This week I met my acupuncturist. We’ll call her PinLady. She is Korean. This is a good sign, I think, as stupid as it sounds. My previous acupuncturist was a white lady who I think was just a hippie. Not that she didn’t understand Chinese medicine, but I’m just saying…She takes my pulse and looks at my tongue. PinLady says I’m lacking in both yin and yang energy. Whatever that means. She tells me right off the bat to have no ice, nothing cold, no soy, no alcohol and no coffee. And to stay away from dairy and sugar if I can help it. My mind instantly goes to the bottles of wine I have been downing. Damn, I thought. That was how I was getting through this.
She tells me that when you take birth control, your body stops producing some hormones on its own, because the medicine does it for you. Once you stop giving it assistance, it takes a while to start producing the hormones on its own. My doctors always told me that it would take no time to get the birth control out of your system. Remember my friend of a friend who got pregnant after forgetting birth control for a few days? It’s out of your system quickly. But what they don’t say is that it can leave you with a broken system. It pisses me off, actually, when I think about it. Why wouldn’t a responsible doctor tell you that it can be easy, but it can be hard as well, and to stay in tune with your body? Why wouldn’t they tell you that there is a chance that birth control can fuck everything else up when it’s time to have a kid? I’m burning up as she is telling me this, envisioning sticking needles in Dr. Dipshit and Dr. NoHelpAtAll.
PinLady puts needles in my stomach and my legs. I’m face up the whole time. It hurts a teeny bit. I remember that my previous acupuncture used to hurt when I was around my period. Maybe it’s a good sign? She says that my body seems to be in a premenstrual state. The treatment seems okay. She tells me that she has restored periods in women in as short as 3 hours up to 3 weeks. I should be getting my period soon, she says. She tells me to get a massage in between sessions to move the blood around more. I set up a reflexology and an abdominal massage appointment before I leave. I didn’t feel that different. A little grumbly in my stomach, but that was it.
Giving up coffee was hard. It was. I love coffee. And the alcohol too. I love wine. But I did it, reasoning that if I got pregnant, I would have to give it up anyways. People started asking questions, especially about the ice. I told them it was a cleanse – turning over a new leaf.
My husband puts me in touch with a nutritionist who cured herself from infertility with a change in diet. She is super vague about what she is talking about, and she wants $150 a week to counsel me. F that. I can figure it out myself. I tuck this idea in the back of my mind.
Two days after acupuncture, I get the flu. Bad. It comes on very quickly, and leaves just as fast. Sore throat, drowsiness. Very odd.
My period had better start in a week.
LESSONS LEARNED: Doctors don’t always tell you the whole story. Putting your fate in someone else’s hands is tough. Especially if you don’t know if it will work.
F!@$ You Infertility! 