[Quick sidenote: Well, this is awkward. It’s been almost two months since my last post, which means I should definitely be fired from this whole blogging thing. Good thing I’m my own boss on this blog, and will therefore allow myself to keep on writing randomness with reckless abandon. The reason for my absence is that work has been nonstop over the last two months. And since I am now a freelancer about to throw a boatload of money toward IVF, that’s good news. Thanks for understanding. Now back to our regularly scheduled weirdness]

The Dragon Lady and I had a breakup back in September,  but it was the totally unawkward kind of breakup where we just stopped seeing each other and didn’t bother with the half attempts at explanations. If I had tried to explain it, I don’t think the “you told me I was having triplets when I wasn’t even pregnant” argument would have gone over so well with her. But it wasn’t just that. The main reason I stopped seeing her was because that voice in my head that sporadically pipes up to tell me that this is all a lost cause got deafeningly loud. So yeah, basically I ghosted the Dragon Lady.

But, now that we are about to drop a totally ridiculous amount of money on IVF, I’m going all-in on everything. I’m all-in on this whole fruits and veggies thing. I’m all-in on nasty wheatgrass shots. I’m all-in on no caffeine, no starches, and no alcohol. Okay, starting tomorrow. And I’m all-in on no chemicals, no phthalates, and no deodorant that actually works. And so it only seems right that I should also be all-in again with the Dragon Lady. That way, if things don’t work out, I won’t have the constant weight of “what if?” on my shoulders. I’ll have done all there is to do.

So after 6 Dragon Ladyless months, I scheduled an appointment and instantly turned into a barrel of nerves. Would she yell at me? Would she put needles in my eyes? Would she light me on fire and point out all my acne? Would I understand what she was saying anymore? Seriously, I had gotten really good at understanding the Dragon Lady’s short verbal assaults in broken English, but now I was out of practice.

The day of my appointment, as I lay there on the table, waiting for the Dragon Lady to enter the room, I brace myself. There will be lots of yelling, I just know it. Lots of tongue examining, pulse feeling, belly inspecting and yelling.

The door opens, and suddenly there I am face to face with the woman who will officially rip me a new one and then jab needles into it. And then it starts, the verbal assaulting.  “hi hun! How doing?!”

Wait a minute…

“I miss you. Want so bad you have baby.”

Um, who is this woman and what has she done with The Dragon Lady?

“Let me feel pulse. Then I see”

I hand her my wrist and she holds it, closing her eyes in concentration. Then I see it – a wave of true Dragon Ladyness wash over her face. There she is, the woman I have come to see today. Her eyes fling open, but inside her eye sockets there is only fire.

“No good! No good! No baby!”

I tell her how good I’ve still been. How I’ve even kept burning myself…sometimes. And that I am all-in for this IVF cycle.

“Pulse bad! Hormone bad! Kidney yang bad!”

I explain to her the protocol all my doctors now have me on, and that we have 6 weeks until the egg retrieval.

“Lot of work! Lot of work to do, hun!”

This, I figured. But I’m willing. Because, after all, I am all-in. So bring it on Dragon Lady.

And she does. By the time I leave her office an hour later, I am armed with four new supplements to add to my vast collection, strict orders to burn myself until I am bright red, and a mental list of all the things I cannot eat. Which, is basically everything.  And I am also armed with some words that surprise me.

“I pray for you. Tonight, tomorrow, I pray.”

Of all the things I had expected to happen this visit, this was not one of them. I’m not a huge prayer person, though over the last two years, I’ve definitely sent some prayers up to the man/woman/thing above about all this. But that voice in my head that sporadically pipes up to tell me that this is all a lost cause told me that praying wouldn’t make two craps’ worth of difference. So I’d given up on that front. But The Dragon Lady hadn’t.  She’s praying. So maybe I should too.

After all, I’m all-in.