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.

It’s beginning to look a lot like… oh shush December 19, 2011

Item – Christmas shopping mostly done. I have one specialist art supplies shop to raid for my sister’s present, and then I will fall face-down into the gluten-free boxes at Hotel Chocolat (again) and all will be well. Anything else that goes wrong will be entirely the fault of the British Postal Service. My conscience is clear.

Item – I actually got completely Queenie at the work Christmas party, and for just about the first time ever, swore, cheerfully, inventively, and at length, in front of my colleagues (but not my boss! I have some self-preservations instincts left! Go me! See the little goblin, see his little feet…). My colleagues have taken to patting me on the arm whenever they see me, and giggling.

Item – I did get to see a proper old-fashioned in-a-freezing-Victorian-barn-of-a-church carol concert, and now I am happy. I may be a godless heathen, but I do so love carols. Especially with a proper well-sung descant or two, an organ extravaganza, and an outbreak of Handel’s Messiah. And all the proper traditions properly followed – the truly disgusting wine served during the interval, the tiresome children sat directly behind you kicking the back of your pew and whining incessantly in the quiet bits without being dragged out bound and gagged by their parents, the person next to you singing very loud and very flat, the person the other side of you attempting the descant part for Hark The Herald Angels Sing with ear-watering results.

Item – We shall not cast our eyes down and to the right. We’ll only see the weight-loss ticker and it will depress us all. It’s as if, being denied wheat also mincepiescakespuddingsbiscuits AT CHRISTMAS, I’ve had to somehow compensate with Excessive Consumption Of Brown Rice And Potatoes. Which have no wheat in. So I can eat them. It’s fine, damn it. Yes it is. No it isn’t.

Item – I think, I only think, mind you, that I am feeling more energetic since I gave up wheat. This is very unscientific, because I also was recovering from surgery a few weeks ago, which tires one out quite noticeably you know, and I tend to feel perkier after ovulation because my reproductive organs have called a truce on their persistant turf war for control of entire pelvis brought on by Oestrogen, Hormone of Satan. My mother thinks I sound well on the telephone, how’s that for evidence.

Item – There are a few more days of work to wrestle through. And then, we descend into the bunker of the family. Armed with nuclear-armageddon-hoarding quantities of pregnancy tests and sanitary towels. Oh, my God. This is going to be so awkward. Hold me.

Good news! And now I shall whine anyway December 17, 2011

Good news! The medical interventions have helped enormously, and H’s Grandfather is rather better. They’re even hoping to send him home to enjoy Christmas in his own favourite arm-chair.

The relief. I feel all limp.

Of course, he’s not and will never be cured – he is seriously ill (out of respect to H’s family’s privacy, also my own anonymity, I’m feeling leery of posting details), and he’s old and frail (if amazingly compos mentis), and this is a reprieve only.

*Has a little weep, blows nose, gets grip*

Anyway. Christmas is on.

Annoying news! My period is due on Boxing Day. When we’ll be going to stay with the In-Laws for Festive Socialising. Hurrah! And H is horrified at the very idea of trying to drive for 150 miles with me puking with gong-like regularity next to him. No idea what to do about this. The metoclopramide my GP prescribed doesn’t always work. I am getting rather pissed off with feeling the first ripple of ick, taking the stupid tablet, and half-and-hour later dry-heaving for twenty minutes anyway.

And H has a bad cold and feels miserable and spends his nights making noises like a disgruntled buffalo on loop.

And my job is veering wildly between interesting and amusing (nice colleagues, you know) and stressful, dull, prolonged, and annoying (the other colleagues, you know). I have whiplash. And haven’t reached home before 7:30pm all week. Augh.

Anxiety, unexpected December 14, 2011

This year’s Grand Christmas Crisis (what? It’s a tradition now chez May) is being provided by H’s grandfather, who is seriously ill in hospital right now. All our festive plans may be completely derailed at a moment’s notice, and damn it, it’s not fair, on H’s parents, his grandmother, and the patient himself. Christmas is a tough time for H’s lot anyway (anniversaries of several tragic, desperately sad deaths). And we both love the man dearly, and H is miserable with worry, and I am miserable for H and his whole family, and a bloody Merry Christmas to you too.

