Pardon My Dust

I lived!

I hoped I would. I even suspected that I would. But it is nice to have it confirmed. To be up and about, all hale and hearty once more.

This next part has nothing to do with anything but I feel compelled:

I am reading a regency romance right now, as I tend to do when I am stressed about anything. Apart from a gentle anxiety over whether the haughty Lord Crynstone will realize in time that Miss Amelia had naught to do with her uncle's treacherous plot to land them both in the parson's mousetrap by engineering that compromising scene in the rose garden; I find such light fare soothing. It frees the rest of my mind to worry obsessively over the embryos. Are they dead? Are they in Ireland (new post up at REDBOOK)? However, I cannot actually bring the book with me in public as it features a half-dressed man (as if the earl would strip to the waist for any other purpose than to help free his frantic stallion, Nightmare, from the ensnaring confines of a mysteriously damaged wooden bridge) and an equally immodest female. The cover, it is lurid.

So instead of shaming myself at the Y, I grabbed an old favorite off the shelf on my way out the door to Patrick's sports class: The Portable Dorothy Parker. I should state (and I doubt any of you will argue with me) that Dorothy Parker's poetry is execrable. Truly. It is a mystery to me how it was ever published. But her short stories are brilliant and her reviews, hilarious. She has this one about a Milne play called Give Me Yesterday... ha ha ha... SLAYS me every time ("Ah, Selly, Selly..."). For some reason I had never read the Introduction to this book and for some other reason I read it for the first time while I waited yesterday and this brings me to my rambling point:

That is the bitchiest forward I have ever read in my entire life. Seriously, Brendan Gill must've been dipping his quill in actual acid. It is annoying, certainly, to read fatuous praise for something you are already prepared to enjoy but good grief! He even takes out poor AE Housman in the process. And who is Brendan Gill, I'd like to know? I had to google him myself and all I came up with was the fact that he wrote the Introduction to The Portable. So there. Oh, and he wrote for the New Yorker for a couple, six decades. I realize this irritation is fifty years, oh no, SIXTY years past its prime but like I said, it was new to me. And I wanted to share. Am I right? Eh? Surely I am not the only one to find this Introduction beyond the pale? Don't all start shouting at once now; let's keep this civilized.

My ability to distract myself is amazing even me sometimes, I swear.

I just wrote this big thing about preschool but I don't have time to finish it right now. I'll save it and post it later this week.

I had promised an embryo update at REDBOOK, though, largely because I had been promised an embryo update so here it is:

who knows?

There were fourteen embryos biopsied yesterday. They don't check on them today. They will have PGD results by the time we show up for transfer (roughly), which sounded APPALLING because sitting around with that full-to-the-point-of-agony bladder without even knowing if there is any reason to be there or if I will just be sent home with regrets... bleh.

I emailed the PGD lab and he promised to call me in the morning before we go. So that's good. He also assured me that they had received the cells. So that's even better.

Wish us luck tomorrow if you would and I will post an update at Infertility Diaries.         

Comments

[Amber]

So you wrote all that to say that we still know nothing about the embryos??? good grief girl. you are killing me.

[spit]

good luck

and I love Regency Romances, too!

[Denise]

I could not log in at Redbook so I couldn't get this gem off my chest:

"My embryos went to Ireland, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."

I CAN'T GET OVER THE EMBRYOS GOING TO IRELAND. With no passport, yet. They could have been TERRORIST EMBRYOS!!!

[JuliaKB]

Geez, that's cruel. Not giving you the update today, I mean.
Hoping they are all good and all make it, and the biggest problem you have tomorrow is choosing which to transfer and which to freeze. A girl can dream, can't she?

I worked at the library the last year of high school, and I had to shelve YA novels and some of those romance ones. Of course, if you sort and shelve them, you have to read the covers, and that completely killed my desire to ever read the actual books. So I read blogs while I worry about things. Amazing power to distract they possess (Yoda says).

[luolin]

Good luck. 14 sounds like a lot going into pgd, especially if they are all on the right side of the Atlantic.

Now I am glad that my clinic didn't call me to come in for transfer until they got the pgd results. Much better to be sitting in my hotel room wondering if there were any embryos to transfer than in the waiting room.

