My Golden Ticket

Thursday, April 7th, was Cycle Day 1 for me and I was to call my Doc and let them know when that happened.  I had not looked forward to a period in almost 4 years and now I was doing nothing but waiting on the darned thing to arrive.  I think it knew I was waiting on it to come because I spotted for several days before actually starting.  It wanted to mess with me just once more while it could.  I called the nurse and let her know and she said she'd have my calendar for me, either Friday or Monday.  I was kind of excited to be getting a calendar.  We'd waited so long for this process that a calendar meant there was a plan.  A real plan!  I was excited to have the skeleton of a real plan finally.  It meant this was going to happen.  And not in some distant time either.  It was going to happen soon!

That night after his bath, Hubby noticed that his incision looked a little funny and asked me if I'd come take a look.  For lack of a better way to say this, it looked like there was a bit of discolored snot coming from the bottom of it.  (In 1997, my father developed staph infection in his sternum after having open heart surgery.  He was on IV's and ill at the hospital for almost a year.)  There was no way I was going to repeat that awful ordeal with Hubby, so we agreed that he'd call the Doc 1st thing in the morning. 

The next day Hubby called and Dr. Mr. Clean said he'd like to see him right away, so we headed to Columbus.  I went ahead and called my Doc's office. I figured I'd let them know that we were making the hour+ trip up to Hubby's Doc and if my calendar happened to be ready, I'd go ahead and pick it up and save myself another trip.  The nurse said that my calendar was ready and I could go ahead and get it while I was up there.  WOW!  Now we're moving along!

We traveled to my Doc's office where we met with his nurse who gave me the calendar along with lots of instructions on how to give myself injections and what meds I'd be taking.  She handed it all to me in this neat little purple folder that I am to bring with me to all my appointments.  She said if I needed anything, I should call her.  Otherwise, they'd see me on May 6th for my baseline bloodwork and ultrasound.  Good Lord there was a lot of info packed into that 15 minutes!  Could I possibly give myself shots?  And the even bigger question: Could Hubby, who practically faints at the sight of blood, give me injections? 

After knocking around for a couple hours in the big city, we went to Hobby's Doc.  Dr. Mr. Clean took a quick look at his incision and let us know that what we were seeing were parts of his green-yellow colored stitches dissolving.  Why didn't they tell us there were that color to begin with?! That would have been a helpful little piece of info.  After squeezing, stretching, and pinching his very tender incision while Hubby winced and clinched his fists, Dr. Mr. Clean said that Hubby was healing wonderfully and sent us on our way.  He stated that if we needed him for anything else, he'd be available.  Otherwise, he's see Hubby many years down the road when he needs a prostate exam.  Hubby whispered to be on the way out of the building that now he'd officially been man-handled.  I could tell, just by the way he was walking that he was in a lot of pain.  Poor Hubby.

And we traveled back to our small town more than an hour away.  On the car ride home, while Hubby drove, I just looked and looked at all the info in my little purple folder that the nurse gave me.  I was just like Charlie and that purple folder was my Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.