ClustrMap

Keeping this on the front page. I expect it to update sometime in the next week. We’ve gone back down to our normal 10-15 hits a day now that the unpleasantness at FF is too boring to talk about.

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Well I'll be triggered

The trigger shot wasn’t too bad – humungous needle, but like before the trepidation was worse than the reality.

Both my ovaries have been throbbing today. Busy day tomorrow, need to be at the clinic by 9am to drop off Podna’s contribution, then back there again for 11am to have it put in. I’m on the Augmentin and prednisone for the next five days so have cut right down on carbs. The Augmentin are huge. I have a theory that most of the tablet is cornflour or something and the amount of active ingredient is very small. The only reason they’re that big is so that GlaxoSmithKline can put the name on the tablet in big letters. Mostly pills get an “A” at most. This pill, 2.5cm long x 1cm wide x 0.4cm high, gets the full name in a 6 or 8 point font.

The pharmacist warned that taking prednisone at night can interfere with sleep patterns, but the clinic specified to start it tonight. So we’ll see what happens.

This cycle, in the interests of de-stressing and not second-guessing too much, I have not been taking my temperature every morning. I am now VERY tempted to start taking it to see when I ovulate or if I have already, but I shall resist and forego that piece of knowledge. However I think I’ll start again somewhere in the last few days before the pregnancy test – if it’s bad news I like to have some warning.

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Yep, surging early

Another blood test this morning, didn’t stop bleeding at that one either. The results have come back and the LH was 18.0 which is almost double yesterday’s. So I’ll be triggering tonight and we’ll be doing our procedure tomorrow.

I don’t know whether to be pleased or not. They all seem pretty upbeat about it at the clinic, I just wish there was more than one follicle.

At least there’s no more blood tests. Last time I found the trigger hard to do because the needle would pierce rhino hide – bit scary 🙂

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Blood test results

My results came back – Oestradiol 811 and LH of 9.9 They’re not sure if the LH is starting to surge or not (if it is, I’ll ovulate in the next couple of days) so I have to do another blood test tomorrow morning.

I was hoping that the oestradiol count would show that there IS in fact another decent follicle but that score doesn’t look high enough for that, unfortunately.

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Scan this morning

I had a blood test and scan this morning. The blood test was interesting – I wouldn’t stop bleeding. The nurse and I agreed it was probably the aspirin that I am currently taking every day, but it didn’t happen on the other recent tests.

The scan wasn’t particularly good. It looks like nothing is going on with the left ovary, and the right proved to be very difficult to find. We think we found one follicle after a lot of prodding and poking and squirming around. It was quite uncomfortable. One follicle is a disappointment, to me anyway. We’re still in with a chance as it was a good size (16mm on 10th day of the cycle) and my lining is good for this stage at 10mm, but we still wanted more than one.

For some reason this has made me think of all the miscarriages I’ve had. The last five years have been a relentless nightmare of misery and frustration.

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Oscars

I see Helen Mirren got the Oscar for Elizabeth II – The Sequel

ha

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Busy busy busy

Up betimes this morning to get a blood test done. The lab didn’t have my form. **sigh**

This morning I received an email to say my dear friend Karen was delivered of her gorgeous baby boy Calum yesterday. As we had an appointment at the hospital anyway we dropped in to see her. And I can confirm that Calum is gorgeous 🙂 The Babylicious t-shirts were handed over with due ceremony and admired by all present.

Then we had the appointment with the gastroenterologist who is a little concerned about Podna’s symptoms at present. He has all the symptoms of a flare-up but none of the blood test markers, which either means it’s not his disease causing it, but possibly another disease (probably not) or scar tissue from the op last March (bit soon for that, so unlikely) or that his markers aren’t reliable (this happens apparently), or that he’s been left with too little intestine to do the job of digestion properly. None of these is a particularly brilliant outcome – the good news about the lack of apparent disease, going by the blood tests, is mitigated somewhat by the idea that the blood tests may not actually be telling us what is going on. The idea that scar tissue is the problem puts as back to square one before the op last March, sortof. The idea of another disease is not exactly pleasing either. The last option is actually the best as there is a treatment for that – more pills, but a well-known syndrome with well-trodden paths of medication. My memory of the op last year was that they didn’t remove any of the bit of intestine in question, or only a tiny amount, so personally I’d be surprised if that was it.

Then off to Fertility Associates to pick up more d-r-u-g-s.

Then off to work. I have about three projects all going live at the same time, and my right-arm (a member of staff, I mean) has just left, so things are busy.

Got the call in the afternoon re the blood tests – they want another test tomorrow and a scan. Results so far:

Saturday: Oestradiol 299, LH 6.1
Today: Oestradiol 572, LH 7.0

Good to see that oestradiol rising. We want more of that. Hopefully we’ll see some nice follicles tomorrow. If it’s anything like the last cycle, we’ll be triggering around 2nd March.

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We're special (but we knew that)

According to the Beeb, less than 5% of cohabiting couples stay together for more than 10 years.

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Children's T-shirts

I must say I was pretty disgusted to read today about so-called fashion t-shirts for children with slogans like “Future Porn Star” emblazoned on them. Apparently they are “adult purchases for children” and “joke gifts.” I’m not so worried about the threat of children growing up expecting to become porn stars (which I think is what is behind the outrage the article writes about) but I have a hearty dislike for people making children the unwitting butt of a joke, which, if these t-shirts are jokes, is what they’re doing.

Now I know that the genius behind the wondrous Babylicious is an avid reader of this blog and would never do something so categorically stupid or unkind.

Go to Babylicious instead, people, and boycott World.

