THURSDAY, 7/22/99
We're doing a third cycle. We decided on the couch Sunday night during a commercial, which is how all the big decisions in this marriage get made. Lupron starts August 9.
Today I sat with the clinic's financial counselor, a very kind woman with a very large calculator. New York insurance covers a lot of things about infertility, it turns out, but not IVF itself. So we are paying for it with the money that was going to be a new kitchen. Dan says we didn't need a new kitchen. Dan says this every time and looks at the cabinet door that's been hanging off one hinge since 1997.
I wrote a check with a comma in it on my lunch hour and then went back upstairs and wrote a radio spot about free checking.
SUNDAY, 6/20/99
Father's Day barbecue at Dan's parents' in New Jersey. Hamburgers, potato salad, his dad at the grill in the apron that says KISS THE COOK, which nobody has done since the Carter years.
Over dessert, Dan's sister Rachel tapped her glass and announced she's pregnant. Due in January. Their second. Everyone screamed. I screamed. I am a professional; I can scream on cue. Then I looked across the table at Dan, and Dan was looking at me, and in that second I loved him more than I have ever loved anyone, because he didn't look away and he didn't pretend.
On the Turnpike home he said, "You were great in there." I said, "I was acting." He said, "I know. You were great." We didn't turn on the radio the whole way.
For the record, I'm happy for Rachel. Both things are true. That's the part nobody tells you about this: both things are always true.
SUNDAY, 5/9/99
Mother's Day. I went to the drugstore for my mother's card and stood in the aisle reading them. I write this kind of thing for a living. I know which ones were written by a 24-year-old on deadline. I cried at one anyway. It had a duck on it.
Took my mother to brunch. The restaurant gave every woman at every table a carnation. The waiter handed me one, then looked at my left hand, then at my mother, and said, "For both of you." That was kind of him. I kept it in a glass on my desk all week, until it looked the way I felt.
MONDAY, 3/15/99
Follow-up consult with Dr. L., who is our reproductive endocrinologist, which is a job title I didn't know existed five years ago and now say at dinner parties like it's "dentist." He has a fish tank in his waiting room with one very old angelfish in it. I think about that fish a lot. It's been in there through two of our cycles.
The diagnosis, after four years and every test they make, is still "unexplained." Which, as a copywriter, I find insulting. Everything can be explained. I explain things for a living. I explained why a car was "spirited" once. Nobody can tell me why all of my tests are fine and all of Dan's tests are fine and here we are.
He thinks a third cycle is reasonable. He said "reasonable" three times. Dan counted.
FRIDAY, 2/12/99
Negative.
The nurse called at 3:15. I was in a meeting about a Valentine's Day promotion for a jewelry store, which I would not put in a screenplay because nobody would believe it. I went back in and finished the meeting and said something clever about diamonds. Then I went home.
Dan brought home a pint of the good ice cream and two spoons. We ate it in bed with our coats still on. That's all I've got tonight.
SUNDAY, 1/3/99
New year, new page. A woman on one of the IVF message boards keeps an online journal, and she says it helps. So here I am.
I named it Copy because that's what I do all day: I write copy. Thirty words to sell a minivan. Sixty seconds to make you feel something about paper towels. It's the only kind of writing I know how to do anymore. Also, if I'm being honest, because this whole thing, the shots and the waiting and the calendars, has started to feel like the same few paragraphs over and over. A copy of a copy.
We're in cycle two. Lupron since the 28th. Dan gave me my shot at midnight on New Year's Eve while the ball dropped on TV, and we kissed after, and it was, weirdly, one of the best New Year's we've had.
Resolutions: Be kinder to my body, which is doing its best. Stop reading the message boards at 1 a.m. Write this. See how long I keep two of the three.
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