In Other News...

Whew! What a whirlwind weekend! It's amazing that since I came out of my coma (read: took some time off from IF treatments) that I 1) actually have friends; and 2) they want to spend time with me.

We have some good friends at church who are moving later this month, and this weekend was the last time we were going to be seeing them. M. (the husband, recent seminary graduate, pastor) gave the sermon this weekend, so I went to church on Saturday night to see their fam and hear his sermon (did I mention I had a computer conversion and had to work on Sunday? Good thing we had beer!). The reading was from Jeremiah and was one he had had on his blog a few weeks back and asked friends to comment on, so I was familiar with the text. Basically, God is empowering Jeremiah, and he says back to God, I am just a boy, and God gives Jeremiah the word of God and watches over him.

M.'s sermon had to do with discerning his own call to become an ordained pastor and several times in his life when someone or God had asked him to do something and his response had been "You want me to do WHAT?" I started to space off as I am want to do during sermons, but had the most surreal experience that jerked me back to reality. I heard M. say "whether that call is to seminary or to being a foster parent or something else..." So, either M. said something random and I just heard foster parent, or he was totally talking about me in his sermon that was otherwise, for as far as I could tell, about him. (I should mention we ate dinner together the night before and discussed our intent to become foster parents, and that M. himself had been in foster care himself for 6 months as an infant before he was adopted). Either way, in light of the text and the whole God touching Jeremiah's mouth and giving him the word of God, I feel even stronger now that we are absolutely meant to be foster parents, and that God put His word in M.'s heart to encourage me and empower me to continue on this path. So, if nothing else happened all weekend, this was some pretty powerful stuff.

So, today, I called the foster care agency of choice and left a message with S. to call me back because I need to be sure we get into the class I want this summer. I'm leaning toward the 7-week class now, because I'm just more and more anxious to begin this ministry. So cool.

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I received my protocol in the mail from RE's office. Looks like I will start stims on July 19th. Yes, thanks for asking, that does seem like FOREVER from now. But it also means I can make enjoy parade adult beverages and antics over the 4th of July with my college friends, on DH and I's annual trek to the holy land (i.e. Minnesota).

The best news about my protocol so far, is that I will NOT be taking Lupron! Hooray! Down with hot flashes! Down with hot flashes! I have a feeling that I was 'over suppressed' during my first, cancelled IVF cycle but I never said anything about it. Actually, this is a theory that I worked up in my own head over the past two weeks, not back when it happened. So, I am a medical genius, if you didn't know, and apparently I am able to predict what RE will recommend without even telling them my opinion. I love it when a plan comes together! But I digress ... I responded so much better during my two IUI's and so they have me on the same stim schedule as I had for my last IUI. It's seriously like 5 days of a low dose of gonal-f. I'm sure I will still have headaches, but seriously?!, will be such a simple stim.

And because they did not put me on Lupron, I am once again, still in the running for Best Patient of the Year, because I was totally going to have to call and question them on that. And then they would have to think I was a crazy lunatic patient who thought she was a medical genius.