Or, Because I Said So.

Our weekend at the lakehouse was refreshing. No one asked about my fertility situation, and I was able to relax (mostly) and enjoy our friends' children without feeling as if everyone was looking at me and thinking, How sad that she can't have her own or maybe Thank god she can't have her own. They might have been thinking these things, but at least the I word (infertility, yo) wasn't percolating in the air the way it tends to if you've just been having teary conversations about your cervix. Denial = Fun! (I did notice that one of my non-mom friends wasn't drinking, though - I don't think she was pregnant, but she may have been 2ww-ing; I banished these ruminations fairly successfully.)

ANYWAY. I called my clinic yesterday to reschedule my "pre-op" appointment on the 25th because I realized that, um, I have a big meeting that day that I scheduled and cannot change. I often schedule things as though I exist in two parallel worlds simultaneously. While I was on the phone with the nurse, I decided to throw in an extra question, just for fun: Why am I not supposed to take Me*drol and tetra*cycline for my FET? It was my understanding that I have taken these in the past because my embryos have been ICSIed and thus my already-hostile uterus might mistake them for a marauding army or, alternatively, a cheeseburger. In either case, it would do away with them.

So the nurse said, "Oh, you don't do those for FETs." Why? I asked. The embryos are still ICSIed. Does the freezing render them benign? She shifted tactics. "I don't think we do those for blastocyst transfers." I referred her to my chart for IVF#1, when I did a blastocyst transfer and took those drugs. She said she'd ask the doctor and call me back.

She called back later and said something that I can only recall as sounding a lot like, "The doctors said you don't take those drugs on an FET because you don't take those drugs on an FET." She could tell I wasn't satisfied (maybe she could sense in my pregnant - ha! - pauses that I had looked things up on the Internets and knew that this "rule" didn't hold across the board), and she wanted me to be satisfied. She said she would ask again, but I've heard nothing.

I want to be liked by doctors and nurses. I want to be their favorite patient. I want them to sit in their team meetings, behold my chart with delight, and say in unison, "That Motel Manager - she's so smart, slender, and hygienic!" But I know I am annoying them at this point. And it makes me feel as if I must gird myself for battle each time I go in, and I don't want this to get adversarial (like my relationship with certain telecom providers). In reality, they probably look at my chart and say in unison, "That Motel Manager - boy, does she bug the shit out of me!"

But I was further annoyed today when I discovered that the hospital had not sent my records to the high-success-rates clinic in Colorado, with which I have a phone consultation tomorrow for 250 of my hard-earned dollars. Calls were lobbied. Pressure was applied. The hospital records office promises to fax my chart to the clinic by the end of business today. I really hope they do, because I really want to hear some answers from somebody at some point. Is that too much to ask?