Monday, July 09, 2007

Welcome to my pharmacy. I mean, my life.

Here's a glimpse into my life over the 11 days. If you're afraid of needles, avert your eyes.


I'll walk you through it. From left to right:

  • Menopur. Or human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG), which is extracted from the urine of postmenopausal women. (Who are these women donating their urine? The mind reels.) Menopur is stimulates the development of multiple eggs. We won't go there right now. Anyway, every night, my husband mixed this up and injected it into my hip. You can see the needle in the center of the photo. This one hurt like a motherf$#$&*(#$. Good times.
  • Diazepam, better known as Valium. Yeah, baby! I get to take one tonight, to help me sleep, and then I have to take one tomorrow morning at 7:30am to relax me for my egg retrieval. If you call me at about 8am, you'll get to talk to one happy camper.
  • Leuprolide Acetate, a.k.a. Lupron. I already talked about this one in an earlier post. That little needle with the orange cap is what I use to inject it. Twice a day, morning and night.
  • Gonal-f. That's the white and red needle in the front that looks like a pen. In fact, it's called the Gonal-f RFF Pen. Which be all James Bond and stuff (you know, in the event that James had to suddenly help Pussy Galore produce multiple eggs), except that I had to keep it in the refrigerator. So there was no chance of me pulling it out my purse and trying to write a check with a fertility medication worth several thousand big ones. Instead, I got to screw a needle onto it and inject myself twice a day. (That's five injections a day, for those of you keeping score.)
  • Doxycycline. That's the prescription bottle back near the alcohol prep pads. An antibiotic that both hubby and I get to take twice a day to prevent any infections that might screw up the proceedings.
  • Novarel. Are you tired yet? I am. Novarel is human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Hubby injected this one into my hip last night at precisely 9pm. My caffeine- and alcohol-drinking days are officially over, at least for a while. Novarel induces ovulation in about 40 hours, which is why my egg retrieval is at 9am tomorrow, 36 hours later. Don't want my docs going in there and finding empty follicles. Not at these prices.
In the back is the sharps container. I love having something that says "biohazard" in my kitchen. So appropriate.

I think that's it. And I haven't even touched on the side effects, the most irritating of which is that I now have the water retention of a camel, which is a great thing to have during bikini season. But it's temporary, and I can live with that.

4 comments:

Tink said...

Best wishes for tomorrow!

Tink said...

Best wishes for tomorrow!

Tink said...

Best wishes for tomorrow!

Cynthia Badiey said...

Hey Tink,
I'm not sure why your comment posted three times...but THANK YOU all the same!