Is "IN" out?

Between negotiating the purchase of our new house, packing to leave our old house, the beginning of my donor egg cycle, and work life has just consumed me and my blogging has suffered. I promise, I'll try to be better!!

Yes, I have officially started our donor egg cycle!! I started on birth control a couple of weeks ago (used to suppress your ovaries so you start fresh and, in the case of a donor cycle, used to sync the donor and recipient's cycles) and started my lupron last night. Our donor will begin stimming on 3/16 and her tentative retrieval is between 3/25-28!

All of my drugs for all of my cycles have been obtained through a speciality infertility pharmacy. For those of you who don't know, you generally don't walk into your local Walgreens to get these specialized drugs. Local pharmacies don't stock them as the volume and, in some cases, short shelf life, doesn't justify having them.

But, birth control pills, those are available at your local pharmacy. So, a couple of weeks ago, Clinic A called the prescription in to my pharmacy, and I went to pick them up.

Many people take BCP before an IVF cycle but, other than this time, I only did for my first IVF a million years ago. So, when I walked into the pharmacy, the pharmacist/customer service person inquired as to why I took BCP for one month in 2006 and had a short-life prescription again now. I explained that I take it as part of my infertility treatment plan. She cocked her head to one side, looked at me thoughtfully, and said "I prefer the term 'fertility problems'. It just sounds....I don't know....like less of a disease than 'infertility' sounds".

After quickly convincing myself that jumping over the counter and stuffing pill bottles down her throat wouldn't be the best way to handle this situation, I calmly explained that I AM infertile and, yes, the word is appropriate because infertility is a disease. Now give me my damn birth control pills!

But, it got me thinking. In some ways, the words fertility and infertility are almost synonymous. We use them interchangeably. We call ourselves INfertile, but, we go to Fertility clinics. We google INfertility, but come up with articles and books on increasing and improving our Fertility. We don't take INfertility drugs. We take Fertility drugs. Why? Fertile people don't take them - only we INfertiles.

If INfertility is the inability to have a baby, and, through treatments at the Fertility clinic we successfully have a child, are we no longer INfertile? Since I still hope to have a baby, albeit through the use of donor eggs, is it more appropriate to say I have Fertility problems? Would INfertility only be appropriate after all baby-making attempts have failed?

I'm sure you all know that my answer to these questions is HELL NO! I think a better definition of INfertility is that it is a category of diseases that prevent the sufferer from conceiving or, in some cases, carrying a pregnancy to term, without medical assistance. But, it is, most assuredly, a disease, and a horrible one that doesn't get the attention it deserves, unless it's negative attention.

I don't know why the terms INfertility and Fertility are sometimes used interchangeably, but, it doesn't really matter. We know what we're talking about. My answer to that pharmacist should have been "I am INfertile! I don't have Fertility problems. I have no problems at all with fertility! Apparently, though, it has a problem with me!!"

But, all I was thinking at that moment was that I had to go home and take my birth control pill. Gotta prevent those unwanted pregnancies, you know.....now, THAT would be a Fertility problem!