Depending on how you count, we are either five or six days into our new IVF cycle. We started meds on Friday night. 150 Gonal-F and 75 Menopur for starters, and then they bumped me up to 225 Gonal-F and 75 Menopur after Monday morning's blood draw, which was itself a bit of an adventure. (They're remodeling the lab at our local hospital and can't process same-day results, which meant that I went through the bother of the blood draw only to have to drive up to Rochester - a 3 hour round trip - to re-do it that afternoon.)
This morning, I rode with a friend up to Rochester for my next labwork. She had plans to be up here for the day and offered to give me a ride, which is lovely, because I'm going to be doing plenty of these round trip drives alone in the next week. Of course, her schedule vs. my schedule means that we left early - shortly after 7am - to get me here in time for my blood draw, which took about ten minutes total, from registration to getting up from the chair. And of course, all of her things started late morning and went through a lunch appointment. So I've had the better part of today to bum around Mayo and around Rochester, which has proved to be a strange but welcome sabbath. Time to myself, time to be anonymous.
If you haven't been to the Mayo Clinic, you have no idea how huge the system is. On this campus alone, there are a good handful of clinic buildings that then run into Methodist Hospital, which is itself another series of buildings. Everything is connected by hallways and subways, and this campus connects via subway and skyway to most of downtown Rochester.
In these last few hours since my labs, I've gotten coffee & breakfast at Starbucks (yum!), read a chunk of a book, knitted a few repeats of the sweater I'm making for Sam, worked on my sermon for Sunday, wandered a few blocks to a small mall with some really perfect-for-me stores (a game store, a Scandinavian store, a cute-almost-hipster-designy-home goods store), found a tasty stand to get a delicious noodle bowl for lunch, and all the while keeping my eye on my phone in case any work emails come through. Oh. And people-watching. Lots of people-watching.
This is a gigantic hospital system. Honestly, I have no idea what the breakdown is between people who are here as patients for routine stuff (that just happens to be most convenient to do here) and who are patients with particularly serious medical needs or particularly specialized care. Looking at myself, I'm here because Mayo is the closest hospital to offer an office of Reproductive Endocrinology, which sort of puts me between those two categories. Whenever I'm here, I feel a strange sort of sadness. A hopeful sadness. Sort of like everyone here has a sad story of why they need to be here, but it's okay, because they're here, and they're here to find some answers and some healing.
There are plenty of people, like me, who are simply waiting. Some are waiting around for lab results, or waiting until their next appointment in a day-long series of appointments. Some are waiting on a loved one who is in surgery. Some wait for rides or for family, some are waiting in the public waiting spaces because the hospital room of their loved one has started to feel claustrophobic. Meanwhile, the streets outside are a full bustle of doctors and nurses, researches and administrators, patients and families and out of town guests, all doing "normal" things in a corner of the city where "normal" has everything to do with "medicine."
On this strange sabbath day, I am grateful beyond grateful for this place and the good work that it does for people struggling far more deeply than me. I am anxious to hear whether I am responding to my meds in a productive way. I am feeling like all this time inside my own head today has been sacred space and not lonely space. I will be glad to get home, but I will also feel glad that this day turned into something quiet and strange and beautiful.
This morning, I rode with a friend up to Rochester for my next labwork. She had plans to be up here for the day and offered to give me a ride, which is lovely, because I'm going to be doing plenty of these round trip drives alone in the next week. Of course, her schedule vs. my schedule means that we left early - shortly after 7am - to get me here in time for my blood draw, which took about ten minutes total, from registration to getting up from the chair. And of course, all of her things started late morning and went through a lunch appointment. So I've had the better part of today to bum around Mayo and around Rochester, which has proved to be a strange but welcome sabbath. Time to myself, time to be anonymous.
If you haven't been to the Mayo Clinic, you have no idea how huge the system is. On this campus alone, there are a good handful of clinic buildings that then run into Methodist Hospital, which is itself another series of buildings. Everything is connected by hallways and subways, and this campus connects via subway and skyway to most of downtown Rochester.
In these last few hours since my labs, I've gotten coffee & breakfast at Starbucks (yum!), read a chunk of a book, knitted a few repeats of the sweater I'm making for Sam, worked on my sermon for Sunday, wandered a few blocks to a small mall with some really perfect-for-me stores (a game store, a Scandinavian store, a cute-almost-hipster-designy-home goods store), found a tasty stand to get a delicious noodle bowl for lunch, and all the while keeping my eye on my phone in case any work emails come through. Oh. And people-watching. Lots of people-watching.
This is a gigantic hospital system. Honestly, I have no idea what the breakdown is between people who are here as patients for routine stuff (that just happens to be most convenient to do here) and who are patients with particularly serious medical needs or particularly specialized care. Looking at myself, I'm here because Mayo is the closest hospital to offer an office of Reproductive Endocrinology, which sort of puts me between those two categories. Whenever I'm here, I feel a strange sort of sadness. A hopeful sadness. Sort of like everyone here has a sad story of why they need to be here, but it's okay, because they're here, and they're here to find some answers and some healing.
There are plenty of people, like me, who are simply waiting. Some are waiting around for lab results, or waiting until their next appointment in a day-long series of appointments. Some are waiting on a loved one who is in surgery. Some wait for rides or for family, some are waiting in the public waiting spaces because the hospital room of their loved one has started to feel claustrophobic. Meanwhile, the streets outside are a full bustle of doctors and nurses, researches and administrators, patients and families and out of town guests, all doing "normal" things in a corner of the city where "normal" has everything to do with "medicine."
On this strange sabbath day, I am grateful beyond grateful for this place and the good work that it does for people struggling far more deeply than me. I am anxious to hear whether I am responding to my meds in a productive way. I am feeling like all this time inside my own head today has been sacred space and not lonely space. I will be glad to get home, but I will also feel glad that this day turned into something quiet and strange and beautiful.
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