step one

Yesterday morning I drove up to Lexington, MA, for the initial screening for my egg donation. It was quite a long morning, not that I'm complaining about getting everything done at once. I'm glad, though, that most of the process will be able to be done a lot closer to home.

The first thing I did was to take the MMPI test, which consists of 567 true-false statements. 567. Most of them seemed pretty straightforward but I did notice a trend toward paranoid-sounding things: Someone is trying to rob me. Someone has control of my mind. Someone is out to get me. Followed by something innocuous like I enjoy watching movies. And of course, since it was an office setting, they were required to have the radio tuned to the local soft rock station. At this time of year, that means the Rod Stewart and Mariah Carey are alternated with a few different renditions of Jingle Bell Rock. You have to wonder, really, if this has an effect on the test results.

Next I met with the doctor, who went over how it all works (which I had already read about and talked about with other people), and the nurse, who gave me the much more detailed, this-is-what-you-will-be-doing-on-this-particular-day version. I'm sure I will share more of this as it happens, but essentially there will be a few weeks of pills, just normal birth-control pills, followed by about two weeks of injections, then the actual retrieval. That I won't share much more of, because I think hearing details on medical procedures is just Too Much Information, don't you? And about the injections - I'm really not skeeved about them. Seriously, after you've had three kids, pretty much naturally all three times, a needle is not such a big deal. My husband, on the other hand, is a big squeamish wuss. He had to have blood drawn while we were there, and he complained about it intermittently throughout the rest of the day. They took one vial from him and eight from me, is all I am saying.

The last meeting was with a counselor. I haven't had any experience with therapy before, and I am not what you might call outgoing and at ease with people I don't really know, so it was a little weird for me. She was very nice, and very earnest, and asked a lot of probing questions. About my experiences being a parent, and my reasons for wanting to be an egg donor, which is completely understandable, but also about my childhood, my family, etc. I guess that's also revealing, but I gotta say as I was talking about my parents being divorced since before I could remember, and the remarrying and divorcing again, and all of that stuff, I was thinking oh my goodness I sound so dysfunctional. And of course the phrase "dysfunctional family" has been used to the point where it really doesn't mean anything, but I've never applied it to my family. I kept wanting to say, "But I'm fine, really."

Anyway, unless they decide I am just too psychologically damaged to proceed, it's a waiting game for a couple of weeks and then everything will start. I know a lot of the process might be unpleasant, but I have to say I'm really looking forward to it. The timing is just great; my sister-in-law is going to have her baby any day now,* and it's such a reminder of what's really happening and why I want to do this. I'm very excited!

*Dude! My father-in-law just called, and she's on her way to the hospital right now! Now I'm very very excited!