I have some great PIO stories

Well here I am. 10 days after transfer.  That went by fast.  I ate my pineapple core.  I drank only a little coffee.  Tried not to over-analyze anything.  The only real symptom I think I had was some weird twingy-pulling really low on my pubic bone.  Whatever that may mean.

The truth is, when I really stop to think about what this last IVF means, what it truly means, it makes me panic.  I feel my lungs constrict and my mind starts racing.  Because if it doesn’t work…

But I don’t think about it.  I can’t.

However, I do have two PIO injection stories for you.

The first starts with some blood

The first story happened a few days ago.  We do these injections in our bathroom, me bent over the sink, my eyes shut in case I catch a glimpse of that holy-inch-and-a-half-needle in the mirror.  Chris is on his knees with a nice view of my butt.  My pants are pulled down, eh, sort of.  So get this.  He finishes injecting, waits for a second, and then pulls it out.  Most of the time, there is nothing.  A few times, a drop of blood has beaded up.  This time, he draws the needle out and blood comes SPURTING out.  No kidding.  Like a slasher horror movie.  Blood comes shooting out and keeps PUMPING, gushing down my skin, soaking my work pants, and puddling on the floor.

“Shit! What the hell!!” my so-not-ready-for-gushing-blood-god-bless-him husband shrieks, and leaps backward, before remembering himself and grabs the tiny 2×2 gauze pad to slap on my butt.  Obviously that didn’t stop anything.

“Grab a Kleenex!” I holler at him and he’s frantically swiping tissues from the sink.  We get the bleeding to stop finally.  Of course, I probably lost all that night’s worth of progesterone.

That time I shot up in an optical department

The second one was just Friday night.  We were on the road, driving out of state to go pick up our plants for the garden from my in-laws.  We had planned for him to pick me up at 4:30 pm from my work, but my supervisor wouldn’t let me leave until 5. 

So we got a late start, and even though I had already called the clinic and they ok’d for my shot to be given later in the night when we arrived. With traffic and getting a later start, I was worried about getting that shot in.  So we decided to stop at the next big city and look for a Target because they sometimes have family bathrooms.

Well, we get there, and there is no family bathroom.  Chris suggests a Minute Clinic, asking if we could use a room.  There is no Minute Clinic.

But there is the optical store…

So we hung out by the entrance for five minutes pondering life and how the hell we were supposed to do this, until I finally resigned with a, “Screw it.”

I marched in there up to the counter where the sales lady was standing.

She greets us.

“So, I think I have the weirdest question you have ever been asked,” I announce.

She smiles.  “Oh, let’s see what you’ve got.”

I lean in to her.  “So I have to do an injection, here,” I explain, pointing behind me to my butt to make it clear.  “We’re from out of town, and my husband has to give it to me, and I can’t go into the women’s bathroom with him so I’m wondering if there’s somewhere here we could…” I sort of awkwardly trail off.

She, luckily, laughs, “Yes, that is definitely the strangest question I have ever been asked.  But yes, you can use the optical room over here,” and bless her heart, leads us to the room.  So I walk in feeling like an asshole, and he shuts the door and I quickly prep up everything.  There isn’t a lot of room and there seemed to be a lot of expensive equipment in there, so I kind of just learn over the tiny sink, praying no one comes in with my pants pulled down, Chris behind me and a bunch of drug paraphernalia laying around.  They might have gotten the wrong impression.

Anyway, you know, no big deal and all.