(In)fertility, part 5: The “Retrieval”

Josh said it best.  My reproductive system was hijacked.  With a few pills and more than a few injections, They took over everything, and bent it to Their will.  Mother Nature just didn’t do the job, so she was fired, replaced by synthetic hormones and long needles.  I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember starting the process by going back on The Pill for a few weeks before starting the injections.  (By the way, I love The Pill.  If I had my druthers, I would subsist entirely on The Pill, Diet Coke, and Advil.  Don’t worry, though, I’d throw in some multi-vitamins for good measure.)  Then it was a few weeks of the easy insulin needle injections before we moved on to the The Shots That Could Be Called Horse Shots Except Even Horses Would Be Scared Of The Fucking Needle.  Those were a total bummer, rivaled in suckiness only by the week and a half of almost daily blood tests and internal ultrasounds to carefully monitor the growth of the follicles.  Yes, that’s right, I said almost daily blood tests and internal ultrasounds.  I won’t go into details, but let’s just say it involved something that looked disconcertingly similar to the Seattle Space Needle, minus the needle part (Thank G-d for small favors, right?).

After nearly two weeks of starting my day with a visit to the phlebotomist and lab tech (We were on a first name basis.  They were lovely ladies, really.), we got a call from the doctor that our little follicles were fully baked and ready to go.  We had six, and it was time for them to evacuate my ovaries and take up temporary residence in a petri dish.  The official term for moving day is The Retrieval.  Josh and I were told to be at the clinic the next morning.

We showed up at the clinic, and were led to a corner of the room where the “privacy sheet” was closed around us.  (Interestingly enough, “privacy sheets” aren’t all that private.  You might think they’re sound proof or something like that, but they’re not.  Just so you know.)  So, we’re sitting there listening to all the other couples at various stages of their fertility journey (why do people always use the word “journey” to describe shitty situations that no one else really wants to be in?) which is not really what you want to hear when your hoo-ha is about to be spelunked in ways that it has never been spelunked before, not even by the Space Needle.

The plan was for my follicles to be retrieved (isn’t that such a nice, cleansed way to say that they were going to be up to their elbows in my lady bits?) while Josh would be escorted to a plush little room, complete with videos, magazines, and a wet bar where he could make his donation to the process.  (That’s how I imagined it, at least.)  Afterwards, my precious little eggs that the doctors, phlebotomists, lab techs, Josh and I had to carefully nurtured and tended over the past weeks would be unceremoniously pipetted into the petri dish, where Josh’s sperm would be eagerly waiting.  Party time, boys!

And that’s pretty much how it happened.  The nurses came by, checked my vital signs, hooked up the IV, and began the process of knocking me out.  (Would you want to be awake for this?)  I was becoming increasingly groggy as they wheeled me into the procedure room, and this is what I remember:

They put the gurney in the middle of the room, and I was immediately surrounded by men and women in full scrubs, complete with the caps and masks.  I swear there must have been 10 of them, circled around me, poking and prodding and moving and positioning.  They dimmed the lights, turned on the biggest spotlight I have ever seen, and pointed it, well, you know where.  So, there I am, flat on my back, ankles in the stirrups, legs spread about as far as they’ll go, and I’m staring into the silhouetted faces of masked strangers, the huge spotlight bright behind them, and the last thing I remember thinking is “Wow.  This must be what it’s like to get abducted by aliens…”