Day 9....... Revelations

I'm sure by now you will all have figured out that I have been having a really, really rough time this past week and in truth, I really couldnt figure out why. I knew I was feeling really resentful and angry and I was finding myself being really 'snappy' and impatient. For the most part I was putting this down to the hormones but it just wasnt sitting fully right with me.

I went down to see Gordon today... it was a last minute appointment and he was very good to accomodate me at such short notice. I was just feeling so angry and lost and I knew that he could help me or at least I knew that I could really talk to him about what was going on.....

But when I got there..... I found myself unable to vocalise what was going on... I genuinely did not know... and usually when I tell Gordon that I don't know what is going on... he knows that I do actually know and he pushes me until I can talk about it, but today... he realised that I actually didn't know.

He suggested we try a technique known as a Hypnotic Emotional Drop Through, initially I wasn't too willing... I have used this technique and I have seen what it can do to people's emotions, but Gordon assured me that I could stop it at any point if I didnt want to go fully through with it.

Basically, it involves getting into a very relaxed state and beginning with the most prominent emotion, you must vocalise that emotion. For me, it was anger. Once the emotion has been vocalised you must take a very deep breath and hold it for a few seconds and only release it when you are ready to release the attachment to that emotion. You then take some more deep breaths until you return to a fully relaxed state. The next step is to 'drop down' through that emotion and find the next emotion that is directly under that. It can take a bit of searching to find the emotion that you are truly feeling... but the thing about this technique is that it only works if you are true to your emotions and find the actual emotion that you are feeling. The next emotion for me was frustration, and so we repeated the process.

The other thing about this technique is that it is a hypnotic technique... therefore... I dont fully remember what all the emotions that we went through were, but there were about 20 I would imagine..... until I got to 'scared' and that was the last emotion that I could 'drop-through'. I said to Gordon that I couldnt drop through that emotion because dropping through that brought me to full circle and back to anger, instead I felt that I had to move in a horizontal direction and almost parrallel to being scared..... the emotion I found there was the tiniest glimmer of hope, we repeated the process and Gordon asked me to drop-through that emotion and I did... although it felt more like raising above that emotion than dropping through it, I found 'possibility', once again we dropped through it and I struggled to put a word to the next emotion... describing it as the 'opposite to the funnel effect', I eventually vocalised 'blossoming', and that was it. Gordon brought me back to a fully conscious state and then left me alone for a few minutes to fully comprehend what had just happened.

My emotions has gone from Angry, Frustrated and Scared to Hope, Possibility and Blossoming... but even still it just didnt feel properly right to me.

Gordon had used an 'anchoring' technique on the positive emotions (anchoring goes back to Pavlov's experiments and basically creates an attachment between a stimulus and an emotion... for example... squeezing a knuckle when thinking of 'hope', so eventually one will feel hope when that knuckle is squeezed).

He then asked me what emotion I attach to going back to having this transfer, I immediately said 'hatred'. Gordon then put pressure on the anchor point and asked me to think about going for this transfer in terms of hope, possibility and blossoming. It seemed a bit odd and I wasn't fully sure where this was going..... but all of a sudden it was like a light bulb went off in my mind, suddenly everything just felt connected, it all clicked for me.

Gordon could see what had happened and asked me to vocalise what was going on in my head, it took me a minute to find the words but eventually I told him that I had just realised that my feelings of anger, hatred and frustration are not in fact connected to CFC or IVF or even my history and fear of it all going wrong, in fact... those feelings are personal feelings that I have towards the owner of CFC and were caused by the way I was treated at one point.

I never wrote or even spoke in detail about my egg collection procedure... there were two reasons for this, the first being that I didnt want to bring any negativity to the process or attach any negativity to the clinic..... the second being that I knew there were a lot of people reading this blog who were on the same journey as me and I didnt want to scare anyone with details of my bad experience.

But it is now time for me to write about that experience, because that is where my negative feelings have come from..... so here goes........