(Of course, it occurred to me, that what with my penchant for for Fucking Up The Holidays, I’m quite likely to go and get pregnant right now this very week and make everything totally 100% more insanely complicated and stressful and depressing than it already is).

(Now that I’ve said that, I shan’t. Sod’s Law. So that’s alright then).

The salad and the purple dress December 11, 2011

So, yes, low-carbohydrate meals that stop a lass tearing her hair out and eating the cupboard door in sheer despair. I did say at some point I was going to talk about recipes.

One of the things H and I eat anyway, voluntarily, and with pleasure (especially in summer), is the Enormous Salad.

This is how we, well, H, mostly (he is the Salad King) make Enormous Salad.

Ingredients:

• Lettuce. A good, flavoursome one like Romaine or Cos or Batavia. Not iceberg. Iceberg tastes of ice and goes crunch, qualities which make it exceedingly boring to eat in large quantities. Rocket or lollo rosso may be added in small quantities, but can be overwhelming in large.
• Celery, finely sliced.
• Cucumber, ditto.
• Cherry tomatoes, or baby plum, or similar small, intensely tomatoey varieties that actually taste of tomato rather than frost-bite and pinkish slurry.
• Ad libitum, any or all of finely sliced fennel, finely shredded spring onions (scallions, to you lot over the other side of the Atlantic), finely sliced white closed-cup mushrooms, radishes, finely slivered red onion (easy on the quantity unless you all love onion-breath), finely sliced carrots, oh, yes, had you noticed? Not great lovers of the chunk, chez May.
• If you like, tinned artichokes, thoroughly rinsed and chopped into quarters, black olives (H hates them, so we don’t, but they’d be nice), green olives (H likes these. H is weird), maybe the odd caper (H hates these too, the boring git).
• Herbs! A little basil, or a tad of fresh flat-leaf parsley, or coriander maybe (cilantro to you). Or, no herbs. We don’t always add herbs.
• Protein! We often use tinned tuna, drained and broken into flakes. And hard-boiled eggs, which go nicely with the tuna. Sometimes we use tinned sardines instead. Or, we’d abandon the sea and egg Niçoise theme and we’d slice grilled chicken, or use left-over chicken from a roast. Or, or, or, we’d use sausages! Yes! Pan-fry or grill sausages, cut them into chunks! We totally would! And when feeling luxurious, we’d use grilled lamb steaks, or beef-steak, also sliced.
• Dressing – usually a good, mustardy vinaigrette made by H who is unnaturally good at vinaigrette (I’m hopeless). We use, well, H uses, pure Tuscan extra-virgin olive-oil, which tastes very peppery and grassy, so you may prefer to cut it with good sunflower oil, or use milder, sweeter, Spanish or Greek olive oil. And cider-vinegar, but a good wine-vinegar would also be nice (eschew malt vinegar. It’ll drown the entire salad). And garlic, french mustard, salt, pepper. Occasionally, a teaspoon of mayonnaise, or a touch of balsamic vinegar. And SHAKE. Simple. But, for the love of all that’s edible, do NOT use some low-fat pre-made bottled crap from the supermarket. Do not so insult your food. You’re eating this, not running a car on it. And anyway, the human brain is made of 30% pure fat, and so low-fat diets are stupid and make you stupid (low saturated fat diet, horse of different colour. Knock yourself out (i.e., skip the steak and lamb options above, stick to tuna).

Place all ingredients in very large bowl, toss with vigour (ho yuss) and serve.

Given how enormous this salad always ends up being, and given the immense variety of textures and flavours in it, we’ve never wanted any kind of carbohydratey food with it to feel full and satisfied.

Another good main course salad is equal quantities of diced tomatoes, cucumbers, fennel, little gem lettuce, so that you have a cereal-bowl-heaped-full of greenery/tomatoeness per person; a piece of feta cheese about the size of two small matchboxes per person, also diced to the same size as the greenery; dress with black pepper, good olive oil, and shredded basil. This one needs to be made at least half-an-hour in advance and tossed frequently thereafter until consumed. The tomato and feta juices mix with the oil and pepper and make an absolutely perfectly balanced, in terms of salt versus acidity, dressing.

