The higher the hopes...

I allowed myself to be hopeful this month. It was our last month before moving on to donor treatment, and maybe I needed that bit of hope. Maybe I just wasn't ready to say goodbye to my dream of having my own baby. Clearly, I'm still not.

So I admit it - first, I stupidly allowed myself to get a bit hopeful that a miracle might have happened when AF showed up two days late. But of course, show up she did.

Then I went in for my blood test yesterday and my FSH and E2 levels were good - 9 and 184 respectively. The nurse commented how good they were, and seemed pretty certain that we'd be starting on the short protocol today - provided today's blood test and scan were OK. And again, I allowed myself to get hopeful and started working out how I would fit my work in around trips to London for blood tests, etc.

I went in this morning and the scan showed up a clear right ovary, but two cysts on the left - one at 10mm, the other at 13mm. There were three possible outcomes - aspiration probably tomorrow followed by an immediate start on the short protocol, starting straight away with the follicular protocol, or being told that yet again this wasn't a suitable month. It all depended on the blood test, and stupidly, I allowed myself to hope that it would still come out OK. After all, it looked as though I had two chances out of three.

So I was pretty upset when they phoned and gave me the same old rubbish about this not being an ideal month, but if the same thing happened next month we'd go ahead with the follicular protocol.

I pointed out that this is what I'd been told in December, and it HAD happened again, so surely we should be starting this month. No, the nurse said Mr Miracle Worker wanted to see if the cysts would go away on their own. I pointed out that I have had at least one cyst 10mm or above EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY'VE SCANNED ME, from last March onwards. I even had one when we did our cycle last July. So they're obviously not going to go away on their own, and leaving it one more month is just wasting another month while I continue to get older.

So I don't get to go ahead, but nor do I get closure, because they're still dangling the possibility before me of something happening next month. We'll go ahead and contact the new clinic about donor treatment anyway, because we'll probably have to go on a waiting list with them and we might as well get the ball rolling. And if next month I finally get a chance to have a last shot at XXXX clinic, we can always remove ourselves from the waiting list if it's successful - not that I'm holding my breath.

I don't know if I'm so upset because I had allowed my hopes to get up over the last three or four days.

Or because I'm moving on to the next plan without getting any sort of closure on the current situation.

Or because I'm angry that the clinic seems to have gone back on the promise they made me in December and won't properly explain why or respond to my arguments.

Or because I'm just so fed up with the answer to my prayers always being the same - "No, not for you".

Or maybe it's because everyone else in my family is so excited today, because my latest niece was born in the early hours of this morning. And I can't read all the messages of congratulation, and my brother's excited post on Facebook, without crying so hard that the computer screen in front of me disappears into a blur - and I'm sorry to say that they're not tears of joy, but of self-pity.

Tomorrow I'll be ready to face the world again. I'll be excited about my new niece, and making plans to go and meet her.

But for today, I have a nice big piece of work to do which is not difficult but requires total concentration, and I'm going to wash my face and bury myself in that piece of work. And if the phone rings, I'm going to ignore it, because just for today, I can't bring myself to be excited about yet another person getting what I want, at the same time as trying to come to terms with the fact that it looks more and more likely that I'm never going to have it.

Sometimes it's easier not to have any hope, because the higher the hopes, the greater the disappointment.