Houston

First off-- the bleeding stopped right after I posted about it, as did the headaches.  I am back in the land of the side-effect-less.  Hoorah!

Yesterday, I left home at about 10:00 to head to Houston.  Here I am early on, waiting for my iced tea at Sonic, still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

It was a gray, wanting-to-rain kind of day, but the drive was very pretty, thanks to the Texas wildflowers-- at least one field of bluebonnets actually made me gasp out loud because it was so expansive and shockingly blue.  I also saw longhorns and lots of little baby calves.  It was pretty much like driving through a Texas postcard.

Anyway, when I did get to Houston, it was starting to rain.  I met N and M at N's gorgeous office.  We were all pretty nervous at first, but our conversation over lunch was really easy.  I feel like we have a lot in common just in terms of basic life philosophy, so that's always good.  We're all eager to have our kids meet too-- I think they'll get along great.  Their daughter is about a year younger that my older daughter, so 2.5 years older than my younger daughter.  Sometime soon we'll make that happen.

M gave me directions to Houston IVF.  By then, it was raining pretty hard, but the traffic wasn't bad or anything, so it was a quick drive.  The building was just as he described, but I walked around aimlessly for a while trying to find the right elevators.  Even so, I got to the appointment right on time, at 3:00.

But then I waited.  And waited and waited.  I finally went back to the exam room at about 3:45.  The hysteroscopy itself is very quick (and this is the third I've had, so I knew what to expect).  When Dr. Hickman came into the room, he got right to business.  He didn't narrate the way the other doctors did, but since I'm such an expert (ha!), what I understand is that he inserted a catheter through the cervix and filled my uterus with saline to better visualize it on the ultrasound.  He said my uterus is beautiful and I've already grown a nice, triple-stripe lining, so I have no issues responding to the medication.  And that's it.  The end.

Standing up afterwards is messy (ick!) and I had a teeny bit of cramping on the way home-- really insignificant.  Overall, no big deal at all.  It's a little frustrating to drive 6 hours and wait 45 minutes for a 5 minute procedure, but what can you do?  Lunch with N and M was great, so that makes it worth it.  And if you have to spend all day in a car in Texas, March is the time to do it.