Spring cleaning

I was doing some 'spring cleaning', going through my kitchen cabinets, straightening and grouping and alphabetizing the food items. Go ahead and laugh. I know I'm a little overboard with the alphabetizing thing, but I need to have everything in order. I guess I need control over something (as many of you know that when suffering from infertility, the thing that hits the hardest is that there is no control over what seems to be a basic fundamental human function...procreation), and being an over-zealous neat freak is one thing I can control. I was happily going about my business arranging and straightening things, from one cabinet to the next. I didn't even realize where in my kitchen cabinets I was. I was just going through the motions - open cabinet, straighten things, make sure items were in their proper spots, close cabinet, and move onto the next cabinet. So I get to the very far corner cabinet at the top and open it without realizing where I was at or what I had kept in that cabinet. Lo and behold, I was staring at the cabinet contents and couldn't move. In this particular cabinet, I had stored all the meds...not just any meds...but THE meds. From every single cycle. Even way back when to my IUI days. <-- What a joke! Oh and while I'm at it, I might as well fess up that I even kept all the receipts and the notebook of my BBT charts..(Nice to know that I ovulate but what good does that do when the problem is male factor?)... Basically every single thing that had to do with ttc for about 15 years. Anyway...

So there I was just staring at all the meds, and all the memories come flooding back full force. Memories of hope, Jerry giving me the shots, ultrasounds, surgeries, transfers, BFN phone calls, desperation, WTF follow-up appointments, anger, etc. came flooding back to me.

I'm sure those of you who've done IVF at least once know exactly what each item is for. But I'm going to list them for those who haven't just to show all what I was willing to put into my body just for a chance to have what everyone else in the free world can have for FREE.

-- Needles of varying guages, new ones in their unopened packages and old ones in the many red sharps containers

-- Syringes

-- Empty vials of Lupron, Menopur, Follistim, Repronex, Cetrotide, hCG

-- Empty kits

-- Birth control pills (contradictory, huh?)

-- Containers of Clomid, Prometrium, Estrace & Dexamethasone (even have some leftover pills)

-- Crinone gel

-- Climara patches

-- Vivelle patches

I just couldn't toss them. These things represent my life, who I was and still am.

So I closed the cabinet door and moved on...at least for now.

Btw, I would pull out all the meds and put them on my kitchen table and take a pic to post, but I'm not sure if I could get them to fit back in so neatly. Maybe next time.