Counting Down The Last Day(s) of a Needle Free Summer

I'm on Day 29 of my cycle today. That means that I should get my period any day now (I'm on average a 29.5 day cycle- trust me I know from charting for years and years and years and years). Estrace can mess with the length of your cycle, but I'm getting some indications that it may be on its way (cramping, increased wretchedness, irritability, and anxiousness), but then again, maybe those are just side effects of the Estrace. It's impossible to tell at this point. Either way, I feel shattered.

These tablets won't look pretty to you after being on them for a few days (well, at least they don't to me anymore).

It has not been an easy ride being on Estrace for the past eleven and a half days (I'm counting the hours!). That's for sure. Today I'm in the state I was in last time I took Estrace (and then found out I was pregnant without IVF, only to then have a miscarriage)- I feel like a corpse dredged from a body of water that has been reanimated (who knows for what purpose- zombie army?). I'm bloated, slow moving, and I feel positively inhuman. I have a splitting headache. I'm bleary eyed from another terrible, nightmare filled and broken sleep. While the symptoms of my urinary tract infection have mostly abated, I'm still on antibiotics till they're finished (a few more days). I feel sore all over my body like I've been beaten with a pipe, probably partly due to inactivity and sleeping long periods of time and partly due to the Estrace. I visited the chiropractor on Friday for a final adjustment before I get the injectable drugs underway (the swelling of the ovaries from walnut sized to grapefruit sized with the upcoming hormones makes it too risky to do twisting movements because your ovary could twist and pinch off your Fallopian tube, torsion, and you could lose an ovary). I have many other side effects that I'm too tired to list, so just refer to my previous post.

Estrace tablets may look innocent, but they pack a major punch (in the gut for me).

My husband asked if I could go to a gala with him tonight last minute and I heartily declined. Normally I'd love to dress up and go out with my husband, but zombies aren't allowed at galas, don't you know?

#nofilter #nomakeup- Zombies don't dress up and put on makeup to go to galas, we eat brains ... (this is around noon, so I'm definitely more swollen in the face than I am normally)

All I want to do is sit (I'm using this word loosely, it's more in between sitting and lying) on the couch and languidly watch television or tinker with some of my writing. But my concentration's not great, so I'm not getting much writing or editing done.

I just feel trapped. I don't want day one to arrive, because I don't want to start injecting myself (or having my husband inject me) with multiple hormones every day for about two weeks. On the other hand, when day one arrives, I dump Estrace from my list of prescriptions until the egg retrieval when I start it up again. I hate Estrace, so it would be good to discontinue it for a couple of weeks, but I fear that the other hormones will be worse and I'm terrified of needles, so I dread it.

Can I just wake up from this nightmare? Maybe none of this is actually happening and I'm actually a cat sleeping under a palm tree in Huahine while the south seas lap at the white sand and the tropical sun beats down on my warm fur. My feet are twitching because I'm having a nightmare and I'm trying to swat and kick away syringes and I'm trapped in the inelegant form of a human. Or maybe this is real and there's nothing I can do but wait.

Gingerbread men taste better. Eat them instead of me, the Estrace Man.