Saturday, January 23, 2010

I got drained for DHEA

I got my period on Thursday and today is Day 3. The magic day 3 whence all shall be known and understood about fertility and one's hormone levels. I have been contemplating a 3 month course of DHEA and today I went to my GP and asked him to prescribe me 75mg of DHEA per day and to do some blood tests on me. Because he knows me and my all-too-medical-head very well, he merely nodded and did my bidding. So I am now waiting on results for all these ...

DHEA
DHEA-S
DHEA-T
testosterone - free
FSH
LH
oestrogen
progesterone
Vit D, 25-Hydroxy
Thyroid Peroxidase (TPO) Ab
Antithyroglobulin Ab
inhibin B
AMH
thyroid function
liver function
iron studies

I will go back once a month and get most of them re-tested so as to monitor everything properly. it shall be interesting and I shall treat it like a science experiment.

Today my step-daughter asked, for the kazillionth time, if her father and I were going to have a baby. Usually when she asks I say "Maybe ... we're trying", but today I said that I thought that we probably wouldn't. That we'd been trying for two years now and it was very unlikely that it would happen. I felt all glum and pessimistic and realistic and sad while saying this.

The Little Guy piped up from the back-seat "Can't you just take a pill?" and we all laughed.

I wish it was so easy.

For now I shall brave the testosterone storm that may swamp me and take my 75mg of DHEA in the hope that an IVF cycle in May results in more/better eggs and a pregnancy. Otherwise it's the end of the road for us. If anyone out there has anything good to tell me about DHEA, please do so. I'd love a story about a late-thirties poor responder who took DHEA for 12 weeks and got pregnant.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Show-and-tell - Can a Loony?

Here I am for the 87th Show and Tell at Mel's. Telling but not showing this time.

Yesterday I collected my Marmee from the airport in the afternoon and brought her back to our house for a welcome home dinner. She'd been up north at the beach with the rest of my maternal family, sunning and surfing and relaxing. So I cooked some foods I've never cooked before. Last night's menu included spinach and ricotta cannelloni followed by meringue. T'was yummy.

After I'd dished out and started eating the cannelloni I thought to myself that I wished that I'd taken photos because it was so colourful and gorgeous. But I didn't. And the leftovers don't look quite so wonderful as the piping hot dish all tomato-ey and cheesy did. Here's the recipe.

Napoli sauce

2 tbsps good olive oil
800g canned diced tomatoes
1.5 tsp basil
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tbsp sugar
pinch salt
1 onion chopped

1 heaped tsp crushed garlic

Heat up the oil, saute the onion and garlic 'til translucent, add the tomatoes and the seasonings and cook with the  lid on, stirring every once in a while, for a half an hour while you make the cannelloni.


Spinach and Ricotta filling

375g spinach (if you use frozen, then defrost it and squeeze all the water out)
350g ricotta
3 egg yolks
2 crushed garlic cloves
1 cup grated cheese (tasty, parmesan, mozzarella, use whatever you like or a mixture)
a sprinkle of nutmeg
1 tsp salt (and some pepper if you like it)
cannelloni tubes - 20 small tubes, or 10 fat ones (enough to fill the bottom of a lasagne dish)

Combine the spinach, ricotta, yolks, garlic, 1/3 of the cup of grated cheese and the seasonings in a big bowl. Mix well with your hands. Then poke the mix into the cannelloni tubes 'til they're full.

Puree the sauce with a whizzy stick and pour half into the bottom of the dish (I used a 18x29cm (7x11.5") rectangle lasagne dish). Lay the cannelloni over the sauce then pour the rest of the sauce over the top. Sprinkle with the other 2/3 cup of grated cheese and bake at 200C (392F) for 30-35 minutes. Poke with a skewer to see if cooked.

Eat!


Then I made meringue to top a lemon curd tart I'd bought. I've not made meringue before which kind of startled me. Here in the land of the Pav I had escaped meringue making??? Astounding.

I had 3 egg whites (because of the 3 egg yolks I'd used in the cannelloni filling, apparently meringue and cannelloni are companion foods) so I beat them within an inch of their lives with the beaters I got for Christmas (me to me). Oh how I love those beaters - they even have dough hooks. Who knew I could appreciate whitegoods so much. 10 year old me would be so impressed! Anyway, after beating them 'til peaky with a pinch of Cream of Tartar (what on earth is that stuff anyway, must investigate) I added about 3/4 cup of caster sugar really really slowly and beat it all together until beautiful fluffy meringue mountains formed easily. The I walloped heaps onto the tart, whacked it into a very hot oven for a few minutes and we all ate delicious curd cake with sweet meringue topping. And again I wished I'd taken pics of it all, but no. Apparently I was too busy living my life to document it.

I had some left in the bowl and decided to bake some meringue blobs. Oven down to 90C, in went the meringues for me to remember to turn the oven off after 1.5 hours and then leave them to cool for 3 or 4 hours in the cooling oven. But ... oh dear ... I forgot about them almost as soon as I had put them into the oven and this morning my step-daughter, the Perfect Child, said "what happened to those meringues you cooked last night?"

Yes, dear reader, the oven was still on and the meringues were still warm. TBG thought they'd be little meringue-y rocks but akshully they were perfect! And yummy. Ta-daaa.

P.S. I copied Mel and made myself a formspring page too - http://www.formspring.me/pundelina - go on ask me anything!

Saturday, January 9, 2010

You know you wanna





And I sure want you to - so go on, delurkify and leave me a comment letting me know that you're out there (google analytics says there are plenty of you but you're mostly so very quiet).





As for me, I'm holding in there. Only just though. And only with copious quantities (read, 1 or 2 glasses of wine) of alcomahol. I'm sad and dispirited and not sure what to do next. I think I'll try taking DHEA for 3 months and then get Dr Mac to do an oestrogen priming cycle in April/May. Even though he doesn't believe in either of those options, I just can't give up.

In the meantime, the Big Guy and I will make whoopee, pray for miracles (or peace) and I will (must) finish my research project.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Honest and scrap and Happy New Year

My blog is honest - that's one of my failings actually. Unflinching honesty. Only popular if you are really sure that your arse doesn't look big in those jeans or if you don't care too much if I tell you the truth. (Apparently very few of you wanted to know about bad 70s movies. But hey, I is what I is. Oh, also, I'm worried that I offended people with that last post so I'm very sorry if that happened, it wasn't my intention.)

And my blog is scrap. Just like all those bits of material I will do something with one day, just like that half-broken chest-of-drawers that still kind of works that I haven't thrown out yet. It's here, it's bitty, it's pieces of my life and my feelings. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Always a patchwork of the overflow.

Thus (who gets to use that word in real life, I love thus, it's a most excellent word), thus Allie thought that I deserved this award. Thanks Allie, if there'd been an awards night I would have been sloppily dressed with my hair all over the place, stumbling drunkenly up to the stage to blushingly accept it. I has completely embraced the "drunk Christmas" part of failed IVF cycle #4.

The rules are that I should share 10 honest facts with you and pass on the award to 7 of my bloggy peeps.

But I don't have it in me tonight to write more right now so I shall nominate my gals in my New Years wishes below and when I am less ruled by awfulness and crapola I will write 10 speshul things. Here's a cartoon from the talented Lawrence Yang at http://blowatlife.blogspot.com/


Here's hoping 2010 brings several of us our babies or healthy pregnancies, and brings joy and peace to us all!