This is your brain on infertility. And a worrisome update.

Perhaps the most frustrating and debilitating aspect of infertility and loss is the inability to focus on anything else.  My body goes to to hospital, interviews and examines patients, answers questions right or wrong for the attending.  But my head and my heart are consumed, and with all my mental and emotional energy devoted to the babies I can't have, there is nothing left.  I barely read about my patients.  I miss important parts of their assessments and plan.  I know I am not the physician my patients depend on me to be.  Certainly part of this stems from being an inept intern.  But I think if I could learn not to let infertility take over, I would at least do better than I am now.

But how?

I am praying that we don't end up back at Square One.  It turns out that two of the four frozen embryos didn't survive, so if this FET fails...game over and player loses.  I am preparing for the worst and have already renewed access to ovum donor profiles.  I'm hoping to convince Husband that we should consider adoption, but am not optimistic.  The surrogate can cycle again almost immediately -- checked with Northwestern -- so the rate-limiting step will be finding a donor.  If only my sister were twenty-one!  They won't let her at eighteen, I don't think.  And Husband will be stuck repeating his entire workup.

Maybe this will be a moot point and I will find out good news.  Mama is convinced that everything will go perfectly and keeps telling me I am too much of a pessimist.  I am simply an optimist with experience.  And the experience of being forced to agree to termination while watching my baby move around on ultrasound, and listening to its heart beat is one I NEVER want to repeat.

So yes, I have a contingency plan which (for irony's sake) I am calling Plan B.  First step: supraphysiologic doses of frosting or ice cream.  Second step: spending large sums at the bookstore.  Third step: Plead with Husband to consider adoption.  Fourth step: Find some way to survive two weeks in Israel, where our best Israeli friends are expecting and everyone else already has babies.  That part is still a work in progress.  Would it be rude to seclude myself in our room re-reading Jane Austen the entire time?

Then, of course, there is the possibility of success.  I don't even know what I would do in that case.