Too close for comfort

What a fucking weekend.

I took all of your wonderful advice and, when I woke up on Friday morning with still no email from the Czech clinic, I wrote them again.  The gist of it was "hey, I haven't heard from you and I'm really worried, what the eff?" but I was of course much more polite in real life.  When I got home from work on Friday afternoon, an email awaited me.  The doctor had been very busy, and they were very apologetic for not getting back to me sooner.

Happily, all went well with the donor's checkup.  Retrieval and transfer are scheduled tentatively around July 2nd to 7th, which fits nicely in our availability window.  Score!

The rest of the email went on to say that the donor's period would be later than mine, so I should take norethisterone to delay my period.  I was instructed to start taking it at least 5 days before my expected period and keep taking it until they told me to stop.

Fine, except for one leeetle problem.  I had no idea what norethisterone was, let alone have any.  I was already on CD21.  Which was still fine, if I was going to have a 28 day cycle this month.  But sadly, my crystal ball is in the shop and therefore I had no way of knowing if I was headed for a 25 day cycle instead.  If I was, I needed this medication STAT.  Oh, and did I mention it was past 5pm on a Friday afternoon?

I made a few desperation calls to my RE and regular GP anyway, but as one would expect they were all closed.  I resolved to get up early, get my ass to a weekend walk-in clinic first thing in the morning, and talk some random doctor into giving me mystery drugs.  Piece of cake, right?

This part of the plan was actually surprisingly easy to execute.  I explained my situation, and the doctor pulled out his prescription pad.  Note to self: next time ask for narcotics too.  However, a red flag went up when he asked me how to spell it so he could go look it up.  My suspicion was confirmed when I left the clinic and walked into the pharmacy down the hall, where I was confronted with a look of confusion by the pharmacist.  My heart sank.  The unexpected snag: no one knew what the fuck this drug was and they sure as hell didn't have it in stock.  They could order it, but it wouldn't arrive before Monday.  CD23.  Tick tock tick tock.

For those of you wondering, norethisterone is a magical drug that is apparently widely used in the UK and Europe to delay your period if you're going on vacation or getting married or have some other event going on that would be marred by the arrival of your boorish Aunt Flo.  Apparently those of us with Canadian uteruses (uteri??) are too damn polite to use this drug to tell AF to go the fuck off back where she came from.  I imagine it sounding something like this:

Canadian uterus:  Hey there Aunt Flo, how ya doin', eh?  Good ta hear from ya.  What's that?  You were thinkin' aboot comin' fer a visit?  Oh yah, sounds great!  Whenaboots?  Oh, next week?  See...yeah...it's just that me 'n' the mister, we were headed to Jamaica donchaknow, had a week's vacation all booked and...oh...ya got the dog sitter booked already?  Yeah...no, I know, they're not easy to come by...but see, we had this holiday planned since December, and we had six months of snow...yeah...yup...uh huh...sure.  See ya Wednesday.

British uterus:  Oy, wot's this now?  You wanted to pop round next week for a spot o' tea?  Hah!  You taking the piss or wot?  Not bloody likely!  Now bugger off, you barmy wanker, or you'll be findin' me foot in your arse!

Yes, Jane, this is what I think you sound like.  ;)

I drove to a few other pharmacies but got the same look at each.  You would have thought that I was asking for powdered unicorn horn or a fucking phoenix feather.  I spent several hours calling around to pretty much every major pharmacy chain in southwestern Ontario to no avail.  I was stuck with Monday.  Tears were shed, teeth were gnashed...you know the drill.  Adding insult to injury was the fact that, if the Czech clinic had gotten back to me in a timely fashion after my donor's appointment, I would have had tons of time last week to get this stuff lined up.  I did my best to let it go, but the anxiety stuck with me all weekend and I was terrified I was going to start spotting or something and the whole damn DE cycle was going to have to be rescheduled.

Of course, I emailed all of this to the Czech clinic, and got a reply this morning saying that they thought starting the pills on Monday would be just fine.  Which is what I've done.

So much stress and worry.  For basically nothing.  I think I'm going crazy.