Purim 2018

Purim was on Thursday. Between preparing mishloach manot and doing my part of the potluck meal it kept me busy. Even though we didn't host for the first time in ten years (we were both working), it turned out to be a lovely day itself.

Tuesday I had an appointment for my yearly eye checkup. I had a little twitch in my right eye plus they were both dry so timing worked out well. She didn't find anything specific to cause the dryness or twitch but suggested drops I can start using. She said the twitch can be anything from stress, lack of sleep, caffeine, etc. Later in the conversation she looked at my medical history and meds I'm taking and saw a prenatal and asked, are you pregnant? And I said, "trying... IVF stuff." To that she responded, "Well, there you go: that can cause a lot of stress." Since then the twitch has actually been getting better and fading away - maybe the drops help too. 

This past weekend we had the craziest winds. There were downed trees and neighbors losing power. Our house is older and one of the things that needs updating is the windows. They're not very energy efficient and the winds were just seeping right through making it so cold. I found a space heater to put in our bedroom last night which made a huge difference but we weren't comfortable leaving it on overnight. We had it on for a few hours with the door closed and then turned it off right before bed. It worked really well and now I carry it around to whatever room I'm in to keep me company. If I tried to turn the heat up to the entire house it would pool around one room and shoot my electricity bill up through the roof; this is a much better solution. 

Over the weekend I also had some stomach issues. I don't know if it was something I ate over Purim (we ate a lot of junk) or on Friday, but I had the worst stomach pain on early Sat morning. I ran back and forth to the bathroom literally every 20 min until about 5pm. I didn't have anything left and still I was having stomach pains as though I needed to go. Not even gas was coming out at that point. We considered going to urgent care to get it checked out. I'm a big fan of checking things out and going to the doc for even the most minor things, but this felt silly - it was just a little bug, right? I wanted to see if it would resolve on its own. It was concerning that it wasn't resolving fast enough, and without getting into too many details there were also different colors that were  unexpected and causing alarm. I hadn't really eaten all day because I was worried it would make it worse. After shabbat I took a hot shower and it seemed to really sooth whatever tension was causing the cramping/urge to go. I guess being cold all day wasn't helping? I don't know. I went to a post-Purim party and had a nice time - no bathroom emergencies. It's not completely gone but I'll keep drinking water and monitoring. Maybe it was a stomach bug and hopefully it's over. I will say I feel about 10 lbs lighter. 

I'm currently fighting with the clinic about a new charge on my account. Last year's February cycle produced two embryos, one tested healthy and the other not. We transferred the healthy one in April which resulted in the blighted ovum. The other was cryopreserved. A lot has happened in the meantime and since it's not a viable embryo I kind of forgot about it until last week when taking inventory. I asked my nurse to get rid of any of the non-transferable embryos so she said she'll get paperwork ready. In the meantime, they want to charge me for another year of storage. I'm not paying for storage for an abnormal embryo we're not planning to transfer and about to thaw and dispose. So the due date was 2/24 for payment. No notice that it's coming up, no heads up or anything. The card they have on file was replaced which is the only reason I got notified. They were trying to just take the payment directly and it didn't go through. It's amazing that the departments there don't talk to each other. Now I have get some paperwork notarized and send it over and then dispute the charge. It's always something.