When our last IVF cycle was a bust last year, I had a fridge crisper full of leftover drugs. In fact I had exactly enough drugs to do one more cycle - alone. I planned dosing myself with the same (or less) Gonal-F as my last cycle, getting my GP to organise an ultrasound on about day 9 of my cycle and then depending on the measurement of the follicle/s I saw at that appointment, I'd plan to trigger and then go at it like rabbits with the Big Guy for one last medicated hooray.
But something always stopped me from doing it, certainly not lack of drugs, not lack of courage, not lack of willing GP because my GP is both awesome and malleable. I guess I just figured it was pointless really.
But I didn't throw out the drugs, they stayed in our crisper taking up valuable space. Every time I looked in the fridge I saw both the possibility of another cycle and the hope of a pregnancy, as well as the futility and pain of the same.
I got back from Bali on Sunday. And in the afternoon, in my jet-lagged haze, I opened the crisper and decided to dispose of the drugs. I have known I'd have to do it for a while, but I kept on not being ready. And then, out of nowhere, I was.
I stopped in at the hospital at the end of our street; the hospital where I planned I would deliver that baby we never had, where my mother-in-law's sister is a midwife who would have taken such good care of me, of us. Emergency was quiet last Sunday afternoon, and so I waited while a paramedic found out where to check in the dazed young man on her gurney.
The nurse asked what she could do for me and I confessed that I had a strange request. I had all these drugs and sharps leftover from our final failed IVF cycle last year that I'd been hoarding and I wanted to dispose of them safely. I started crying halfway through my silly explanation and she looked at me so very kindly, such tenderness in her eyes, and said that would be fine and was I alright.
Am I alright? I'm not sure really. I do know I have a lovely family and a wonderful husband. My life is full and busy and everything really should be fine. I should be over it. But my heart got torn wide open by infertility. I never expected it to happen (no one does) and it broke me into pieces. And I'm just slowly stitching myself back together.
The drugs are not in my fridge anymore but the crisper is still empty. And now its emptiness haunts me a little like my empty womb. The crisper, I can fill.