Of course, now it is winter and neither of the above appeal when it’s sleeting and you’re coming home with wet feet and wet gloves and wet hair and misted-up glasses. So I will now go forth and experiment with soup.

Cautionary tale – back in September H and I were at a discount warehouse emporium, and H found a very nice dress he was sure would suit me. And it had been reduced from £70 to £20, which is jolly. And so I tried it on, and damn me sideways but I couldn’t zip it up. And then I committed the cardinal sin of the Eating Disordered everywhere, and bought it anyway, to slim into. Which usually leads to the putting on of seven pounds at least, despair, and the hiding of the dress so far at the back of the wardrobe you’ve hung it in Cair Paravel.

I tried it on yesterday. It fitted perfectly, and I looked, according to H, cute. In a gorgeous sexy sort of way, not in an ‘awww, puppy!’ way, he added, thoughtfully.

Salad! Onwards!

Is a little hacked off December 9, 2011

Item – First week back at work after a week-and-a-half off? Was naturally the week everyone and everything chose to Kick Off. Meetings were scheduled, in which we were told, variously, that half a dozen people were resigning and wouldn’t be back after Christmas; that several people were going on maternity leave in the New Year; that we weren’t getting replacement staff for x, y and z positions; that the senior staff had come up with a genius new idea to change service provision for certain groups, which would mean us the front-line staff would basically spend all January being shouted at, harangued, wept at, emotionally blackmailed and argued with – and not one of us thinks this, uh, change is clever, and what’s more, the person whose grand idea it is has resigned, so won’t be there to see the fantastic mess resulting; that we’d all be doing more hours front-line despite the fact none of us have any down-time between front-line and back-room tasks now and we’re barely staying on top of back-room as is; and that if we have any objections to any of the above, we can always write a report for consideration by The Management. Oh, the fuck.

Item – I woke up at six this morning with a tummy-ache, that refused to go away, and morphed into The Dire Rear, so I spent several hours sitting on the loo making Regrettable Noises and worrying that I was going to be sick, too, any minute now. And then I fell asleep on the spare bed. And now I feel better. So what was that? It in no way seemed severe or unpleasant enough for Norovirus (of which I was afeard, as a friend I saw on Monday had it that evening (and he was dreadful-poorly, poor sod, though luckily only for the one night)), and then someone was disgustingly ill in the toilets at work while I was in the next cubicle on Thursday *shudder*). Anyway. I just ate some chicken. Let us see what the Turbulence Within makes of that.

Item – Meanwhile, all the fertile shenanigans have started a whole week earlier than they usually do, so either I will ovulate in the next 24 hours, or Satsuma has chosen this stressful moment to fuck with my head.

Item – Stress entirely increased by the fact I’ve missed work today (I don’t think my boss would’ve appreciated me turning up only to lock myself in the lavvy and groan through the keyhole), and Monday, when I expect to be swamped and busy, is Team Festive Lunch day, and last Team Festive Lunch day I was pregnant, and, ohh, you know how that worked out. I am anxious and tearful and have been for days and fully intend to carry on being so until bloody buggering January. Whereapon the full-on rogering that is the work craptastica will be operational, and I will be angry and rageful instead.

Item – Also, my first full week of Total Gluten Avoidance has resulted in the gain of one pound. Gain. Admittedly, the low-carb part went to hell as H and I experimented with wheat-free pasta, varying brands of, and I haven’t quite located places to get lunch near work that do Everything-Free Woo Food sans rice and potatoes. But still. Way to start, May. Enjoy the Dire Rear.

Tick Tock December 4, 2011

So, some of you noticed the new ticker. Yes, it’s just down there, on the right. Yes, I have totally put my current BMI on it. Oh, come on, you all knew I was fat. I’ve been whining about being fat since I started the blog. And all I’ve managed to do about it is scramble from Really Fat down to Quite Fat, with the odd back-track and sit-down-for-a-rest.

Admittedly, Satsuma appreciated the lifting of just that tad of lard from her work-space, and has set-to with a will now she has the elbow-room.

But, yes. I want to be Not Fat At All. BMI Absolutely Normal So Shut Up Doctor.

