Height of stack of remaining grading: inches.
Dilation: centimeters.
Time until grades are due: days.
Time until birth: days (I hope).
Folks: don't try this at home, no matter how much you'd like to really max out your institution's parental leave policy.
_______________________________
I do feel a bit of (survivor's?) guilt with respect to how' [...]
So, past midnight, let me tell you: I am well.
Huge. Intimidated by the new semester. Snowed in. Craving chocolate and vegetable puree soups.
Nesting like crazy. (When a pregnant woman asks for a label machine for Christmas? Worry.)
I had my 20-week ultrasound just before Christmas. All is [...]
I have a terrible problem with scratching open mosquito bites until they bleed. I also chew either nails or cuticles -- one or the other, typically, for months. My nails are grooved from the cumulative damage.
(Miss T. already is getting hangnails -- perhaps there is some built-in tendency for [...]
I'm here. It's still here. Nuchal scan was entirely normal; ultrascreen came back with 1/4000 chance of Down's, 1/2000 of trisomy 13/18.
I keep saying I'm trying to decide whether to get an amnio or not. But then I keep not calling to make an appointment to talk to [...]
I am still pregnant. So far as I know. Another ultrasound, nominally for nuchal translucency purposes, in a week.
Cornell told me to start tapering off the PIO after the 9w1d ultrasound, but wanted a level check before I went off entirely. I went in live (well, to Mount Kisco [...]
The ultrasound today was normal. Normal growth, normal placement, normal gestational sac, etc. -- and a normal heartbeat pounding away 182 times a minute.
I went straight to my first midwife appointment afterwards.
I am going to lie down for a little while now.
[...]My grandmother died on Wednesday morning, as I was traveling.
Beaker drove out on Friday with Miss T. We held the funeral mass on Saturday.
Everyone who came to the wake was either a neighbor (they all cried) or an old, old, old as in high school, friend of Ricky's.
I [...]
At the end of Monday, things didn't seem too bad, all in all. I'd gotten through my grading. As long as I managed to scrape together two midterm exams on Tuesday -- when I wasn't going to be teaching -- I'd be okay at work. I hadn't talked to Weatherwood [...]
I talk to either Ricky or Marina every three days or so.
I call Ricky in the late afternoon, as he sits in my grandmother's hospital room. It's an isolation room, with double doors and (I presume) negative air pressure. It feels drafty and she is always cold. If he [...]
I have been wanting to tell people, this past week. I am tired of living inside myself, of walking around worrying about things only I know about, of holding back.
I have become very aware of how isolated I am on campus. This year's IVF adventures are at least partly responsible: [...]
The good news: the book is in!
Even better, there was no co-author-on-co-author violence in the final days, despite the sudden (brief! it came back up! oh my god!) collapse of our version control system.
The bad news: this grading thing. So I just started. Like, for the semester. This [...]
My grandmother has tuberculosis. Not unheard of in the very elderly, although more common in immigrants. Generally it's a reactivation of a previous primary infection. Since, in cases like this, it was acquired, say, 50 years ago, it's not usually drug-resistant.
I [...]
My grandmother started coughing up blood last night. She's in the hospital now. She's had a bunch of scans. The staff are wearing masks around her, because "it might be TB." Ricky and Marina are both there with her today.
Ricky will be able to stay with her there tomorrow. See, [...]
One week later, we're at 2239. A fine number, and entirely comparable to last time (this is a day earlier, again). Progesterone today? Unknown, but the the Saturday number had made it in and was "fine" at 31.
So that's it for bloodwork. Dr. D has changed his mind about [...]
So, last time, I had a doubling time of something crazy like 34 hours during the first week. I blamed it on switching labs between the two tests. Cornell claimed to be worried about multiples, which is sort of crazy; you change the initial conditions, but not the mechanism of [...]
(I couldn't take another night of sniffing my own underwear in abject ignorance.)
The lab at the local hospital took my blood at 8:05 this morning... and no-one's touched it since then, because the phlebotomist skipped the "STAT" on the order sheet while she entered the tests into the computer system.
(Guess how many phone calls it took to figure that out!)
The Cornell nursing [...]
1. The Internet doesn't know whether I'm pregnant.
2. If there were any consistently indicative symptoms, any at all, then there would be something quantifiable somewhere in the body, and medical science would have figured out how to exploit that to test earlier.
3. I am taking drugs that make me feel [...]
I got a little nosebleed right before class today.
