He who never plays, never loses

This is one of my favorite weeks.  Not only is it Price Increase week, which means I’m making about $10,000 a day right now (don’t worry, that’s not even a fraction of what I need to pay the expenses of my event, much less pay to live…but it sounds impressive), BUT it’s also the start of HBO documentary series season.  Last night was a doc on Bobby Fischer.  I loved it because a) I love documentaries about competitions/sports; they always have me on the edge of my seat, and b) I love mental illness.  So as far as those two things, this documentary pulled out all the stops!  If I could be an armchair psychologist I would diagnose the late Mr. Fischer with a little Asperger’s, followed by paranoid schizophrenia.  He also exhibited the bizarre phenomenon known as “self-hating Jew”.  Apparently his relatives had to throw him out of dinner parties because he’d start railing about “the Jews”…and they were all Jewish.  Huh? 

Anyway, there was a moment in the documentary that made me grab a pen and write something down.  It’s when they were interviewing the young Anatoly Karpov (pic above) who won the World Chess Champion title by default because the current title holder, Fischer, didn’t show up.  They interviewed Karpov about his thoughts at the time, and he said that he thought Fischer was afraid of losing, and said, “he who never plays, never loses.”  Americans would say, “you’ve got to be in it to win it”.  Is this an American mentality vs. a Russian mentality?  It reminds me of that great moment in The Sopranos when Tony’s Russian lover says, “you Americans expect nothing bad to ever happen, and the rest of the world never expects anything good to happen.” 

This struck a real chord with me.  With all this TTC stuff, I realized I am making myself vulnerable to losing.  After all, if I never tried TTC, I would never have known if I could have a baby or not.  I would never have known that I wasn’t actually ovulating; I would have gone on blissfully believing that I could have had a baby, had I wanted one.  But since I’m actively trying, and using medications now, and have already had one failure, the stakes are so high.  I’m afraid to lose.  But I know not even trying is not an option.  So, here we are.  

Today I broke down and started my HPT Challenge, because I figured, why the heck not?  So I took a non-sensitive, “take after your missed period” test, the first of six I have on hand.  And guess what?  At 6 dpo (and 8 days past the hcg shot) the test was NEGATIVE.  I have to admit this came as kind of a shock to me.  I really didn’t think the shot would be out of my system this early (after all, for many it lingers on for two weeks!), and made me question a lot of things.  Perhaps if I used a more sensitive test it would have detected trace elements of it – but it really doesn’t matter; if my gauge is going to be these particular tests, since they are the ones I have on hand, then I know that there will be no false positives as long as I keep using these tests.  So the shot is officially out of my system.  Kind of bummed I didn’t get the thrill of a positive test just once even if it was fake, but oh well!

So what now?  Well, I don’t know.  I am very much playing this cycle by ear because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about TTC it’s that there’s no way to predict how you’ll react to something, so it’s best to be flexible.  So there’s no point in testing again for a good long while – probably not until next week.  Period is due about Tuesday, so I figure once I get back from Cleveland on Sunday I can test Monday and Tuesday, and if I really snap, go and take the blood test.  But there’s no point in doing anything this week, and I’m out of town Fri – Sun and it’s probably best not to test while traveling because I’ll want to break down and cry and I can’t do that surrounded by people.  Can I hold out until Monday, 12 dpo?  I don’t know!

Another blogger came up negative after IVF.  A big part of me thinks, how is this possible?  I mean, you extract the eggs, they fertilize, they get put back in your body.  How can this possibly not produce a pregnancy?  And I’m doing IUI which makes the sperm find the egg, fertilize it, and then the egg has to find its way to the uterus and implant – how could that possibly work, if IVF doesn’t?  And to women MY AGE with no known fertility problems.  I’ll be honest, it scares the crap out of me.  Makes me start thinking again….um, exactly how long is this going to take?  If it ever takes?  Will I one day wish I’d never played so I never lost?