Cycle Cancelled. !@#$

I’m all sorts of mixed up. Not sure where to begin with this one. I will probably be all over the place.

I’ll get right to it: my unmedicated FET cycle has been cancelled because I haven’t ovulated.

It’s CD16, so this normally would have been the day I see a third consecutive higher temperature, but no dice. My blood work shows my estrogen at 88 (up from 20, but still low) and my progesterone at 1.08.

To add injury to insult, I saw Nurse Bitch today. She rammed the dildocam in and was quite rough. My cervix felt bruised afterwards. I have a hard time believing that someone who has worked at this clinic for 25 years doesn’t know how to perform a transvaginal ultrasound more gently.

The left follicle is smaller, but I have four on my right that measure between 9-14mm. My lining remains at a steady 6mm. Nurse Bitch laughed “6mm is nowhere near where it needs to be!” as if to say, My, my. What were you thinking, doing an unmedicated FET?

I know I sound paranoid. But I call her Nurse Bitch for a reason. She was the nurse that, during the cycle that resulted in my daughter, pulled out a dildocam covered in blue EWCM (from the estrogen pessaries) and pulled a face as she said, “Urgh!” To say this was humiliating and unprofessional is an understatement…

She’s also the nurse who dutifully sent updates about our donor’s follicle growth, but refused to explain what five top measurements meant for the other 40+ follicles — which was pretty important to DH and me, as we never did IVF and didn’t know what these updates meant.

And she’s also the nurse who wouldn’t tell us anything, even when we came this close to having our donor’s cycle cancelled, even when I asked her directly, “Is this cycle going to be cancelled?”

Back in July, I braced myself when I stepped into the waiting room. I was dreading the possibility of seeing Nurse Bitch, but I totally lucked out with Hilary who is kind, gentle, enthusiastic, sweet, and gentle with a dildocam. I straight up told her that I would like her to be my nurse from now on. I figured it would be easier (in terms of both my stress levels and politically within the clinic) to advocate for myself with what I do want instead of what I don’t. And it worked: I’ve seen Hilary for seven of my eight ultrasounds so far, including my SHG.

Today’s appointment with Nurse Bitch made me realise that I’d placed myself in a protective bubble to keep old anxieties and grief at arm’s length. She damn well popped it.

I think I need to request she not be my nurse again. I think I need to write about residual grief and anxiety. About how now that I have a child these bumps in the road are manageable, but maybe my suspension needs a little fine-tuning.