I am a Pincushion!

Here is the maths-

Days since treatment commenced - 11
Times a needle has been stuck into me - 22
Times into stomach - 18
Times into arm - 4

It's raining and I'm feeling very sorry for myself. Had to get up at 6.00am this morning to drive into the city to get bloods taken and my normally very shy veins were feeling extra intimidated today and chose to hide. After 3 mins of trying to get blood out we had to switch arms and try again on the other one, which gave us half a vial after 5 mins. And I did all the things you are meant to, tried to keep extra hydrated, kept warm, kept my arms pumping in the waiting room, but no co-operation was forthcoming. However it is all good news, extra follicals have developed on those ovaries, threat of over hormone stimulation has been kept at bay, and we are go for egg retireval on Friday. There I get even more people becoming overly familiar with my lady parts as they go in to get those eggs. The good news is that I am asleep for it this time, unlike all the internal scans with the probe, (aggggh and shudder at this point!). When I wake up I get to look at my hand and see written how many eggs they got, last time it was seven, lets see if I can beat it this time!

In Memorandum

With all that has happened I took up the services of a psychologist to work through all that has happened. Now I am a pretty self sufficient and emotially upbeat person and in the course of a normal life would never take this route, but life hasn't been normal so I had some sessions on the couch. It was one of the best and most positive experiences of my life, we acknowledged the past and worked on moving forward. One of the things we discussed was having some kind of memorial to the two pregnancies that we lost, something to mark that they existed and that we lost them. So I thought about that for some time, ideas such as planting a tree didn't work with being in rented accommodation or getting some kind of object for the house seemed very maudlin. In the end I was inspired by a post from a friend of ours who makes micro financing loans to groups and individuals around the world. This allows you to join with up to hundreds of others in financing things such as small business to buy more stock or a farmer to get the right machinery. Real, tangible, life changing support that helps to change peoples lives in a practical way.

So I made two loans, one to help a womens' co-operative buy some material to make goods in South America and one to support a female Ugandan farmer to improve soil quality for their farm, or in plain English I helped pay for poo! Now a couple of months later I got the first loan payed back, with a little bit of interest to save up for another loan amount, and I was able to re-invest in another project in Senegal.. Now I feel like I almost have a living memorial, that is out there helping to make the world just a little bit better almost with a life of its own.

http://www.kiva.org/