Ever have an itch, but you can't figure out where to scratch?

Well, that's kinda how I felt the minute the Gonal-whatever-the-fuck-the-hormone-is-F dissipated into my system. Except it wasn't an itch. It was a lump in my throat where I had a sudden urge to cry. But it was stuck. Like when you're constipated and you know you should sit there longer, but are bored with the whole process because your People magazine subscription ran out and you want to get up and go about your day as you remind yourself once more that you should have more roughage in your diet. Well, my tears were stuck. Like that. And I didn't want to cry in a self-pitying way. It really was an instant drug reaction. That and I was really dizzy. (No, the dizziness wasn't due to digging through my wallet trying to find the full $29,000 NT that wasn't there. The nice lady, Julie (they name themselves Western names around the age of 12 here), let me leave owing $10,000. They accept cash ONLY. No frequent flyer miles for us.)

And it wasn't b/c... Wait. What wasn't b/c? Damn, sister. You get so friggin' off topic I forgot what you were whining about! IT, being the dizziness and lump in my throat. So. It wasn't b/c the lovely nurses giggled through their embarrassment about stumbling through instructing me in how to inject myself with this pen by employing a halting mix of English peppered with lots of Chinese and mime. I wasn't worried about the communication gap. I've become a pro at reading non-verbals and interpreting their misused words. I.e., when she said push, she meant pull.

They were so concerned I wasn't getting it, they even dragged Dr. Lee 2 (he's really only one...Lee. My Dr. Li is "Li" vs. "Lee." But I like to call them 1 and 2. [The Chinese/Taiwanese people really aren't too into original surnames. Chen. Shen. Li. Wu. etc.]) into the room to reiterate what they had told me in much better English.

I once again enthusiastically exclaimed,

"Wo Dong!" ("I understand!" [minus the applicable tone accents])

with a slap happy grin on my face. Because while they are all so apologetic for their crappy English speaking skills, I keep telling them not to worry about it. Actually, it's quite a running theme here. Dan and I have both assuaged many embarrassed Taiwanese people, saying more times than we can count:

"Your English is much better than my Chinese."

My feeling is, I'M in their country and they have no need to be apologetic. We Americans could use some of that humility and learn about others' cultures and languages. Especially in Los Angeles, it really is kinda mandatory to have some working knowledge of Spanish at the very least. Off topic much?

Anyway. Luckily they premixed the concoction in the pen so it seems to be pretty idiot proof. And since they did some of the dirty work, I felt better about each dose costing nearly $125.00 each. I mean you go into IVF knowing it's going to be a ridiculously expensive gamble and when you digest that one lump sum cost you somehow manage to swallow it because you just know you and you husband's genes are amazing and wonderful and your going to give birth to the next savior of the world. So you justify it somehow. But when it's broken down in a price per unit of a drug that screws with you, well, it makes it harder to digest.

Hmmm. I'll just keep fixating on our opportunity here which I feel fortunate we can take advantage of. There's that. Plus if it doesn't work, we can be freer to travel and we have our pups (oh, okay. And an ancient cat. And fine. They're not pups anymore. FINE. Ok. They're 11 + 13). We could always add a third to our furry brood. I found some adorable dogs on Petfinder I'm coveting. I'm hoping for their sakes they get adopted before we get back. But that's kinda keeping me going as a little consolation prize. Yes, Dan, we CAN TOO have another dog! We CAN, damn it. *dissolve into manipulative tears here*