loaded

Last night, at exactly 9pm, I pushed one final needle into my belly and emptied the syringe, triggering my body into ovulation.

Five follicles had grown to maturity Saturday morning when I saw my RE. I closed my eyes and silently hoped that in the hours that followed, the sixth one would have caught up.

Tomorrow is egg retrieval day. I’m going to visit the ER for the fourth time this year, climb into a table, and let myself be sedated into unconsciousness, once again.

I will not know, upon awakening, if the five, or the six, have yielded each one an ovocyte, but before leaving the clinic, in the afternoon, should receive that news. And then come home, and wait, with my man, leaving our precious cargo in the lab.

Sometimes the banal can seem so filled with emotion and meaning. I know that there is a fork in the gray road ahead, that one path will be open, and the other closed, and that the end of this long year will be filled with either joy or heartbreak.

Please let it be joy.