Also, how do they decide when they want a full bladder or not? I always had an empty bladder, for which I am grateful, but it seems sort of arbitrary-other women at my clinic did it with full bladders.

[Sela]

One of the mom I used to babysit for had an enormous collection of romance novels. Just every kind imaginable. I used to be able to get through three before she got home...

Can someone explain the bladder thing to me? Maybe I missed that health class, but what does a bladder have to with babies?

[kimberly/tippytoes]

I am reading the Portable now, but I had skipped the intro. I'll have to go back and look at it while I await your next update.

[Mary]

Good luck tomorrow. I used to have a pleather book cover that was perfect for paperbacks with embarrassing covers. Get one at the bookstore & you can read trashy books anywhere you want.

[Lisa]

Or better yet, deface a highfalutin book (Proust?) - remove its covers and glue them over the luridness!

[luolin]

I hope I didn't sound cluelessly optimistic. I do realize that it never seems like enough embryos for the person who is actually sending them off to Ireland/the pgd lab.

[Amber]

Sela, some RE's use ultrasound guided transfers, and when the bladder is full it is easier to locate everything else. at least that's what one of them told me.

Once I had to get up and pee for 10 seconds and then stop because my bladder was too full. that was fun. not.

[em]

I'm about to go through this... I'm donating my eggs to my cousin... I wish you all the very best of luck (and I've got my fingers crossed for me and my cousin too).

[Pam L]

Sela, the full bladder ,a s far as I know from my experience, is to make everything more visible for an ultrasound so they can see what's going on in your uterus. It pushes it up and makes for a better picture. I know because I got reprimanded severely one time for wasting their time when I was in for an ultrasound and I hadn't been able to drink the gallon or so (it seemed) of water before I got there because I had to go straight from work. The time before I did have a full bladder was was left waiting in the waiting room for 45 minutes. Yikes!

[carosgram]

Georgette Heyer is one of my favorite authors.

[Leggy]

Good luck tomorrow. Here's hoping for lots of genetically good looking embryos.

[Leggy]

And OMG- the Ireland story. That is worse than the time Fed Ex "misplaced" my embryos for a day or so.

[Beth TigerMoon]

Oh I am so wishing you the best on this go 'round! (And praise be they didn't go to Ireland. Dear lord that doctor ... !!).

[Anna]

Wishing you luck for tomorrow and hoping there are some beautifully non-translocated embryos with your name on them.

[SheilaC]

Hoping and praying for good news tomorrow, and a good transfer. Best of luck!

[Jude]

Good luck for (well it's today here) but tomorrow.
Everything crossed for you.

[Slim]

Did you see that Fox obit of Vonnegut?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnAaDEFk7Uk

I'm not even a big Vonnegut fan and I thought it was beyond the pale. Now I'm wondering if James Rosen was trying to be Brendan Gill, although then JR would be linked with that damnliberal magazine.

I am thinking nontranslocated thoughts for you.

[Slim]

Did you see that Fox obit of Vonnegut?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnAaDEFk7Uk

I'm not even a big Vonnegut fan and I thought it was beyond the pale. Now I'm wondering if James Rosen was trying to be Brendan Gill, although then JR would be linked with that damnliberal magazine.

I am thinking nontranslocated thoughts for you.

[Matthew M. F. Miller]

Doctors are paid to make you wait - at least Dorothy Parker provides instant, if not brutal, gratification.

"Could it be when I was young, someone dropped me on my head?" Brilliant

[Lydia]

Best wishes!!!!!! I've got a really good feeling. :)

[Spacemom]

Thinking good balenced calm embryo thoughts for you S and P

[silene]

Good luck tomorrow - glad to hear you lived.

[magpie]

Good luck with the embryos!

Brendan Gill was an architecture critic, and a writer, and very involved in the historic preservation life of NYC. Among other things, he helped save Grand Central Terminal - a glorious building. He was a good speaker - funny and acerbic. But I've never read his intro to the Dorothy Parker.

[Stephanie]

This is your time, your moment, the stars are aligned for you. Thinking/living positive thoughts, this will go well for you I know it!

[Kristine]

I've been thinking of you all week! I am definitely wishing you all the luck and good thoughts I can!

[Marilyn]

Holy cow, I knew Brendan Gill. He lived down the street from my aunt in Norfolk, CT.