And why? Well, because my ovary and fallopian tube are not blocked, or otherwise embuggerated, and because Cute Ute, despite being a monstrous bloated excrescence, has a nice interior (just like the Royal Festival Hall in London (which also contains the Saison Poetry Library, which is one of my favourite places on Earth)). Therefore the causes of the infertility/miscarriages are either a) the PCOS, b) the endometriosis, c) my age, or d) unholy trifecta. (Not forgetting the bonus-ball clotting disorder).

Let me elaborate. You like it, really:

PCOS – as we know, causes hormonal and blood-sugar imbalances, which makes ovulating that much harder, and implantation that much trickier, and the delayed ovulation means higher levels of FSH and oestrogen, which can damage the DNA of the maturing egg, which also leads to fertilization problems, implantation problems, and miscarriages. However, as I now tend to ovulate less than a week later than ‘normal’ (ie day 14), the lateness of the ovulation is probably not a huge factor any more. And my hormones can’t be that deeply enfucked, if we’re all getting together to do the egg-tossing-dance on time on first try every month. A tad enfucked, as evinced by my shortish luteal phase (which is allegedly ‘not short enough to be an issue’ but I don’t trust it), yet not utterly enfucked. At this point in time, all I can do about the PCOS and any remaining hormone/blood-sugar problems, is go back on the low-carb diet that works for me (well, it works for me because it lets me eat cheese, and because I lose weight on it when I don’t cheat, and also it facilitates going gluten free (but see below)), and get my weight down to Normal, Thank You. Hence, ticker.

Endometriosis and probably adenomyosis as well because OK, adeno may be the red-headed step-child as far as research and support goes, but it’s basically endometrium in the wrong sodding place too – Well, the first thing I did on getting my attention-span together was google treatments for endometriosis that didn’t involve Mirena coils, lupron, hysterectomy, going on the Pill, etc. I.e., treatments that would keep me fertile (hahahahahah fertile, oh, May, you card). Oh, yes, I could get pregnant. Apparently pregnancy and breastfeeding are in no way a cure, but they do give you a year off, as it were, which is nice, and some women have fewer symptoms afterwards. Some women. Only some. Anyway.

The other thing that kept bobbing to the top of the Ocean of Woo was gluten avoidance. Coeliac sufferers are well known to be more prone to miscarriages, a tendency that ameliorates considerably when they avoid gluten. More recent research shows that full-blown Coeliac Disease is not the only form of gluten intolerance, and there seems to be a connection between gluten intolerance and endometriosis. They are, after all, both variations on the theme of inflammatory auto-immune disease, it does not startle me that there is a link. And my entire family are cursed with auto-immune disorders (Crohns disease, asthma, eczema, arthritis, ankylosing spondilitis, cancer, type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, psoriasis, sarcoidosis, Sjögren’s syndrome, ulcerative colitis, and, oooh, oooh, I know this one! Endometriosis!), so the fact I too have (another, I have eczema (also more common in women with endo (did you know men can get endo? Usually after hormone treatments. So bollocks (haha) to the ‘retrograde menstruation’ theory))) auto-immune disease makes me go ‘Huh. Figures’.

As to the effect endometriosis is or is not having on my fertility, all the reading I did came up with two main schools of thought. School A thinks that endometriosis is only an issue if it’s actually covering the ovary and tube, directly interfering with ovulation and blocking fertilization and making ectopic pregnancies more likely. After all, women with endo get pregnant all the time. In which case, my Voyage to Woo is about my (increasingly parlous) quality of life. School B, however, thinks that endometriosis, being an inflamed and inflamatory condition, creates a sort of puddle of toxins around the reproductive organs even when it’s nowhere near the ovaries and as the poor egg floats from ovary to fallopian tube it effectively gets poisoned, leading to an increase in failed conceptions and miscarriages.

Oh fuck.

So I am giving up gluten. It might help. If it doesn’t help, I will be Very Cross.

Oh, and some people with gluten intolerance find it makes it very hard to lose weight, and suddenly lose pounds and pounds when they go gluten free (though, honestly, this may be due to the non-consumption of Cake and Biscuits and Pasta and Bread rather than the metabolic regulation of avoiding a toxin). Hence ticker.

