Long story, and yes, I'm short

There's me, three days before the end of my early-mid thirties. There's Otra, what my partner of a number of years is calling herself on this blog, and there's the reproductive endocrinologist. There's also a cat with a very smelly butt on my desk right now, but he's not in this part of the story since this was about two weeks ago. We're at the reproductive endocrinologist's because several people have told me that as a lesbian with PCOS, we should just start there. Fine. Scary, but fine.

We go over everything with the RE, us nodding earnestly in thanks-to-Google understanding. We will wait two more weeks, which will be tomorrow, to see if I've gotten my period. If not we induce it via Prometrium. However it arrives, we still want to improve my chances of ovulation with Metformin. Probably in January we'll do an HSG to make sure my tubes are ready to go. And then, in February, when we're ready to get started with insemination, we'll jump right into Clomid. This is the royal 'we,' although Otra is a true sport and partner through the whole thing. If she wore a holster it'd be for a speculum rather than a gun. John Wayne, get out of the way.

Over the sonogram the doc notes that my left ovary looks ready to go, it being somewhere in the middle of my impossible to predict cycle. She suggests that I come back in for a blood test after ovulation has potentially occurred to see if it did occur. Mid-last week I note that my cervical mucus is unusually watery. I suspect ovulation. I call up the Physician Assitant and arrange to come in. I wake up absurdly early on the 26th, I drive thirty minutes, I get a vial of blood drawn, I drive home, I nap (why did I go in so early?), Otra and I load up the car, we leave town for two and a half days on a mini-vacation where they have no cell phone reception. At least not for my still-obsessively-checked Blackberry. (Thank whomever for small favors--there is no such thing as a vacation where the Blackberry gets reception).

We're on the drive home, just entering back into civilization. Otra isn't feeling so great. We stop at the first place we see, which is conveniently a Target. I check my messages. It's the PA. I've ovulated. I have ovulated. I did it. All on my own.

The last time I took Prometrium was about 12 or 13 yrs ago. I was at my first job after college. I had to wear suits (I don't do that any more. Jeans now.) I had my first ever health insurance and my first gynecologist that I had picked out. He diagnosed me with PCOS, told me I was infertile, told me PCOS means I don't ovulate, and put me on Prometrium to clean out my uteran lining, something no other gynecologist since has seemed to think was a wise idea to just do for no other reason than to, I don't know, get it all clean an' junk. Anyway, all I remember of the Prometrium are the cramps and being stuck in the bathroom at the office in a suit I felt awful in since if I took more than ten steps the next quart of blood rushed out.

So here are the questions. Was that doc 12 years ago totally off-base about my incapacity to ovulate or have I been ovulating and worrying over nothing this whole time? Is my period really about to come because my cycle isn't THAT irregular and uncontrollable or is it my body just jumping into action because it's scared to death of the Prometrium threat? And then finally, how awful is an HSG? It sounds like hell.