My mom had significant issues her whole life, leading up to a hysterectomy shortly after she turned 50. As part of her recovery from that, one of the medicines had a "rare but serious" list of side effects, one of which is stroke - and a few weeks later, it happened while she was at work. Add that in with my dad's lifetime of health issues that had him pass away at 63, and I'm just very apprehensive about things in general.
Shortly before my dad died, I had the only serious health scare of my life. It was relatively early in our attempts to conceive, only maybe 12 or 14 months in, and we were starting to realize we needed to reach out for additional medical assistance. My period started, then continued for several months without end. I reached out to my doctor, who dismissed it immediately on account of my weight.
At that point, I had lived in this body for 35 years and had my period for over 20 of them, and I'd never experienced something like that before. So I made an appointment with a different doctor, and showed her a photo of a menstrual clot that was so large, I was worried it was a piece of an organ. (I don't typically have clotting at all, let alone something that size.) She did an exam, and then told me that she wanted to do a biopsy to make sure that cancer could be ruled out as a cause.
At the same time, my dad was in and out of the hospital more and more frequently, and it was becoming evident that his dialysis treatments were not as effective as they needed to be. He was hurting significantly and called me one day to let me know he made the decision to stop his dialysis treatments, and that he would be doing this towards the end of December so that we could travel to the East Coast and say our goodbyes.
It was about a week between the end of his dialysis and when my dad eventually passed. He was fairly lucid the first few days, then sort of drifted in and out for a few days before the very end when he would smile now and then, little chuckles even, but was not verbally responsive.
It was one of those middle days of going between calm conversation and incoherent chattering that I got my own call.
I went out to my rental car to be alone with whatever the doctor was about to tell me, partly because I didn't want to put my own results on my family's already overloaded plate, but also to create a separation for myself of the two situations. What is happening inside exists there, and whatever I'm about to find out in this vehicle is going to stay here until I have the capacity to deal with it.
The biopsy was negative, it was likely just a hormonal imbalance for an unknown reason, and a few months on birth control should regulate things. The condition never came up again, and I have only gotten healthier and more regular since my bariatric surgery.
All of this was in the back of my mind as I headed into the office today. What if there's some thing I don't know about? What if all of that had actually been more serious and has just been dormant?
I told the nurse running the ultrasound, I'm tremendously nervous about all of this even though I already have a child, because last time I just didn't have this much information. This time I am finding myself hyperfixating on all this data and all these suggestions on how to optimize this or that, or every fraction of a milligram of anything on a lab result.
What she said calmed me down a surprising amount. You don't have to worry about the science and all the numbers and get obsessed with everything - that's my job, that's why you've hired this team of experts - doctors and scientists who are able to take all of this information and make sense of it - it's OK to exhale a little bit - you are taking excellent care of yourself, and you don't need to obsess over all these details. Everything looks fantastic, and the work you have put in has paid off tremendously. Everything looks so, so ideal.
I've had almost no appetite the last few days, partly because of some of the medications I'm on but also the anticipatory nerves. I'm still not back to even my bariatric normal in terms of appetite, but I was able to eat a little bit more today than at least the last few days - three meals with protein at each one, which is the best I can hope for right now.
With the results of the scan, the doctor cleared us to officially begin the cycle. My injectable medications will arrive in a week and I'll start them a few days after, at the local clinic where they will show me how to do the injections, and then they'll take blood for measuring the baseline level of everything that they are measuring. Then I'll go back every other day until the levels are optimal, and then the trigger shot, the retrieval, and anything that follows is based on the results of those few steps. I told my husband, we have a calendar but it's also really tentative and we're going to have to be as flexible as we can. He's flying in a few days after I start the shots, and I'm hoping that the timing is ideal and that everything unfolds as it needs to.
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