Because endometriosis makes, might make, getting pregnant so much harder, and staying pregnant so much harder, IVF is back on the table.

After all those doctors telling me, visit after visit, month after month, that IVF was pointless in my case and would be of no use to me.

Yes, I know. It’s a fucker, especially after all the times I went to bat for my doctors and claimed that they must know what they are doing, when they say IVF is pointless for the likes of me, in the face of many commenters here who kept telling me it was The Only Way, but there it is. We didn’t have all the facts. Now we do. IVF is back on the table. First person to say ‘I told you so’ will make me cry, second person to say it will make me hurl furniture about.

So, I need to lose weight to do IVF, should it come to that. Hence ticker.

Also, I am 36, and though I technically was granted an NHS-funded IVF cycle a couple of years ago, back-burnered for when I lost the weight etc., the NHS, like all publicly run institutions in Britain at the moment, is being bent over a barrel and done viciously in the rear by the current government, who seem to think that if you can’t afford to pay for it you’re sub-human anyway. My funding may well have evaporated, and now I am 36, and over the ‘official’ age the NHS funds IVF up until. The least I can do is not be overweight as well as fucking geriatric.

You peeps do know I was 29 when I started trying to get pregnant, don’t you? 29. That’s not old for a first baby. That’s sensible. Damn it all to hell.

Anyway. There’s the ticker. Just in case knowing the internet is watching helps with the ol’ willpower. Especially as it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

(I hate Christmas. I’ve managed two miscarriages around Christmas in the past couple of years and this year we’re Doing Family).

Detailed December 1, 2011

So. Yes. There was a totally expected and planned-for interval in which I felt Under The Weather. In this case the Nice Drugs kept me from getting too miserable in pain terms (though if you ask him, H will tell you all about the bitching and whining about the cramps and backache I did have), but I spent 24 hours being sick every hour, on the hour, like goddamn Old Faithful. With stitches around the belly-button, this is startlingly uncomfortable. And it leads to blog silence. I think I worry very much about being sick into the laptop keyboard.

(This is a horribly real possibility. I sometimes get mere seconds of warning. I was even sick into the basin I was carrying as I ran from the living room to the bathroom. This is a small flat. That’s 24 feet. I had less than 24 feet at a frantic scramble’s warning. I am so amazingly glad I had the basin with me and grabbed it as I leapt up. I award myself some kind of Girl Scout Badge for preparedness and forethought. I will now shut up about vomit).

Where were we?

Oh, yes. I was going to tell you all about Surgery Day in more detail, because that’s what you all come here for, isn’t it? Detail? It’s certainly what I come here for.

The night before, it being H’s birthday, I took H out to dinner, and though I touched no alcohol, yea verily I did eat, and we had a very nice evening. We left the restaurant at about 10:30, and after that Only Water Passed My Lips until after the surgery. I actually got up early enough to have a large glass of water just before the ‘no more water’ deadline. I would recommend this. The first time I had a lap&dye the dehydration before-hand made me so damn miserable. And then I had a shower and carefully scrubbed out my belly-button (a doctor friend once told me about the revolting things he’d scraped out of people’s unkempt belly-buttons before laparoscopies and it skeeved me out). And then I collected my knitting and a book and H, and we went down to the Mothership Hospital, arriving on time at 7:45 am.

I’m normally not even dressed at 7:45 am. I am a Morning Person the same way Silvio Berlusconi is a feminist.

The nurses call you through from the waiting room in batches. I kissed H, gave him all my valuables, and left him there, and I hate that bit, marching briskly off behind the nurse in one’s best British manner. I don’t know why I do it. I should’ve totally rugby-tackled H and kissed him that way, ohh yes.

Then you are left in a cubicle with a hospital gown and a bed and a chair and an unattractive curtain and sit, if you’re me, sit making notes of Things To Ask Doctors.

The first doctor was a nice young woman who introduced herself as Miss Consultant’s assistant for the day, and we went over all the forms together, and I established that I was having a laparoscopy, a hysteroscopy, and would have blue dye shot through my tube (well, she said ‘tubes’, and I decided correcting her was too complicated at that moment. Miss Consultant knows it’s a tube, chez moi). I double-checked that they’d remove any endometriosis and adhesions they could. She said yes. We shook hands.

