CD12: Testing & Reflecting

J and I headed to Dr. B's office bright and early for bloodwork. NK assay, cytokines, and to retest my LADs after out two trips to Mexico to see if the treatment has done its job. The NKs and cytokines were tested to see if I am experiencing a flare of either of said things after taking the two humira shots. The NK and LAD results should be in on Friday, but the jury will be out on the cytokines until at least Wednesday. Also coming in on Friday should be the results on my endometrial biopsy. So we're at the end of our testing phase for the time being and hopefully we'll get some good news that we're good to go for a FET next month.

I met a sweet woman at Dr. B's. She was there with her little girl "E" who was conceived when she was 42. Yes, 42. And she, also, is a patient of Dr. Z's. Her first cycle she had 7 follicles, they all fertilized, and all went in. She got pregnant and miscarried. The D&C showed trisomy 21. She was devastated but they moved right on into IVF #2. Three follicles, all fertilized again. They put them all in and lo and behold they got "E". What luck. So today she was in Dr. B's office doing her bloodwork for Dr. Z (she's not a Dr. B patient, per se) and she overheard me saying to the office gals that I had some leftover heparin and didn't know what to do with it. She piped in and said, "I could use it". Perfect. Wonderful. I was hoping to gift it to someone who could use it and I found someone. I gave her directions to my house and told her to swing by when she could.

Twenty minutes later she was at my door. We chatted quickly as "E" was fast asleep in the car. I gave her my heparin and she gave me her contact info. "Let's stay in touch!" she said as she ran off to work.

She called not half an hour later to continue our conversation. It took me by surprise, nonetheless, but she explained that she had wanted to tell me about using acupuncture. Had I tried it? Yes, yes, yes... We talked for what must have been 30 or 40 minutes. She told me all about her cycle. Her acupuncturist, whom she swears by. By the end of our conversation I felt hope descend upon me like I haven't felt in such a long time. You see it's been quite a while since I've heard of anyone getting pregnant with Dr. Z save for "G". I'm not cloistered, mind you, as I do participate in a number of online fertility boards. But it just seemed that lately I wasn't hearing of anyone getting knocked up by him. So even though her pregnancy happened two years ago, perhaps because she was my age when it happened for her, it gave me some hope that it might also happen for me.

Last night I wasn't so hopeful. I've been waking up lately stupified by the speed at which the past few years have flown by me. I've been here, in the Bay Area, for six years. My life changed quite a bit when I came here. I went from being a research associate in an Immunology R&D lab, to being a dotcommer, to being unemployed...wondering what to do to make ends meet. Like many, I wound up selling homes and it kind of stuck. Or did it?

I've been waking up in a bit of a panic as of late, wondering, "What the hell have I done? Where the hell am I at? Where did my career go?" It feels a bit like a midlife crisis, or maybe it's the lexapro that Dr. B has me on, but I also realize quite clearly that I am on the verge of a major change in my life. We can't go on trying IVF forever, it's simply cost prohibitive, so I'm coming up on the edge of either being a mother, or living a childless life. And if it's the latter, what the hell am I going to do with the rest of my life? Travel? Go back to school? God, I really don't know what I am going to do but I do realize what I haven't done and that is to focus on the "what if" of childlessness.

Last night I sat in Borders perusing a PCAT test book, rifling through the questions, thinking, "My god, I could still pass this 8 years after organic chemistry. This is pretty damned easy compared to the MCAT. Hmm...I love, love, love science, but, Jesus Christ, do I really want to be a pharmacist? Why didn't I take the PCAT after I took the MCAT? Man, what a waste that was. But I can't imagine a more boring job than sitting in a pharmacy dispensing drugs all day long. Torture. But hell it beats this shit and, besides, it's a cushy science job...why not?" But then the reality of the boredom sets back in and I push the idea away, but not too far away. I had quite a long conversation with myself, sitting there in Borders.

I realize I have some regrets about the lack of career direction my life has taken, I've been blown here and there by the wind as opposed to directing what will happen next. I've never really wanted to be anything "really bad" in my life. I was never a child that said, "When I grow up I want to be a doctor" and never wavered from that position. I knew children like this, growing up, who basically became what they set out to be. That scared me. How on earth could someone under 18 have any clue at all what they want to be? And to stick with it implied, to me, a lack of exploration. Or fearfulness of trying something different. I knew this girl in high school named "LS". She knew from an early time that she wanted to be an accountant and she had the studiousness, and kind of dry personality, of someone that would probably make an accountant. A good one, at that. I used to see her board the bus everyday laden with huge bags of books. She studied her ass off throughout high school, she didn't date or go out, and today she is an accountant. That freaks me out. Didn't she ever want to go and be wild? Dig in the dirt and be an archaeologist? Or maybe travel to an exotic country and be an ethnologist? A biologist? How on earth a high school girl figures out where the rest of her life is going is totally beyond me. I don't know if it's "commitment" that she has over me, or if she was just fearful of doing something "less responsible". I will never understand it in a way.

I feel lucky that I have so much freedom day in and day out. I don't make a killing at what I do, not even close, but I don't have to punch a clock. I don't have to be nearly anywhere on time. I ramp up my work when I need money, and when I feel somewhat comfortable, I ease off a bit and enjoy time with J. I've had a very interesting and varied work history. I can't call it a career path because I've been on so many paths. I'm not sure I'd trade it for someone's life like "LS's" though, even though she's probably been at the same job for 20 years and will likely have a really great retirement package waiting for her down the road. In retrospect I would trade my varied work history in for the ability to be a doctor, but as I said, that is in "retrospect". When I was working as an archaeologist if you would have asked me if I wanted to go to medical school I would have said, "No way!" and then picked up my shovel and kept digging.