The department secretary sits right outside my office. "You know when I got nosebleeds? When I was pregnant. Just turned my head and it'd start pouring out."
Ya think that someone who sees me walking past 25 times a day might [...]
... and it's gonna be uterus week! For everyone, all the time! Yay! Isn't it interesting that excessive fertility can cause so much trouble?
Meanwhile, the Times magazine let Pamela Paul speculate recklessly, in her article on pregnancy and cancer, on what will happen to all us IVFers in [...]
I'm just home from another exciting sojourn in the most boring area of Manhattan. We estrogen primed, we watched and waited, we were secretly horrified as the embryologst checked the catheter and found an embryo stuck... and then checked again and found two! That's right, it took 3 tries to [...]
Talked to an old, old friend yesterday. We hadn't spoken for years.
I told her: how we're cycling again, how it's eating all my free time and lots of what should be work time too, how I'm glad that there is an end in sight, how frustrating it is that that [...]
Just the two big follicles at the scan this morning, after 10 days of stims. This is over, over, over. Am trying to change my flight reservations home right now.
Dr. Data said yesterday that he thinks we can get more eggs on an EPP/antogonist protocol -- and, at worst, [...]
She'd slept badly the night before -- mosquitos? dreams? hard to say -- and I'd had to wake her up to take her over to Cornell.
I'd been planning to get lunch at Grand Central, but she fell asleep the moment we got to the main concourse. I took a [...]
All spring I've had to hold myself back from everything having to do with the upcoming IVF cycle.
I made a little color-coded schedule with cycle forecasts, academic dates, vacations... I pored over it daily. Once I had my first post-failure LH surge (on day 21!) I was able to fill [...]
So: I have promised myself one entry per book chapter read and corrected. I've actually fallen behind: I've made it through 3 chapters, and not posted at all until now. We'll see how it goes from here.
So spring break almost sucked rocks, but not quite entirely.
I got the [...]
So -- I'm not pregnant. You knew that, I knew that, but it took an very unpleasant two days and screaming at nurses over the phone to confirm it, and then Dr. Data did our follow-up consultation just two days later and convinced me that we weren't crazy to be [...]
Negative HPTs on both Sunday and Monday mornings (11 and 12dp3dt).
Superlocal lab stabbed my elbow at 7:45 a.m. Monday, but CORNELL NEVER FUCKING CALLED ME.
It's almost certainly the fault of superlocal lab, I bet they looked at those HARD progesterone and estradiol tests and said gee, it'll take us [...]
KIDNAPPED BY PROGESTERONE BURP
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME BURP
PIO CONVINCED GUT BURP
GUT CONVINCED BRAIN BURP
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Yes, the crazy is here. I know it's the drugs. The hormones want me to believe. I hate it. And love it -- why not spend a few days giving in to the delusion? C'mon! It'll be fun! [...]
I am starting in on my one-week-post-transfer migraine (which has occurred in all my cycles, regardless of progesterone dose, regardless of outcome) and I am going mad.
THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO. I can fanatically try to plan out how the next cycle will go (not too early to [...]
... of the possibilities actually available, after just those two eggs fertilized:
We're at an 8, I'd say. Both kept going. One 8-cell, one 6-cell. The 8-cell looked a little messy to me, but Dr. C. was honestly optimistic about both of them.
Beta on February 11.
[...]Or, why I needed to get the hell out of there. Warning: long, self-indulgent, probably incomprehensible. I promised myself I'd write it down, and it seemed like I should get it out before the new kind of crazy that PIO brings...
... yes, they put me on just half a cc, [...]
Three mature; two fertilized.
So my make-me-happy scenario has become best-possible-but-not-very-likely.
Last time I remember being disappointed that only 5 were mature and fertilized; I remember Dr. C., at transfer, being surprised at how well the fertilization and early divisions had gone, since we had 4 good and 1 crappy [...]
I just triggered. Aimed that big ol' sucker at the ballpoint circle on my butt and stabbed.
There have been 4 follicles of decent size on my last two ultrasounds, both done by Big Names. Estrogen plateaued just below 800. Last time, with 5 mature, it plateaued just below 1000. [...]
Scan after 6 days of stims: 15, 12, 12, 12, 8.
As always, underperforming and uneven. That single 15 is unsettling.
Am feeling overwhelmed by practicalities: when/how to get more drugs? when/how to move to the Hemlsley? what about my excessive luggage? how the hell long will I be here, anyway? [...]