The second doctor was the anaesthetist. To him I spoke firmly about the fact I am a martyr to mechanical phlebitis, and I’d be grateful if there was anything he could do to prevent the vein used turning into a bright pink aching rigid hose-pipe for a week or so after the surgery. He said he’d be careful as possible, but it was sometimes unavoidable. I thanked him, and we shook hands.

Then a nurse turned up to check I’d signed the consent form in a consenting and informed manner, and ask me to put my gown on, and pee in a pot for the mandatory pregnancy test. Had I been careful this cycle? Yes. Good. Pee in the pot anyway.

Just as I was about to change, Miss Consultant herself turned up, to say hello, check I was OK, and shake my hand, which was nice.

And then I took my pot and found the loo. It is VERY hard to pee when you don’t really need to quite yet and the door is thin and has a loose rattly lock and you can hear the nurse who is waiting for your pee shuffling her feet outside. I have a shy bladder. I had to pretend I was in a nuclear fall-out shelter and the nurse was on the frigging moon before I got six drops out. Gah. Nurses, there is no need at all to stand outside the toilet cubicle and breathe when an able-bodied patient is trying to pee. OK? OK.

No, I was not pregnant.

Then I took everything off and put the stupid backless gown and my shoes and socks back on and read my book.

Unlike last time, where I waited for hours, I was first in. Oh, well, swings and roundabouts. I and two jolly nurses walked to the anaesthetics room, pushing my bed between us, and then I took my shoes and socks off and untied the back of the gown and lay on the bed, and the anaesthetist came over and smiled cheerfully and he and the nurse spent several minutes vein-hunting – I have fine veins. Good little showing veins. They ALWAYS vanish in the anaesthesia room – and eventually he chose one, apologised to me, and dug in (ow), and pushed (ow) and dug in again (ow), and then said he’d change the vein when I was under if necessary, as he didn’t want to keep on hurting me (thank you). I have small veins, he told me. No wonder I had trouble with cannulas. He then held up a syringe and said ‘this is the gin and tonic!’ which made me laugh out loud, and injected it very slowly. Which proved he really had been listening, as I’ve had four previous general anaesthetics and they normally SLAM that plunger in and it hurts like buggery. This wasn’t so bad. He then held up the next syringe and said ‘this will make you sleep’, and carefully injected that into the cannula, I felt it running cold up my arm, and I went spark out.

I woke up feeling surprisingly comfortable. I was alert and looking about quite quickly, and the nurse came over quite soon to bring me a cup of water, pass me my book (bless her) and offer me a cup of tea (hallelujah!). I had no idea why I was so quickly so much more compos mentis than last time, where I was out of it for a good couple of hours after they took me back to the recovery room and my little cubicle. The only ugly moment this time was just how much blood I’d lost – I was sitting on two two-foot-square absorbant pads, but by the time the nurse decided I was awake enough to get dressed and sit up, I had soaked the sheets around them as well in a purple mess of blood, hysteroscopy medium (clear, usually) and dye. ‘Oh dear,’ said the nurse, ‘You’re a bit of a bleeder, aren’t you?’ I stood up and she passed me my knickers and a sanitary towel like a brick, and she folded up the sheet to hide the mess, and found she couldn’t, so while I was in the loo she found another sheet to bundle over the top of it all. And when I came back, decided I needed another drip-bag of saline or whatever it was.

Oops. For a clotter, I sure do leak like a bleeder.

Anyway, Miss Consultant came by shortly afterwards, and we discussed the surgery.

I made notes.

As I said before, Satsuma and The Tube are both clean and spotless and free from endometriosis, adhesions, or cysts. Infact, Satsuma no longer ‘looked’ polycystic. Considering how regularly and often she’s ovulated over the past couple of years, I’m not surprised, bless the dear little gonad.

The Cute Ute, however, poor thing, is not in the least bit cute. At least, the cavity and lining are cute – nothing is distorted or weird-looking in there at least. Which is good. But she is bulky with adenomyosis, which Miss Consultant thought must be a leading reason for my pain, and dragging on the round ligaments that hold her in place (hence shooting stabbing pains out to the sides). She’s pretty much the size of an end-of-first-trimester-pregnant uterus.

