blackmoondog

Soo... 2 months with a blog, 2 blog platforms. Not counting the Livejournal account that I created for reading and crossposting. After way too much frustration with blosxom, I decided to rebuild my site using MoveableType. Things have been a bit easier so far, but I'm still gonna have to monkey with installing Perl modules in my user account to get the crossposting stuff working. *sigh*

Friday I have to go in for a pelvic ultrasound to check for ovarian cysts. Since I've heard just how wonderful the experience is, I decided to do a little test run tonight to measure the capacity of my bladder. Here's how it went:

5:30 pm - First 8oz glass of water. No biggie. I haven't really had much to drink this afternoon anyway.

5:45pm - 16oz down so far. Still not feelin' anything. Tho I'm gonna make sure the cat doesn't crawl into my lap and dance on my bladder.

6:15pm - 24oz down. Half way there. Still feeling a little bloated from lunch. Stomach starting to feel a bit sloshy. About 15 minutes ago I realized that my "8oz every 15 minutes" schedule is gonna have me drink an extra 16oz. How the hell did I make it through 3 semesters of calculus???

6:30pm - First hour has elapsed. Not gonna make the same mistake as King Theoden of Rohan at Helm's Deep and wonder if it really is this easy. Time to complicate things by heading to the neighboring friends' house for dinner.

6:50pm - 32oz down the hatch. Still feeling no real discomfort. Keep wondering when I'm gonna start doing the peepee dance.

7:03pm - Crap! I have to drink another cup of water in the next 7 minutes.

7:30pm - At 40oz I kinda lost track of whether it had been 5 cups or 6. Eating a burrito may have not been helpful during this experiment. I start feeling some pressure and normally, I'd go to the bathroom around now. Instead, we start the clock to see how long I can hold it.

7:50pm - Since I lost count, I drank one more glass of water. Good thing too, that only got me to the required 48oz.

8:03pm - Why is time moving so damned slowly???

8:11pm - Come on. It has to be 8:30 by now. My goal was to make it an hour after the end of the 2 hour drinking period to give me time for the ride to the office, sitting in the waiting room, and going through the acutal process.

8:30pm - Finally! Looking back, it really wasn't that bad. Which makes me question whether or not I need to add more water. I've had a harder time when I forget to pee before leaving work and then go and run a bunch of errands. I should be able to handle this. But maybe I'll try this again tomorrow at work just to see.

Slowly but surely I'm making progess on my crack at "Under The Hoodie" from Stitch 'N Bitch. Over the weekend I nearly finished the front but didn't quite have enough of the main color yarn with me. I polished that off yesterday which marked the completion of the body of the sweater. At The Tech Museum in San Jose, I knitted my way through the exhibits and got about 4 inches of the sleeves done. I'm knitting both sleeves simultaneously on a circular needle. This trick was pointed out by someone on the Knitty forums as being in Stitch 'N Bitch Nation. Definitely handy, as I'm not all that fond of sleeves. I'm about 8 inches up the sleeves now. After that, the hood and assembly will be all that remains. I decided to skip the pocket, mostly out of laziness.

I am never going to follow the lab's instructions for preparing for a pelvic ultrasound again. The practice runs did not prepare me for waiting in agony while a handful of other people got called back to do their diagnostic stuff.

I drank the requisite 48oz of water within the 2 hour period before my appointment. That was mistake #1. Mistake #2 was getting to the lab 30 minutes early. I spent most of this time out in front of the building pacing and trying to call on any zen-like powers I could possibly have stowed anywhere in my body or mind. When it was down to 5 minutes before my appointment time, I went back inside and did the pee pee dance in the corner, whimpering each time someone else was called back. For those taking notes, Mistake #3 is making a 1pm appointment. The techs come back from lunch at 1pm, which means that if they get delayed for any reason, you and your aching kidneys get to wait. And wait. This was probably the closest I'll ever get to living in dog time. Every second felt like *hours*. Finally, it was my turn! The tech lady was very nice. She asked if I was miserable. I'm not sure that was a strong enough term. I have had 4 crowns put on my teeth. This experience blew them all away. Anyway, the ultrasound itself was pretty easy and I peed for longer and with more force than ever in my life.

It turns out that I don't have any cysts and that I don't have blood chemistry that indicates PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), but I am in some pre-PCOS state. So basically, I get to eat like a diabetic to see if I can back myself out of the pre-PCOS. I'll also be taking progesterone to try to knock my body back to a "normal" cycle. We'll see how that goes. It means another ultrasound next month (thankfully, with very little water drinking -- she said that 16oz should be plenty) to see if any follicles are ready to burst. If so, then we measure my progesterone levels about a week later to see if the kickstart worked.

In other news, Mark doesn't have any indication of fertility problems. Instead of a little gold star, he gets to turn the hot tub back on. I'm simultaneously relieved and depressed about his test results. It'll be a hell of a lot easier to get things figured out but I also got smacked in the head with the feelings of my body being "broken". I'm kinda getting past that and just being thankful that this isn't more complicated and will likely be motivation do use exercise and nutrition to drop more of the extra weight I'm hauling around. This week has been a good start, with two guest visits to the gym (Thanks, Trisha!), 2 bike rides for the knuckleheads, and probably a lot less sugar than average (despite the proliferation of birthday cake).