At my last Nuffield appointment I was given the instruction to call on the first day of my next period to book an appointment for Cycle Day Three. I duly went away and waited and waited and waited for what seemed like the longest time ever. Of course it wasn't really that long but after dreading every period for almost four years actually looking forward to one was going to feel like a lifetime.
And it was slightly late which did not help matters at all. Though having spoken to people online I've discovered that it's not uncommon for your period to be a little shy after a Prostap injection.
After waiting a while to establish this was indeed what I'd been waiting for I called up and made our Day 3 appointment for last Wednesday.
As it was a little later in the day than previous appointments I made the decision to go into work for a couple of hours first thing; no sense using up holiday hours unnecessarily. This meant I missed a phone call from the hospital asking us about changing our appointment time but I got through when we were on the boat and arranged that if we could get there for 2:30pm we'd go for that but if not we'd go for the original time.
We did actually make it for the earlier appointment and didn't have long to wait before we were called through for our scan. This time we met a new nurse, G, who is pretty familiar with the island where we live so we chatted a while about the best restaurants and places to eat locally.
The scan was slightly more uncomfortable than the last one, which I put down to the time of the month rather than the nurse. Again, it was the scan that I had been most concerned about on this appointment because a Day 3 scan seemed kind of unpleasant.
It's never going to be the highlight of my calendar but it really wasn't as bad as I was expecting. The thickness of my womb lining was checked as well as my ovaries. My right ovary was hiding again but this time I was actually able to make out what G pointed to when she looked at my left ovary. That was pretty cool.
And with that all done it was time to get all cleaned up and get some blood taken before I learned how to give myself injections. I forget exactly what the blood test was for but the results would determine when I would start the injections.
As for the injections, I'd been given the choice between a solution which you had to mix up yourself before injection or one which came in a preloaded pen. As much as I enjoyed science at school, with something as big as this I wanted to leave as little room for error as possible, so I opted for the preloaded pen, known as Gonal-F.
I know plenty of women do just fine with making up the medication and injecting it, but the thought of doing something wrong scares me and I'm really grateful the Nuffield gives you a choice.
Before demonstrating how the pen worked, G asked who would be doing the injections. Without hesitating I said 'me!' I mean, I love Mr Click but if anyone's going to stab me with something sharp and pointy, it's going to be me.
The pens really do seem to be foolproof and after a demonstration I felt pretty confident about doing it myself. We were given a snazzy bag for the boxes of pens and needles, and the sharps bucket, as well as a big A3 sheet with step-by-step instructions (including coloured blocks showing where to put the sharps bucket and needle). After restocking my metformin, we were good to go and just had to wait for a phone call to tell us when we could start the injections.
And I'll share more about how I got on with those tomorrow.
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