Bring on the Drugs

So the process begins again and off I go to collect the drugs for the next cycle. It is amazing how little people know about the actual process of IVF, and I used to be one of them. I thought it was just about getting an egg and some sperm in a test tube and that would be it. How I wish it was... Basically at the beginning of the next cycle I will be daily and then twice daily injected with drugs over the period of about two weeks. My body will be turned into a big egg production factory; I never thought about it like that before and now feel a huge affinity and sympathy with my battery hen cousins. Instead of the normal one egg a month we are hoping that my body will bring to maturity as many as we can, as close to double figures that we can get. With our fertilisation level being low last time around the more eggs we produce hopefully means more embryos to implant or to ‘put on ice’ for the future. So I felt like an old hand, checking through the pens and swabs, and giggling over the nurse’s advice that the cool bag they give it to you all in makes a great lunch box. I suppose we can consider this a freebie perk from joining an exclusive club, though I think I would prefer to wear the Dennis the Menace badge from when I joined the Beano club when I was seven.