[LetterB]

I might have to disagree, at least about Parker's light verse. "One Perfect Rose" is one of my favorite poems of all time. Lots of her poetry is overwrought and dated, but there are some very funny gems in there. Her reviews are genius, no argument there. My favorite line: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." (About Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, ha!)

Best of luck! Hoping that all goes well.

[cursingmama]

Good luck!
(I use those fabric text book covers for kids to cover the sketchy books I read from time to time - particularly when I'll be reading at one of the kids sainted schools.)

[Pam L]

Loved Parker's comments on Ayn Rand/Atlas Shrugged. Tried to read it, couldn't do it. It was like slogging through thick mud, as if life only existed in a dark Edward Hopper painting or something. I quit half way through because I could not get a glimpse that there was any hope in it. I never quite got what the point was.

[winecat]

Here's chiming in with good wishes. Keeping my fingers and toes crossed.

[Cris]

Try Carla Kelly for Regencies. It can take a bit to track her down, but she is wonderful. Nothing generic about her characters, and great secondary characters too (I really appreciate this when many regency authors have resorted to a terrible sort of secondary character short hand - dotty aunt, crusty grandmother, protective butler - with no underpinnings to reality). She is a wonderful writer.

Crossing my fingers on good PGD results!

[sheilah]

For the most part I will agree with you on the Dorothy Parker poetry. But there is one that I always loved (especially after I had just gotten dumped...not that that ever happened to ME):

In youth it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change with every passing lad,
To suit his theories.

But now I know the things I know
And do the things I do.
And if you do not like me so
To hell, my love, with you.

[uberimma]

Nu, so? It's Thursday night. How many? Any?

[Giillian]

Thinking good thoughts about your count and transfer. If anyone on God's green earth deserved it...not that that does any good at all. I will be around whatever happens but I would love to be in the cheering section, I am preparing my pom poms right now!

[Sara]

I'm glad you're alive, and have all digits crossed for some good news from the PGD.

[reenie]

All the luck in the world, Julia. I can't believe you're at the doorstep of what I pray will be the next child you get to hold. (squeal)

[Aurelia]

Okay, please update somewhere, or I'll start to get all stalkerish and stuff!

[marisa]

ok,
i tried to post a comment on redbook, but i must be login challenged because can't seem to get on to post the comment.

so, of the 10 that were abnomral, why, can they tell what's up with them?

[marisa]

ok,
i tried to post a comment on redbook, but i must be login challenged because can't seem to get on to post the comment.

so, of the 10 that were abnomral, why, can they tell what's up with them?

[JB]

Posting here, instead of at Redbook, just to say I only had two-to-transfer, and last night I put one of them to bed in ladybug pjs. Honest!

[Beth TigerMoon]

Wafting implantation thoughts your way!

[watson]

I'm de-lurking to wish you much luck Julia!

I just went through IVF w/ PGD last month, so I know the stress that comes with waiting for that final report.

We went from 27 eggs to 19 embryos, down to 9 after the PGD (transferred 2), and were left with 4 to freeze.

The attrition rate (if you can call it that) was shocking to me, being an IVF newbie, but I guess that's to be expected...

I hope your bed rest goes well and does the trick, so 9 days from now you get GREAT news.

GOOD LUCK!!

[luolin]

Couldn't post comments at Redbook (admittedly, I am lazy).

Wishing you luck with the wait and the beta.

Just in case you're still open to ladybug onesie-type stories, I transferred three morulas back on Sept. 11 after my third ivf/pgd cycle and am expecting a baby in 4 weeks. I was told that morulas were common with pgd. I haven't actually bought a ladybug onesie yet, though.

[Giillian]

I am hoping that the glittery fairies had a positive impact on those embryos and they flutter into place like magic. It would be lyrical.

[Veronica]

I wish you luck.

And I'm de-lurking again (I am a loyal reader but a faithless commenter) to share your disdain for both Brendan Gill and Dorothy Parker's poetry. Some people were made for prose. A wet red stain indeed.

And damn Lillian Hellman anyway for doing her best (worst) to deny the NAACP DP's legacy.

Oh, would that I had real-life friends who also have the Portable DP on their shelves and hyperlexic preschoolers happily numbering the pages of their abecedaries in the kitchen...really, it's eerie that I feel so much shared experience with you who are really but a literary figure to me...