This is Your Brain on Lupron

I was warned.

In my case, the Lupron seems mainly to affect my ability to take Lupron.
By which I mean, I forgot to inject the Lupron last night, and didn’t realize it till I woke up this morning. I called the nurse-on-call number, got the answering service, and am waiting for a call back. Part of me is convinced they will cancel my cycle. The whole, you-can-do-your-day-3-tests-on-day-5-because the lupron puts-you-in-a-suppressed-holding-pattern idea would seem to break down if you don’t actually take the Lupron. The other part of me say, eh, there will be some solution to this, just like when I (ahem) forgot to take the oral contraceptive one time in my last ivf cycle. Perhaps the fact that I am not crying hysterically about this is due to the fact that I do not have Lupron coursing through my system.

THIS JUST IN: take some Lupron now, and regular dose tonight. Now I am feeling that as a public service I should open up the blog to search engines so as to provide answers to the query, “sh*t, I forgot the lupron shot”. (I tried googling that and got this post of Persephone’s that I read last year and had forgotten.)

The real question is whether this is a newbie mistake, or does it indicate I am blasé enough to be considered post-newbie (on cycle 3, so precocious). This describes me during ivf1 and ivf2 fairly well:

A newbie wouldn’t have forgotten in the first place. She would have her instructions in front of her, reading them carefully, moving her lips reverently, as she went through the nightly ritual. She might even have noted her instructions on her calendar, synching it to her Palm Pilot for daily reminders. (Believe me, I say this with love. I even used to use those alcohol swabs. Cute, huh?)

This time, I still have the ritual (and still use the alcohol swabs), but not longer read the injection instructions every single time. Also, I don’t have a Palm Pilot. For ivf2, however, I wrote down “start lupron” in three separate places (the calendar on my computer, the “week at a glance” format printout of that calendar in my paper organizer, and monthly-format printout that I use to keep track of the ivf cycle (just like the one the clinic gave me for ivf1-I am well trained). One day my Lupron arrived, I gave myself my first injection that night, and then realized it was a day early. See, I get Lupron brain before even taking the Lupron, though I suppose I could blame that incident on the oral contraceptives I had been taking for that cycle.

In ivf 1, all I did was carefully calculate the exact time between 7 and 10 pm that I could inject Lupron consistently, taking into account my schedule (often can’t get home before 9), horror at the thought of trying to do the injection anywhere but home (see above re: rituals), and the fact that I was starting the Lupron in a different time zone than where I would be doing the rest of the cycle. Then I forgot all about injecting the Lupron until 11:15 pm. This is your brain on ivf anxiety.

Or perhaps just ambivalence about doing ivf! The very ambivalence that is making it unsuccessful! I wish I could link to getupgirrl’s rant about that kind of Christ*ane Northr*p stuff, but she is gone, gone, gone. I remember that it began something like “Yes, there is a mind-body connection. Welcome to five thousand years of Chinese medicine” before tearing apart CN’s “findings”.

Enough rambling. We have a seldom-obeyed rule here, which is “no blogging before breakfast”. Time to convince my husband to make some pancakes. (I’m tired of writing “my husband”. He calls himself hubby in comments, but I just can’t call him that, so I’m going to go with Mr. Luo/Mr. L.)