Capable

Today I was capable. I dragged my behind to another egg retrieval, the most seemingly hopeless one yet. From getting the news mid-baseline-appointment that we'd lost all my embryos from the previous cycle and having my doctor suggest we cancel this cycle due to poor initial indicators, to having some last minute rallying of the follicles only for hope to be dashed by dropping estradiol levels forcing me into a premature retrieval, all while bearing the news of this past week's election results, I'm amazed I rode the emotional rollercoaster all the way into today's surgery. With a heavy heart, I negotiated special terms to today's retrieval to cut our losses by electing not to fertilize (and save on the out-of-pocket costs) if we retrieved fewer than five mature eggs. I wasn't finding much hope to hold onto.

Having awoken at 3am today, I peaced out of our condo around 4:30am and walked all the way to the clinic just because I couldn't bear waiting around anymore. The universe did its best to cheer me on with an inspirational sign in the window of a car parked around the border of Emeryville and Oakland telling me I was capable of more than I know. Shout out to the random car owner who felt folks might need a cheerleader. After a quick pre-sunrise tour around Lake Merritt, I headed into my clinic to face the music.

What followed was confusing and hopeful and hard to digest. We got eleven eggs, ten of which were mature. That's good, really good by my body's standards. I don't trust it. There have been too many dashed hopes and disappointments this cycle for any of this to make sense. But I was capable of making it through today, and I'll get up tomorrow, and in three days I'll begin priming for cycle number 7.

Cycle 6: heavy on the heaviness, light on the hope, but we made it through.