We were told that I would be sedated and completely asleep for the whole procedure, so we didnt really think too much of it. As far as I was concerned I wouldnt know anything about the process until it was long over. The morning of the procedure I was gowned up and brought into the theatre, Patrick was told to go away and to come back in about 3 hours.

I remember being given the sedation into the vein on the inside of my right wrist.... and then I remember waking up... except when I woke up... the procedure wasnt over... in fact it had only just begun. The procedure is done by passing a thick needle through the vaginal wall, bursting the follicles and collecting the egg-containing fluid. This has to be done for each follicle..... I had 36 follicles.

It had appeared that the needle had come out of my arm or my vein had collapsed... either way I was no longer sedated... and there is only a tiny window of time to collect these eggs before the body ovulates naturally and the eggs would be lost. I remember screaming at the Dr to stop as he pushed that needle through my vaginal wall over and over again, I remember my arms being held by nurses as they tried to keep me still so that they could proceed with the process. I remember begging them to stop, the pain was just horrific.

Eventually it was over and they brought me back to the recovery room. I immediately called Patrick and instantly he knew something wasnt right... as far as he was concerned I'd be asleep for at least another 2 hours. I was crying and screaming down the phone to him, I was so traumatised.
Patrick came back as quickly as he could and he was fuming.

He called for one of the Dr's but instead one of the lab technicians came in and told me that I should have told them that I had a low pain threshold.... yep.... it was my fault...!!!

The nurse then came in and explained that there had been a problem with the sedation and that is was a very difficult egg collection procedure due to the placement of my left ovary.

We left for home then and it was right after then that I developped all the problem with my bowels... which later came out that there was a possibility that my bowel was needled due to my struggling during the procedure... yep..... my fault again...!!!

I spent 4 weeks in hospital then due to a combination of bowel problems and Ovarian HyperStimulation Syndrome. When I got out of hospital, Patrick and I asked to meet with the owner of the Clinic, a well respected Dr. I told him that I was hugely upset over what had taken place and that I should have been told that there was a chance that I may not be fully asleep during the procedure. His response was that there is always a risk of not being fully asleep with sedation but he didnt see the point in telling every patient that as soon as they walked through the door.

I was deeply upset and told him that he had an obligation to his patients to give them all of the information before any procedure so that they could be fully informed and in my mind... knowledge is always power. If I know something could happen.... I can prepare myself for that eventuality.

We were basically told that we didnt know what we were talking about and that he didnt see anything wrong with what had taken place during my egg collection procedure and it was 'unfortunate' that I was feeling the way I was.... yes... you guessed it..... my fault again...!!! His attitude was completely inappropriate and clearly his 'God-like' ego did not like being told that maybe he should have done something differently.

Things got very heated that day, I was in a hugely traumatic state, we had no way of knowing how much damage had been done, Patrick was in bits with worry and this Dr was having an attitude with us and refusing to tell us anything..... I hate to admit how close it came to a violent confrontation between them, but it was very close.

Things lay quiet for a few months til we went back to CFC for our first transfer, then the second and third transfers. After the disaster that was the third transfer I called the clinic to set up an appointment with the same Dr in an attempt to find out why it kept going wrong for us. We had the appointment for 4 weeks and I called the morning of the appointment to double check the time.... only to be told that said Dr. would not be in the clinic that day and I should have called earlier to double check..... yep... all my fault...!!!

I have been carrying this pain for almost 2 years, and I never spoke about it or wrote about it..... until today. Up til now I was blaming everything else for how I was feeling, but now I truly realise why I have been feeling the way I was.

Gordon asked me how I was going to deal with this in a way that would allow me to go ahead with this transfer, and after thinking for a minute... I realised that I didnt need to deal with it... all I had to do was seperate it.... and I was able to do that. I realised that my feeling of anger and hatred were personal feelings I had towards this Dr., not feelings or emotions related to the transfer or getting pregnant......... and that was that...!!!

Almost immediately I felt better, that cloud had lifted and now I feel hope, I see possibility and I can feel my body preparing for my babies to blossom inside of me...... Now, I can get pregnant and I fully believe that now..... I can stay pregnant.

Lets do this transfer...!!!