The irony of this makes me feel sick and angry and like punching a wall.

I can feel my uterus when I rest my hand on my belly just above my pelvis now. So I shouldn’t've been in the least surprised. But I was.

And behind Cute Ute, in the Pouch of Douglas, endometriosis. Cute Ute was so bulky they couldn’t get the diathermy tool in underneath her to treat it, so they decided that as it was well away from my ovary and tube, it was better to leave it than cut a large hole in me. The endometriosis was not extensive and not causing adhesions, after all.

She said she’d get the nurse to show me the photos in my file when I was discharged, and then went on her way, and the nurse called H to let him know he could come and get me.

This is where things went stupid. The plan was, my mother would come up, as she has a car and we don’t at the moment, and drive me home. But as I’d been first in and come round quickly, I was ‘ready’ sooner than H had planned for, so he had to call Mum and tell her to come up and meet us at the hospital, rather than having her drive over to our place and hang out. Mum, being Mum, did not drop everything and get in the car, despite saying that’s what she definitely would do when we made the plans. After an hour, the nurse came over and asked me if I knew why no one had come for me yet, and I explained that my mother was coming up from out of town as we didn’t have a car. By this time I’d finished my book, and run out of walls to stare at. For the next half-hour the nurses all gave me concerned looks every time they went past, because I’d clearly been abandoned and they wanted the bed back. Finally, H came in, hurrah! And we discovered that the nurse had got hold of the wrong end of the stick and had been looking out for a lady old enough to be my mother in the waiting room and all the while H had been sitting there, neither female nor sixty-odd. Aigh.

I got to look the at the photos of my nice pink clean ovary, and nasty bloated uterus, and horrible squashed-strawberry mess stuck all over the back of it (Christ, endometriosis is ugly), while H got to lean against the cubicle wall with his hands over his eyes, and the nurse pulled the cannula out of my hand. And then we got given handfuls of forms, leaflets, drugs, and dressings in a plastic bag, and off we shuffled to the waiting room.

Where we waited.

And waited.

The receptionist very sweetly lent me a mug so I could have some more water (so thirsty, despite tea and jug of water and extra drip-bag).

H went off to call my mother again, who of course had finished off half-a-dozen little tasks and written a few emails and God I don’t know, repainted the kitchen or something before setting out.

Eventually I got home, and was allowed to lie down with more tea and a hot-water-bottle and my mother (!) rubbed my feet and made me chicken soup, so I feel I can’t really be annoyed with her at all at all not even a tiny bit. But that last wait in the waiting-room was irritatingly tough.

Anyway. Wounds, two. One in belly button, one just above left hip. Mysterious scratch just below belly button that could’ve been false start with a scalpel, I suppose.

Bruising, below belly-button, spectacular, seems to have been aggravated by the vomitathon on Monday.

Pain, from surgery, not bad (probably because they did so little while they were in there. Last time, in 2007, they were pulling bands of adhesions out and scraping the Cute Ute down like an ocean liner in dry-dock). From subsequent period, not so bad either, because I took a great many drugs for a great many days. Still feeling rather crampy and rough today, alas, probably because I’ve stopped taking the diclofenac/tramadol before my bowel backed up until the next millennium (Oh, also, while I think of it, the endo-in-the-POD explains why even so much as a tiny bubble of wind, on period days, is so amazingly fucking painful to pass I feel like my gut is in a goddamn bow-tie, CSI-stylee).

Blood-loss, constant, ongoing, as I went from three days of steady post-surgical bleeding straight into my usual that-scene-from-The-Shining menstrual bleeding. I went to bed with a towel and a bucket for three days straight. I’m still going to bed with the towel. Buggeration, eh?

My period made me feel worse than the surgery did. Between them, I feel like shit. It’s, well, it’s not been great. Eh, well, over now.

Next time on May’s TMI Talkathon, I shall discuss all the thoughts I have had about having endometriosis and adenomyosis. But I was serious about giving up gluten. Because, sheesh.

I need to shut up and go to bed.