Friday evening they told me to keep taking the same stim dosage and to come back -- for bloodwork only! -- on Monday morning. The nurse left me voicemail, so I didn't get to ask what my levels were.
Yes, I can simultaneously believe that
a) they should have started me off [...]
As they sprayed red ooze over the fuselage and green ooze over the wings, I overheard the flight attendant talking to the couple in front of me. "Do you have a picture of your daughter?" Then she ooo-ed in the way people only do for infants.
Right! This is that [...]
Day 1 of my Lupron period arrived horribly, explosively, crampily, headache-ily yesterday morning. Two days earlier than expected, one day earlier than my plane tickets allowed for.
I called the nurse and begged. Last time I had an ultrasound and bloodwork on day 3, but didn't start stims until day [...]
A dinner party whose other attendees are just as exotically trained as you are, but far more successful -- juggling outside offers and outrageous travel while ignoring their teaching and snarking about the truly famous in the field -- and where Larry Summers is a major topic of conversation.
Allow me [...]
You're reading Well, aren't you? Admit it. It's awful (but somehow not quite so horribly guilt-inducing as Jane "I'm healthier than you because I work at it, damnit" Brody). This line, from an entry that's been getting attention, struck me:
Although chronic disorganization is not a medical [...]
I am hopeful coming in to this new year.
Hopeful might be too strong a word. I'm not depressed, at least. I'm holding my head up and trying to peer ahead. There are two deeply unpleasant projects that finally have visible ends. They may go well. They may go poorly. But, [...]
I. "YOU TELL HER! YOU TELL HER, that SHE MUST NEVER EVER make this happen AGAIN. YOU TELL HER, that MY CLASS RUNS until THREE PEE EM." The student is a foot taller than the professor, his face blank as he absorbs blow after verbal blow.
I've made him angry [...]
So the Times alerted me to an utterly awful piece in Time. By a "doctor."
Susan had chosen me because she had researched my education, read a paper I had written, determined my university affiliation and knew where I lived. It was a little too much — as if [...]
This morning there was frost across the fields as I walked to my office*. There's a huge specimen oak i the middle of campus which still has its leaves*. It's symmetric and full, with no branches below maybe 15 feet off the ground.
Beneath those branches, all the way out to [...]
When does an IVF cycle really, truly begin?
I'm going to argue for the first needle stick. And now I've had mine, for the cycle that I am desperately hoping to carry off in January.
Cornell likes to do their own FSH testing. They want frozen serum. For aging me, they [...]
The last post over at Female Science Professor was comforting, in its own odd way. Excerpts:
Several recent commenters asked me for more information about how I manage to be so ‘efficient’. Just to be clear about where I am on the efficiency spectrum: I do tend to get things [...]
I. Friday morning, our second car -- the one I was supposed to use to drive myself to the airport -- wouldn't start. Beaker cajoled it into motion half an hour after I left to teach. But, I have exactly zero desire to be stuck at the airport on Sunday [...]
[Answering machine picks up. Outbound message recorded years ago, back when he was drinking, and a little drunk. Many, many beeps.]
E: Ray, are you there?
[Horrible feedback screech as he picks up the phone.]
R: Yes. I just had to pull my head out of the shredder.
[His voice is quavering. Tired? [...]
I'm going to New York this weekend to help Ken move my foster father Ray out of his apartment. They're flying off to sunny California on Monday evening. There's an apartment rented there, a couple of blocks away from Ken's. He sent me pictures of it, and of the playground [...]
I. We will be going to a funeral this weekend, for a distant relative of Beaker's. After much consultation with the in-laws, we've decided to bring Miss T., of course expecting that she'll spend most of the service walking around a vestibule with a parent.
But what should she wear? [...]
I. The Yarn Harlot has gone to New Orleans. I'm not entirely sure why her post seems so worth reading that I'm linking from here, not the knitting side. Perhaps because so much of what we hear about New Orleans now is quasi-technical: it's about the specifics of the [...]
I am sad about TimesSelect going away.
Let me explain. For many years I've been paying for Nanna's Sunday Times subscription. For most of those years home delivery wasn't available in Granolaton. Every month my credit card statement would have a little reminder of just how far out in [...]
I know how startled everyone was when their parents suddenly got e-mail. Heck, I'm still startled to see my mother-in-law hovering on my buddy list, in between students whose usernames might as well be pierced and tattooed. But to get e-mail from Ray's little brother (yes, the one who is [...]
