It's a cruel world

A new suite of tests began today & they were all just plain awful!. This morning I had to be at the path lab by 7.30, 6 tubes of blood were taken from my poor veins. As I was driving there, I was angry. I am sick of these tests, I am sick of being pricked in the arm, I am sick of the intervention & medicalisation of all of this. Part of this testing was ovulation tracking, necessary to know when to do the endometrial biopsy & the other tests were more of the same, testing for possible miscarriage reasons. As usual Im not expecting anything interesting other than the usual 'all is normal'. Then I left work early, met A & off we went for this wiz bang , hi tech, 4 dimensional ultrasound where they inserted saline into me & then looked around for fibroids, polyps, septums or other strange happenings in my uterus or tubes.

THIS WAS HORRIBLE. Late last week, I was contacted & asked whether we could make it an hour earlier at 2.45 instead of 3.45. We juggled our lives around to fit in & guess what time we were finally taken inside, yep you guessed it - 3.45.
But the trauma experienced in that hour of waiting was pure torture. Couples came & went. They were happy, excited couples awaiting their 12 or 20 week ultrasound. They were so nieve yet protected, it seemed from the traumas that can horror you on those ultrasound days. They met there from their respective jobs, waited patiently for a few moments only & 20 mins later, walked out joyously, proudly carrying their first photos of their child in utero. They were ooh'ing & aah'ing over their photos & sharing their excitement. One couple who were really excited had just discovered they were having a boy & were thrilled. I found this unbearable & to be honest, I hated each one of them & their joy. The assistant sonographer came & explained to us why we were left waiting. She said 'the baby before you for the ultrasound of 20 wks is misbehaving so the ultrasound is taking longer' I felt like punching her in the face. Did it dawn on her that maybe a cute remark about a 20 wk old fetus misbehaving wasn't so sensitive? Why didn't any of these couples today experience the pain of finding no heartbeat as we have done & so many of you have done. I know this sounds so cruel, bitter & callous of me...but it is a true account of how terrible I felt today. I wandered whether we would ever experience an ultrasound without trauma? It felt as if maybe we wouldn't. I wandered why the clinic cant be more sensitive to the many women who are struggling? Why cant there be two waiting rooms, one for the healthy (supposedly) normal ultrasounds & the other for the women experiencing diagnostic ultrasounds who are struggling?
I remember learning something very important the year my mum died. I remember learning that when someone is acutely sensitive about their world & going through an extremely sensitive time due to acute grief or loss or pain ...then, at that time from their eyes the whole world seems cruel & insensitive. ....& to the other people who aren't experiencing the sensitivity - they just don't get it. I remember learning this, feeling this on such a deep internal level after she died & it is with the same level of sensitivity now that i am finding the world so cruel.
And then the sonographer & doctor told me it would be unpleasant but just like a pap smear. That was a lie, a total lie. In a papsmear, you dont have a thin pipe inserted through your cervix, you dont have saline solution pummelled into you - why cant they be honest & respectful about what will happen?
The dr, at least was decent & I felt so grateful. Isn't it a shame though, that when a dr is decent - it's like a miracle or rare event?
The procedure itself wasn't so bad. It hurt & was crampy but wasn't too bad -the emotions around it were worse. And of course he didnt find anything except that my uterus is retroverted so it was harder for him to see. He did query pcos as it seemed there were many follicle remains around my ovaries - but A quickly jumped in & reminded him I was stimulated only last month & this was probably the remains of an egg pick up.
& that was it - the familiar experience of feeling drained & fed up & angry & over it & traumatised were right back with me. We left in separate cars. A had to go to work & I home. All the way home I felt as though I just wanted to sob, but it never came. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs but that didnt happen either.

I am so sick of the tests, needles, ultrasounds, things up my vagina, the cramps, the pains, the insensitive clinics, the brutal staff, the waiting, the expenses, and the trauma.