The Eternal Guest Room

I gave myself a shot this morning.

I was tricked.

We went in for an appointment and were instructed to bring the Lu.pron. First we had a sonogram and everything looked fine. Then we went into a room and the nurse came in and started giving instructions for the Lupr.on shots. She said we were going to do the first one then & there, and then tomorrow we’d start doing them on a daily schedule. She asked if I wanted to stand or sit, and first I stood up, but as she stepped toward me I realized I was backing away slowly, so I sat down. She had me rub alcohol on one spot on my stomach. Then she told me to pinch the skin. Then she told me to hold the needle.

I looked at D in terror. He later said that he’d never seen me look so terrified. I said “but he’s going to do them” and the nurse said “you need to be able to do it.” And as I started to panic and (geez, embarrassing…) cry, she kept saying I had to show her that I could do it. She basically forced me to hold the needle and said “it’s already in! You just need to push down.” So with my eyes shut and through tears I found the end of the stupid syringe and pushed the stuff in and then took the needle out of my stomach.

It was an out of body experience for sure.

She then said “wow, I’ve never had anyone do it with their eyes closed before!”

So now I know that i can give myself a shot. Well, at least if I can do it without looking. Which might not be a great idea.

But I never want to do it again.

A little advance notice would have been nice, but I guess I don’t really get a vote in any of this.

For the educational portion of this post: The Lup.ron suppresses your ovaries and prevents you from ovulating. This is important because you can’t ovulate until they’re ready to snatch those eggs out. Otherwise the whole thing would be a waste. I hear horrible things about it – hot flashes, killer headaches, extreme bitchiness – so I’m a little apprehensive, especially after the BCPs didn’t agree with me. We have to do the shot every morning at the same time, so for the next 2 weeks I have to be awake even on my “sleep-in” days early enough to do it at 7:15am. I told D that might actually be better – to do them while I’m half-asleep.

My last BCP is on Thursday, and then a few days after that we start the shots to rev everything up. I’ll do my best to keep this updated with the progress; life has been super busy but I’m hoping that starts to slow down a little.

As we pulled out of the clinic parking lot, that “End of the World as we Know it” song came on the radio. I started laughing and said it was apropos in some ways. Because this kind of is the end of the world as we know it – either we’ll have a baby and the world will change completely, or this will fail and our lives with change completely in some other way. Either way, it’s a turning point.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to say “And I feel fine,” but I am ready for everything to change.

And I still can’t believe this is actually happening.