunts and their spouses and teenage children. And I’m sure they’d all really enjoy their festive lunch to the background noises of me keening in the lavatory (you can totally hear what’s happening in the lavatory from the dining room. I get so constipated when we visit) and then crawling back up the stairs on hands and knees, grey in the face and sweating like an old cheese. It’s not the sort of suffering that can be done discreetly. We’ve all had family events where someone had to lie down on a sofa for most of it and then was quiet and would only take a weak cup of tea, and it was fine, I know. This is worse. I’m sorry, but it is.

Item – Incidentally, how in hell do those of you up here on the Menstrual Suffering Olympics podium with me who also have small children manage? How? How? Because, yeah, I am concerned that if I ever get a kid of my own…

Item – Current plan, call In-Laws on Boxing Day and explain that May has Collapsed. What we haven’t decided, is whether H will go down to see the In-Laws without me, or whether he will stay with me and we’ll both go down a couple of days later. H, bless him, favours the latter, as he wants to look after me. But what with all the hospitalised people and unwellness in his own family, he may be needed there more urgently.

Item – Abrupt change of subject! Because we were all getting rather depressed!

Item – Finally and most importantly, I want to wish all my readers, regular, casual, occasional, baffled-because-Google-led-them-here, or any combination thereof, an extremely happy, peaceful, stress-free holiday season, and a 2012 of perfect fulfillment, glorious joy, wonder, excitement and granted wishes.

And for those of us who just feel Christmas is a bit shit this year, I’ve been listening to this song on loop for a month now, and getting all teary-eyed and empathetic.

Let nothing you dismay. Except maybe that. December 22, 2011

Christmas shopping? Check.

Christmas cards? Check.

Mail-order presents mail-ordered? Check. Only, there was a glitch in which the website I was ordering several gifts from and my order… disappeared. They emailed me to say they’d got my card details, but not the details of the things I’d ordered, sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry etc. So there was language, bad, fruity, and I re-entered the order, and now the presents won’t get there for Christmas Eve AAAAAAAARGH rage. Anyway. I tried.

Last day of work before the holidays? Check. Managed to crowbar the last few students out of the building only half-an-hour after closing-time, which must be some kind of record. ‘Go home!’ – ‘But we need to finish this!’ – ‘No, you do not. It’s Christmas. Or Hanukkah. Or whatever. Go the fuck home.’ – ‘But you’re not open tomorrow!’ – ‘Quite right. Being human, we too would like a holiday. Thank you for trying. Please leave.’

Wrapping? Well, we have wrapping paper. We have presents. The two are nowhere near each other as yet.

Plan B for when May’s exploding uterus and her washing-up-bowl of vomity doom crash the family dinner party planned on Boxing Day and ruin it for everyone? Not sorted at all. H has adopted a ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!’ attitude which is making me want to poke him viciously in the kidney with a spoon. Even if, by grace of God etc., I am not throwing up, I will not be in a fit state to join the table, and I will not neither be in a fit state to spend the next few days sleeping on a fold-out sofa-bed in the living-room, which is put away every morning, so I can spend the days, well, I don’t know, actually. How do you suffer acutely and bleed copiously in someone else’s very small house when said house is stuffed to the gunwales with friends-and-relations and, and, get this, there is no sink in the lavatory? So you have to open the door, walk out into the hall, and open another door to go into the bathroom to wash hands. Before you all look at me quizzically and say ‘well?’, remember, I will a) be bleeding like a slaughtered bull at a Mithraic initiation, and b) be putting things up my bottom. I want to wash my hands before I touch doorhandles and certainly before I wonder about the house looking like Sweeney Todd in front of a mixed-biscuit assortment of teenagers, prudish aunts, and strange men, thank you.

Christmas spirit? We’re out of tonic water.

Festive cheer? Oh, shut up.