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Blood tests

I’m in the wrong line of work.

This morning we schlepped over to the blood test lab in Courtenay Place and got there at 8.50. I’m only having Oestradiol and LH done, so it wasn’t a fasting test, but Fertility Associates want the results ASAP today so they can phone me and tell me what to do tonight and tomorrow.

Anyway, we got there and the place was packed out. On a Saturday. It had only been open 20 minutes. The first clue that it was busy came from the woman who arrived at the same time as me. I asserted myself to the front of the queue to get on the list of people to be seen. Yes, I had to queue up to join the other queue. I had no trouble, I had no competition from the woman as she was too busy putting her handbag on the only spare chair in the place to bagsie her place to sit. It was that full. She had her priorities right as they don’t see you in order anyway as far as I can tell.

Most of the people who came in after us (4 out of 5 or 5 out of 6 including us) had to pay for their tests. That place obviously has a licence to print money.

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Egg-making

The injections have been going OK so far even at the superhigh dose. I’ve been letting the cartridge warm up from the fridge for at least three hours, perhaps that’s part of it. The pharmacist told me that my insulin cartridges take about 30 minutes to warm up, but maybe a bit longer reduces the afterburn still further.

I have been having odd bouts of nausea though, which is a documented side-effect, and am carrying a nagging slight headache, which isn’t, but I expect it’s connected. Not feeling spacey yet, unlike last time. Shame, I was looking forward to that.

I also have a ravenous appetite which is a bit worrying as I haven’t started the steroids yet, what will I be like when I do! Still, having no money at the moment means we’re not buying snack foods so there aren’t too many opportunities to pig out.

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Rule of busking #1

Victoria University of Wellington have just found out what every busker knows.

Make sure you always have some coins, but not too many, in the hat.

I could have told them that, having shared a house with a busker early in my long and varied life.

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Pity Dubya's advisers

Today via David Slack‘s review of a review of Uri Dan’s biography of Ariel Sharon, we are treated to another gem of George W Bush’s political and cultural sensitivity. I’m quoting David quoting the review:

“Speaking of George Bush, with whom Sharon developed a very close relationship, Uri Dan recalls that Sharon’s delicacy made him reluctant to repeat what the president had told him when they discussed Osama bin Laden. Finally he relented. And here is what the leader of the Western world, valiant warrior in the battle of cultures, promised to do to bin Laden if he caught him: “I will screw him in the ass!””

I feel so sorry for the Josh Lymans, Sam Seaborns, Leo McGarrys and CJ Creggs of the real West Wing, they must spend so much of their time slapping their heads.

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Carbon credits etc

David Haywood comments on NZ’s potential and more likely probable response(s) to the world’s desire for carbon efficiency. I like how he starts with the (un)stateliness of Helen Clark’s speeches 🙂

I agree NZ has a unique chance to lead the world here, but also agree that we’re a bit moribund to take advantage of it. Our government doesn’t have the get-up-and-go required to leap in and get on with it. One of our problems is our extremely short electoral term – 3 years only – which means that ALL ministers and MPs are permanently thinking about how to get elected. Couple this with our unicameral system and that means we have no long term view in Parliament at all. The only structure that permits input from long-sighted visionaries is the Select Committee stage (where you can hear from industry greats, for example) and to me that’s just not good enough, especially as we have seen how the government can just ignore everything they hear at a Select Committee stage if they want to.

People moan about the House of Lords in the UK being an antiquated leftover from a society structured around privilege, but the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. I’m a big fan of having a non-elected second house. Yes the House of Lords is almost always empty, but the people who do engage in debates there usually know something about the subject matter in hand and care about its future, which you can’t say for the Commons or our House of Representatives. You don’t have to make seats in the other house hereditary, they could be given out like significant honours (not under Tony Blair’s system though 🙂 ) to people who have achieved great things. They do need to be for life or for a significant time (eg 20 years) and non-renewable, that is the only way to cut out any posturing from members who are trying to look good to their bosses. You don’t even need to have party affiliations in the other house.

I have suggested, quietly, that NZ could have another house made up of representatives from Maori according to their own rules. Why not? Think of the opportunity. You could get rid of the Maori electoral seats as they wouldn’t be needed to give Maori a voice in parliament (I should say, until we have something like this I believe it is critical we keep the Maori electoral seats IF we want to keep going with the Treaty of Waitangi). It could be run completely along Maori lines so you’d escape any criticism of making Maori fit with non-Maori (ie Western) political structures. The weakness of our unicameral system, ie that all legislation is decided on numbers according to political party, would disappear. I’m not saying whether Maori house support would be a requirement for putting a bill up for Royal Assent, perhaps you could say that if the House of Representatives give it 80% (or something), you don’t need a Maori Whare majority, but for less you do. For example. And that would truly put the Treaty of Waitangi into place here instead of lipservice from government departments who still think the Treaty is a Maori issue.

How did I get from carbon credits to Treaty of Waitangi….ah well.

A three-house system – now there’s a thing. One elected, one Maori, and the other made up of achievers. Yes.

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First injection

Did the first injection last night and it went well, no afterburn at all. I was actually finishing off a phial from the last cycle so will be cracking open a new one tonight.

A couple of hours after the injection I felt a little nauseous. Is that a known side-effect? Anyway it didn’t stop me going to sleep and I feel fine now.

They’ve requested the first blood test for Saturday (which means getting to Courtenay Place by 9am, yikes) – I’ll have to read back over the last cycle but I was sure they tested me more often last time, and I’m pretty sure they were scanning me by that time too. I’m extremely curious as to what this doubled dose will do. 200 units sounds like such a lot. Maybe it’ll work!

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