Hardisk Crashed!

My treatment is currently put on hold during this holy month of Ramadhan.. I guess it's a good thing to take time off and relax from all those needles, ultrasounds and poking (really really not a fun experience I tell you). 

Last weekend my husband and I went to Low Yat Plaza to buy IT stuff because we wanted to get good bargains during the PC Fair event. We went there with the intention to buy a printer (the one that can be modified to cater external ink tank), external hardisk casing (my old casing got busted because I dropped in once too many times!), external hardisk for each of us (they are getting cheaper by the month!), bluetooth mouse for my netbook, a cable replacement for our GPS, and a set of speakers (my husband added this item on our shopping list at the last minute!).

So, on a fine Saturday afternoon, we drove there and trotted up and down the aisles of shops to find the most best bargain we could. It was tiring and my feet were killing me. We didn't bring a lot of cash but armed ourselves with plastic cards. The problem with Low Yat retailers is that they do not want to bear the cost of government tax for credit card accessibility and imposed that tax to the customers. That is SO unfair! They have this attitude of 'you don't want to pay? Some other people will come and buy'. This is because throngs of IT-starved people like us do go there and succumb to the greedy merchandiser there just because there's no other place to go for IT parts and merchandise. So, note to all: brings lots of cash when shopping for IT stuff at Low Yat Plaza.

Ok, moving on.. So we went there and bought all the stuff on our list plus a couple of other things as well (impulse buying is not good - but I call it shopping therapy.. hehe!). We brought home along with  the other stuff a cigarette port extension (for the car), a USB port replicator and a very cute portable speaker (for me!).

I had quite a tough time finding a replacement casing for my IDE hardisk because it seems that they are not produced anymore since all the external hardisk sold now is SATA. The salesman that sold me the casing told me this fact. He also has an IDE hardisk and he's praying that his casing won't break or malfunction because it's hard to get a replacement. Even though the casing wasn't at all nice-looking, I had to make to with it. 

Back at home I tried plugging in the newly-cased old hardisk of mine into my laptop and it worked fine. It suddenly struck me that I need to make a backup just in case anything happens to it. So when I unplug the hardisk, and plug it into another laptop, it wasn't recognizable! Suddenly the computer is asking for me to format the hardisk! What?!! Oh no! Backup intuition came too late! I panicked BIG TIME! So i unplug it and tried plugging in into the other computer and the outcome is still the same. I thought it was because of the casing so I changed the hardisk back into the old casing with high hopes that it would all be all right. I was dead wrong! The hardisk was still unreadable.

I called my IT-whiz brother and told him about my predicament. He broke the bad news to me that my hardisk had crashed. It is now officially DEAD. Waaaaa!! All my life is in that hardisk! So now I am on a quest to try to recover all my data from the crashed and burned hardisk. Hope I can find a solution with freewares one of these days.. huhu..

Waiting Out..

I called the LPPKN today to set up my appointment. As usual patients have to call after 2.30 pm on the first day of their menses. The line is usually congested at this hour but sometimes your luck kicks in and you'd get through the busy line. Today my lady luck kinda laid back so I had to call a few times to get to my designated doctor's office to book an appointment.

The nurse that picked up my call sounded unfamiliar and she even asked out-of-routine questions. Usually the questions are 'what's your registration number?', 'when did your menses start?' and then you'd get a date for your appointment. This time around since the questions were getting a little bit weird, I sensed that I wouldn't get any dates at all for this cycle. And I was right!

The nurse told me since Ramadhan is around the corner (about three more weeks to be exact!), they are not taking Muslims appointments until after Raya. Meaning I'd have to wait out two whole cycles this time. I wasn't that disappointed since I have figured out that something like this would definitely happen to me (yeah, I kind of have the most rotten luck in the world.. bummer). But I did some quick count of the days to start a treatment cycle starting tomorrow and it actually could be done. If I were to meet the doctor tomorrow morning, I'd get three sets of hormone injections for 31st of July, 2nd and 4th of August. Then I'd have to see the doctor on the 6th for an ultrasound scan, give myself a Pregnyl injection on the 7th and undergo IUI procedure on the 9th. See? Ample time for a cycle treatment. But it depends on how big my eggs grow since my doctor is a perfectionist and he wants the eggs to be a certain size and no less for him to agree to do a procedure. Very very frustrating!

So, since I am told to wait out two whole months (four if you counted the two last abandoned cycles), that's just what I have to do I guess. Let's just take a break..

Bills! Bills! Bills!

Tomorrow is pay day. Whoopee! I am sitting alone at home counting my pennies before I can even spend them. Yup! Pennies! Every month is the same routine for me. I get my paycheck, then pay off as many bills off as I can with my meager income and then stretch as much as I can with the balance until the next pay day comes. It's not much but it's my life. My hospital bills are actually the culprit to adding up my monthly bills because every visit to the doctor's office costs more than RM100. And that's a cheap visit mind you! Oh well..

This month there's not much LPPKN activity for me. It has been almost two weeks after my last visit to the doctor's office and the abandonment of my last treatment cycle. We just let things go natural this cycle but so far there's no indication or early pregnancy symptoms whatsoever. My mood has been going up and down like a roller coaster and I find everything uninteresting. I know that this is also a sign of depression but I just can't help it. I guess I need a looong holiday to flush out all these bad vibes that's pulling me down.

God please please make me a billionaire.. (one can wish can't they?) ;)

And here we go again..

After the last visit to the doctor's office I was given a change of hormonal medicine. The three shots of Menopur was not as bad as I had anticipated. I googled some information on the web and found a video on Youtube giving tips on how to do a Menopur injection without getting the burning feeling too much. In the video the lady mentioned that after the medicine had been mixed, we should let it sit for about 5 minutes in the syringe to make sure that it won't burn too much when going in. Oh, and she did say that the area that the patch of skin we swabbed with the alcohol swab should be dried first because injecting on a wet area would contribute to the burning feeling of the injection. I did all that and the result was bearable injection sessions (not as bad as before). I like the effect.. Maybe next time I can even build up the courage to do the injection myself.

As scheduled, we went to the doctor's office for an ultrasound scan. The result was not as what the doctor had hoped for because the size of the ovums are not as he expected. He expected the eggs to be at least 14mm by now but unfortunately they are only 11mm. He pondered for a while and finally he decided to abandon this cycle and wait for my next menses to start a new cycle (as I had expected, of course, since that's all what I had been hearing from  him through almost every treatment cycle). I do feel disappointed to abandon this cycle none the less.. I couldn't help but wonder did I let the medicine sit too long in the syringe that the eggs' growth was stunted? Or maybe the fact that I am under high pressure lately and had been feeling tense and depression is a contributing factor too? Or maybe the medicine just did not work for me..

I am getting a little bit discouraged about the whole treatment process. It is taking too long and is sapping my energy along the way. I've even thought of abandoning the whole idea of TTC since baby dust is not getting to me at all.. Well.. whatever comes to mind I do still have to wait out this cycle and start a fourth cycle next month.. The waiting game is starting all over again.. *sigh*