Confessions of a needle-phobe

OK, so I've been pretty bad at providing updates lately.  This is only partially because not much has been going on, but is probably more so due to the fact that M and I have been binge-watching Orange is the New Black on Netflix.  We've been plowing through at least two or three episodes per night over the past week.  Usually I'm a multitasker, tapping away on the keyboard or reading blogs while watching TV out of the corner of my eye.  But I've been totally engrossed in OITNB, so much so that I've had to put down my laptop and watch TV the old fashioned way, with both eyes on the screen.  It's probably because of all the lesbians.

Anywho...

In cycle news, I ovulated last weekend and started estrogen priming this past Saturday.  One little blue pill twice a day, mercifully taken orally (so no smurf cooch).  I've been instructed to wait until I "have a bleed" (so I'm assuming not really quite like a full period??) and call in to start my stims.  I was initially a little worried that the timing would mean that I'd be on stims this Thursday, when I'm scheduled to see Cats with a friend.  That now seems less likely, which is good because it means that I'll avoid having to face one of my worst infertility fears: shooting up in a public washroom.  By myself.

I may or may not have mentioned before that I'm very needle-phobic.  As a kid, if I found out that I needed to have a blood test or a vaccination for any reason I'd break down into tears and freak myself out for hours before it actually happened.  I've gotten better, of course, but my mother (who was the one to comfort me through most of these episodes as a kid) finds it pretty ironic that I now voluntarily pay large sums of money for elective medical treatment requiring near daily bloodwork and multiple self-injections.  And a big ass needle up my vag.

Anyway, when I first found out that ovarian stimulation required lots and lots of needles, I was determined to face my fears.  I was gonna do this shit myself, yo.  So I dutifully drew up my first Lupron shot, and subsequently sat in my dining room for about five minutes willing my hand to dart the needle into my stomach.  My heart was pounding the whole time, and my hand started shaking so bad I started to get worried I'd screw it up, but eventually I did it.  And it wasn't so bad.  So of course, having defeated my fear, I should have been able to do the shots myself from then on out, right?

Wrong.

For some reason I still can't comprehend, the next few nights the five minutes of pre-needle heart-pounding and hand-shaking stretched to seven minutes, then to ten.  Finally, the first night I tried to inject myself with Gonal-F (which is probably the least painful needle of them all), my arm just refused to obey me anymore.  It flat out was not listening.  It was like that scene in Evil Dead 2 where Bruce Campbell's arm goes evil and tries to kill him*, except instead of trying to kill me my arm was just steadfastly refusing to obey my brain's command to STICK THE FUCKING NEEDLE IN, DAMMIT!

With that, I was done.  I told M that the anxiety the self-injections were causing me simply wasn't worth it and that from now on, he'd have to do them for me.  Which he has, religiously, even going so far as to cut a night of drinks with the boys short so he could be home in time for the ol' pokey-pokey.  What a guy.  Awwwwwww.

So of course one of my biggest infertility fears is that there'll be a night when he can't be home for some reason, or I'll be out and will have to do the injection myself.  Say, in a theatre bathroom.  While some shrill dance mom pounds on the stall door screaming that I need to hurry up so her eight-year-old daughter in a one-shouldered 80s-style Cats sweatshirt can go pee before intermission is over, but my hands are shaking so bad that I accidentally drop a $450 dollar pen of Gonal-F in the toilet, and I have to fish it out and use it anyway because I don't want to screw up my IVF so now I'm injecting myself with remnants of stranger pee in addition to the old nun pee and oh fuck I still have to mix and inject the Menopur and the bell is ringing and intermission is over and WILL YOU STOP POUNDING ON MY FUCKING DOOR, LADY, AND GO TAKE YOUR BRAT SOMEWHERE ELSE TO PEE???  I'M TRYING TO MAKE A BABY IN HERE!!!

Whew.  So yeah, good that that's not gonna happen.

* If you don't know this classic 80s campy horror movie and/or this scene, we may not be able to be friends anymore.  Sorry.  Unless you go watch it.  Like, right now.