The Second Cycle

“Honey, if you can somehow gather up the strength, I’d recommend you come back next week to start another cycle,” the nurse urged me gently.

I felt like I wanted to vomit.

I’d just been through two months of HELL and I wasn’t sure I could jump straight back into it again. At most clinics they give you a month’s break between cycles, but I had qualified for a trial that was about to end; thus the urgency.

With moderate reluctance I dragged myself to the clinic and picked up the boxes of injections.

I had a sick feeling that I was torturing myself for nothing. My gut screamed that this all was in vain – but my logical mind argued, “Unless you’re in it, you can’t win it.”

Anger, disappointment and hopelessness swirled around me like an ever-present hurricane, but something was changing: I was starting to enter the eye of the hurricane where a calm APATHY resides.

This journey wears you down. With time, you inevitably lock up your heart and, with a sense of relief, throw it out into the swirling winds. You watch it circle around you. You know it’s there, but it’s just too painful to reach for it; at least for now. Survival has become my primary focus, all other emotions can wait in line.

As I began my injections again I realised that the nurses were right – the first round IS the hardest!

I woke up at 6am and reviewed my medication schedule. My previous dose of follicle stimulating hormone had been 87.5 (pathetic, I know, but they were being “cautious” with my polycystic ovaries). This time I was starting on 125. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to inject myself for a month again. My reserve of resilience was waning.

But this I openly confess – it felt nice to feel cold. With relatively little emotion, I would grab a chunk of belly fat, inject myself twice, throw away the needles, and then get on with my day.

I almost pretended that this wasn’t happening to me; except that I couldn’t ignore the swelling in my pelvis that induced waddling and caused unbearable pain.

After 11 days I was ready for ‘egg pick-up’.

As we drove in for the procedure I kept repeating my mantra – “the first time is the hardest, the first time is the hardest, the first time is the hardest”. I tried to reassure myself that now I KNEW what to expect, so it would never be that bad again.

I was wrong.

Last time I had my procedure relatively early; this time I was LAST on the list.

There is no GA (general anesthetic) but you still have to fast.

And knowing what was coming was like waiting to be tortured; which is torture itself.

I took a book and sat in the lobby for 5 hours trying desperately to focus on my book, keep my breath calm, and NOT think about the pain that was to come.

Every time I approached a panic attack I would return to my breath and try to distract myself with the book that my cousin had ‘prescribed’ me – The Little Paris Bookshop – a novel about a Parisian man with a floating bookshop who ‘prescribes’ books to the lost, sad or broken-hearted.

He, himself, had locked away his heart two decades earlier, after losing his love, and the book takes you on his journey towards happiness as he slowly begins to FEEL again, TASTE again, and SEE beauty again. Opening his heart and allowing himself to FEEL, as painful as that is, propelled him to RE-LEARN and RE- RELISH the beauty that LIFE offers…..food, friends, sunshine, sunsets, travel, dancing, LOVE…….

Around 1pm, on that Friday afternoon, they FINALLY called me in for the procedure.

Two doctors approached me – an older woman, who looked a little bit like Cruella De Vil, and the Director of the practice.

They looked tired.

It had a been a long day.

I was holding the “Green Whistle”, that I had bought at the chemist, and they eyed me suspiciously.

“Why do you need that?’ they asked.

I informed them that I have severe chronic pelvic pain, that I was doing a back-to-back cycle, that my pelvis was very inflamed and swollen, and that I had used the green whistle last time.

I sat in shock as they subtly rolled their eyes at me. I was speechless. Did I imagine it?

They escorted me into the surgical room and I proceeded to lay on the table. I put my legs in the stirrups and scooted my bottom down towards the end of the table: you know, the usual procedure.

From my previous experience with the whistle I knew it took a few puffs for it to fully kick in, so as soon as Cruella shoved the ultrasound stick in my….you know what….I started sucking in the powder.

There was an unprecedented roughness that made me gasp in agony and I tried desperately to remind myself of the well-researched phenomenon that exhaustion decreases empathy in healthcare professionals (well, everyone actually)- as I was the 11th patient to be done by 1pm on a Friday (just unfortunate bad luck you could say).

Regardless of my logic and excuses, the pain was excruciating.

She shoved it roughly to the left, then to the right and then back again: she was frustrated and she was taking it out on me.

“What’s wrong with the ultrasound machine?” she grunted angrily.

I looked up and the screen was black. I didn’t know what was happening, all I knew is that she was causing me unbearable pain and the procedure hadn’t even started.

I sucked harder on the gas. The Director came over and removed it from my lips. “You don’t need it right now, we haven’t started yet.”

I wanted to punch him in the testicles.

I was so angry I couldn’t even cry. I clenched my jaw in defiance and took deep controlled breaths as Cruella continued to shove the ultrasound stick in frustration inside of me.

I looked up and the nurses looked horrified. Finally a nurse came over and gently pushed the green whistle back towards my mouth. “You can take some breaths if you need it honey.” I nodded in relief and tightly squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t cry.

Eventually a clear picture emerged on the ultrasound machine and Cruella started cutting through my muscle.

If I wasn’t so angry I think I would have passed out.

Last time I had felt support and empathy; last time they gently talked me through each step during the procedure. This time she gave me NO warning as she started hacking through me.

I deeply inhaled the pungent powder until it FINALLY started making me a bit dizzy – changing my perception of the pain.

The torture eventually finished and she bluntly stated that we were done, and offered no further information.

“Oh…so…..did you get anything?” I stuttered through my daze, still reeling in shock.

“Nothing on the right side,” Cruella replied abruptly and my heart began to sink, “but we got two on the left.”

A glimmer of hope.

They helped me off the table and led me into the little recovery room.

I sat in woozy reflection as the impact of the procedure began to sink in. It was NOT the physical pain that was leaving me scarred, but it was the way they treated me and how they made me FEEL during that painful and immensely vulnerable moment that was to have a lasting impression.

I took that on board as a health care professional, since performing painful procedures is an inevitable part of my job description, and I’ve had moments where I’ve felt terrible for the things that I have had to do, but I suddenly realised that it wasn’t the physical pain that they would remember but HOW I MADE THEM FEEL that would forever become permanently etched in their minds.

And how you feel is obviously complicated by EXPECTATIONS and PERCEPTIONS (and your childhood, personality type, beliefs, paradigms etc.) but I obviously had an EXPECTATION, from my previous experience, that was NOT met.

But LOVE is still LOVE, and regardless of the complexities of perceptions, LOVE and EMPATHY will always permeate through the thick fog that covers the terrain of our complicated minds.

The trip home consisted of more tears; this time around my wounded soul and my hurt feelings. I felt so disrespected.

In Victr Frankl’s famous book “Man’s Search for Meaning” he recalls a moment when a guard threw a rock at him and spoke to him as if he was an animal. He felt MORE wounded in that moment compared to when he was being beaten mercilessly for “stepping out of line”. Not being treated like a human being was more wounding than other forms of horrific torture that they experienced at the concentration camps.

Now, I am NOT by any means comparing my experience to his, but this is a profound lesson for healthcare professionals to INTERNALISE.

So I cried the whole way home….

Then I cried again at home….

And I cried the next day…..

And I cried for a week….

Feeling cold and numb was no longer an option.

The floodgates had opened.

But the deluge of tears was still to come.