Fixing a Hole......

but unfortunately, it didn't stop my mind from wandering......

I took a long walk today with the aim of working off some of the bloating/meds associated with failed Stim #3 (yep, you read right), as well as to practice some 'mindful walking' as recommended by Dr Alice Domar in "Conquering Infertility". Now, I have to say that if I took drugs and had any talent at all, this walk would have inspired a Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds-type lyrical explosion. Perhaps because I was attempting to walk mindfully and stay in the moment, there was instead an explosion of picaresque symbols lurking furtively around every corner. I even fully expected to see a number plate "IVF111" somewhere along the way. And so, like old Jean-Jacques, roaming around that park in Paris and staring at the tree's roots, I set forth to be Enlightened.

The bad thing about moving interstate frequently is the complete lack of familiarity with one's surrounds. This is also a positive and something I took full advantage of today, through the twisting, stone-cottage studded inner-suburbs of south-eastern Adelaide. Dear reader, I did persevere with the mindfulness, despite many intruding ruminations on more negative aspects of my life. I'm one of those people who could never meditate, and even yoga is beyond me. Just how do people turn their minds off for even a minute? Peace of this kind eludes me, instead pushing me into stressful, mental meanderings which eventually become too much, the effects of which can only be ameliorated by a fatalistically exhaled 'meh' during these existential episodes.

Walking past the first park, I was smiled at gingerly by a teenage girl with Down Syndrome and what looked like some type of palsy. Once again I was saddened and inexplicably sickened by the jolting realisation of the rarity of such scenes these days. We seem to have selectively reduced the incidence of Down's and other "imperfect" babies in our society. I don't want to get too deep here as this is a personal decision that each person needs to make. Suffice it to say that it's something simmering not too deeply below the sea-level of this late-30s, TTCer's thoughts.

Next, I spied at the end of a lane way, a virtual horde of perhaps 5-year-olds and their parents. It was a cult, you know, the Fertile People Cult, AKA, Everyone Else. Normally I would have done a swift 180 and found myself another route, however, in the interests of moving beyond being a Professional Infertile (as I have been called) and dealing with the reality that most people do indeed get to have children and I'd better start accepting that fact (girlfriend!), I charged ahead with spirit and verve. Call it some sort of masochistic Aversion therapy; I walked past and through possibly 20 children without a care.

Beyond that was a dog with a plastic neck brace. Truly.

Paying for my not-doing-IVF-so can-drink-coffee-with-impunity-coffee at the local cafe, I was bemused to see the sign on the change dish: "If you don't like change, leave it here". Not bad, Brown Dog Cafe, not bad. A change dish on many different philosophical levels is a change dish after my own heart.

What was the point of this? I really don't know. I think it's time to start accepting the inevitable. Not for me the delusional/optimistic (2 sides of the same coin, really) belief that if I stim indefinitely, I will find success. I haven't been able to find the statistics, but I'm pretty sure that the majority of people who do IVF are unsuccessful. I commit to one more stim and have a review with Dr Suave this Friday to discuss my demands/protocol.