Bingo cards and holding out hope.

A cryptic blog post, yes. Allow me to explain...

Ari got a call from a close friend of ours from grad school about some theatre related things, as these boys love to talk about. Surprise surprise, in the middle of the conversation, we found out they're due in April, first baby for them. We are of course, super excited and wonderfully happy for them. And like all happy announcements, it's only logical that I stand in the shower crying.

You know how it is to be infertile.

It's like a Pavlovian response: pg/birth announcement ding! I'm crying in a corner somewhere. Drives me nuts. Not the announcement, but my reaction. I will of course put on a happy face, b/c, well, I am happy for them. But if I'm at home and reading it on FB or getting a phone call, inevitably, 5 minutes later, I'm a mess for a good 15 minutes and then my mood is killed for the day. Case in point, yesterday.

So why the bingo card? I teased with Ari last night we should make a bingo card of all our coupled friends and stamp them as ppl announce they're pregnant. I have no idea what the prize would be, but that's kind of what it feels like. I'm totally in that mostly married late 20's group where everyone's poppin' out babies. It's both awesome and awful. B/c, I love me some babies. It's that whole leading up to baby where all of the attention is on said couple that's the hard part. That sounds profoundly selfish when I type it, but it is what it is and I own those emotions. It's just that unspoken reminder of failure. Of loss. Of emptiness, barrenness, of holy shit I never knew I could be this jealous a woman-ness.

That random announcement definitely messed with my mood, compounding with some continued bizarre PMS-like weirdness. I've felt PMS-y since mid-January - bloating, cramps coming and going, tender boobs, and being generally crazy emotionally. I noted that my estradiol was elevated somewhat in my last round of blood work, so it seemed natural. But today is day 5 of random and persistent ovarian pain, around my right (and remaining) ovary. At first it just felt like regular cramps, but for the last 4 days it's been hovering in the 3-4 range on a pain scale of 1 to 10, and yesterday moved into the 4-5 range. It is highly likely I've got a cyst.

And that would be fucking AWESOME.

Why? Why would I be happy about a cyst?

B/c it means my ovary tried to pop out an egg! On its own! Nevermind that it got fucked up and might have made a cyst, but it maybe made an egg! This is like a freakin' miracle for a woman with POF.

Worst case scenario: it's a tumor. Why do I jump to that? That's what happened to my left ovary. (In fact, that's how I lost my left ovary.) Other worst case scenario: ectopic pregnancy. Highly unlikely though, given my gradual symptoms, and no other symptoms of early pregnancy. Best case: I'm knocked up. (Ha! Fool's hope.) What's most likely: ovarian cyst of some kind.

Either way, I hope I'll know more by this afternoon- I was able to get an urgent appointment with my GYN today at 2:30. Fingers crossed it's a cyst.

This is me, holding out hope for a cyst.