After she took my blood she showed me back to the waiting room and said I should have a seat and wait for the doctor to see me. The nurse makes him nervous, and his anxiety was building from feeding off that nervous energy she carries. I smiled politely in agreement and sat with my collective. We ARE the ‘gmorg’, and it’s amazing how much we talk without uttering a single sound. We wondered silently why the sestra was under the impression I was supposed to meet with the Doctor, but we decided it would only be to our advantage to wait and let her have a look.
Inside of an hour, the doctor arrived and the tired nurse invited us in to another of the 3 exam rooms. This one is the 3rd room, between the 4’x6′ painting of 3 legged unicorns that I guess are supposed to be happy.
The room is pretty big and is sectioned in half. The entry part has her desk which is a lot less than impressive, but reminds me of the standard commercial black desk with metal legs you can find in most office supply stores back home. Her computer monitor shields her from prying eyes outside the door in the waiting room. That consultation area stands apart by the division of a small folding privacy screen in the middle of the room, just next to a sonogram computer, gynecology table, and another wide screen tv, this one doesn’t show Pink tv.
I undress my bottom half behind the screen while Gordon sits in the far seat of 2 chairs in front of the desk. He can see the monitor – it’s quite big. I slip on the white generic clogs for patient use to scurry over to the table, my naked butt following me, just on the horizon of my dressy blouse. I lay down and put my pretty painted toenail feet ‘here’ and ‘here’ on the 2 cushioned styrups. It’s probably the nicest gynecology table I’ve ever been on. And that’s saying a lot.
The doctor waves her magic wand to and fro inside, finding my left ovary pretty quickly – they always do. It has 3 follicles of comparable size, and a 4th that’s a bit smaller than the others. Yay, I am responding to the menopur! After measuring the 3, she moves to the right side and waves her wand to and fro, to and fro, to and fro again, “Loves me, loves me not” comes to mind as I watch the monitor for the right ovary to appear. I explain again that my right ovary is situated a bit behind my uterus. She pokes and searches but she can’t find it and she explains there’s no reason to dig for it now, so she won’t. When the follicles grow she’ll be able to find it more easily.
After the appointment we left to return to the pharmacy, with the cash Gordon had taken from the ATM in town when he went on Friday to the medical center for his mom with the papers she needed signed for her broken ‘leg’. We bought just enough menopur to get us to our next appointment on Tuesday. We got home well before noon and sat in his moms bed while he recapped our adventure and all that everyone said. Her cell phone rang, which we designated for the doctors calls, and he jumped up to answer it. How he hates the phone. When he hung up, he said my estradiol was good, and my level was 145, he thought, but he couldnt remember for sure. I pressed him to remember, in English, outside his moms bedroom door who sat wondering what we were saying with that blank look I sometimes get when the conversation is just too far beyond my ability to interpret. He bit my head off because he was feeling the stress of not being understood like old times, and was upset I was making him feel like he should call back and ask for the level again. Mostly, I think, he was aggitated because when I asked when and if ICSI would be considered, the doctor informed us it would be done now, and said it casually as though we were already aware of that. Thankfully I came to terms with that, and Gordon didn’t have real strong issue with it – so he was just annoyed that we weren’t informed or consulted and that the decisions were happening without us.