16. November 2011

I was booked to go to fertility clinic to talk about the ways of keeping my options of possible future pregnancy open. Rufus was so kind to come with me to this appointment. 

We had a chat with a lovely and very understanding consultant who went thru all the options with us. He pointed out that the best one would be to preserve embryos. This meant using injections for around two weeks (to inject myself in my tummy) to stimulate ovaries, than have a little procedure under intravenous sedation where they collect my eggs and inseminate it with my partner's sperm or sperm of anonymous donner thru a procedure called ICSI. However in my case they would freeze embryos for later use should we decide to do so.  

There is more info on ICSI at the following link:

http://www.hfea.gov.uk/ICSI.html

Later we signed all the consents forms regarding embryos. This raised a lot of issues again. Some of the questions were hard to answer without tears and emotional pain. 
I remember there was a questions what happens if one of us dies. Just the mention of dying made me cry. I know this sounds crazy but even when walking passed The cooperative funeral care (the ones you see on almost every street ) I would turn my head the other way. I thought if I looked at their windows I would be tempting faith! I know its absolutely crazy to think that but thats how much I was afraid of dying at the time. 

 I was faced with further tests. They ve done blood screening to exclude few things including hiv and they ve done an ultrasound, which by the way is when i found out I had a fibroid as well in my womb…just thought to myself is there anything more I'm gonna have in my life !
The nurse performing an ultrasound reassured me and said that fibroid is something that majority of women have. Something new you learn every day !
 Rufus stayed with me thru ultrasound and was holding my hand thru all of it. All of this was so new and very head spinning for me. It must have been head spinning for him too.  I was still distraught with all that I have to go thru in the next 6 months, all the emotional and physical pain was still there, skin numbness from my new scars was there and going thru this IVF procedure was too emotional and I burst out in tears in front of Rufus again. I just thought to myself how much more do I need to go thru ? Is there an end to this ? Little did I know that this was actually just the beginning of my long cancer journey !

Even having a cotton boob on the temporary basis was such a nuisance ! Cotton boob is a little cotton like breast filled with some material that you place in the side pocket of specially made bra to make it somewhat realistic and symetrical to your other breast.
They are so light in your bra and have not got the weight of the normal breast. So by the time I'd go to the supermarket and back I would usually find my new cotton boob half way up my shoulder and totally asymmetrical ! It was funny at the times but it mostly brought tears to my eyes.

Luckily it was winter and its not so noticeable under my big jacket.

At least scar was healing nicely with no complications but there is this weird numbness all around where my breast used to be. It felt really strange applying my creams.