More on Knoxville

Now that I have some time and I'm not incredibly exhausted, I'll post some more details about our trip.  I think my body went into shut down mode all weekend because my arms felt like there were 50lb weights attached to them for both days.  I'm sure driving 24 hours in two days, going to an appointment that we've waited on for almost a year (it was also kind of a physically rough appointment)going on a field trip with about 40 eight year olds, going to Jay's FFA banquet, picking out lights for our chuch project, and grocery shopping might've had a *little* bit to do with that exhausted feeling.

We got to Knoxville about 6:30 pm Wednesday night.  We really didn't know what we wanted to do so we went in search of the University of Tennessee.  I'm not sure, but Jay may be changing his goals from visiting all 50 states to visiting all the football stadiums in the SEC?  You know me and football - I asked if they were also in the SEC.  Jay looked shocked and told me not to say that too loud while we were in Tennesse.  I thought I should get some points for at least using the term SEC correctly, but I guess not.




Here is a picture of the stadium that holds 30,000 more than the Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.  That's just a little bit more than the size of my bladder (more on that later).



Here is a picture of one of the buildings.  It was a pretty campus, but I was amazed at this building.  I don't know..it looks kind of yucky to me.  And I thought my freshmen dorm wasn't that great...

After our tour we ate BBQ for Jay's birthday.  It was supposed to be a local favorite, which we weren't too impressed with.  EVERY time Jay and I go outside our normal chain restaurants we are disappointed.  I always dream of finding that local "spot" and it never works.  At least we know where not to go next time.

The next morning was our appointment.  I was supposed to drink 40-60 oz of water before so my bladder would be nice and full.  I know my body and I knew that much water would more than do the job, but I was afraid not to drink it.  I didn't want to mess up any tests they needed to run.  By the time we got to the testing part my bladder was more than full.  It was ready to pop.  I couldn't even lay down on the table.  It was so full I had to empty some of it.  I think we were the only patients in the clinic, but I couldn't swear to it.  I do know there was some tech guy running around so I don't know what he heard or saw that day, but he my be scarred.  I didn't have a bathroom in the exam room so I had to wrap one of those thin paper blanket things around me and run to the bathroom.  I'm sure if the tech guy was around he might have saw more than he bargained for that day, but I didn't care.  Making it to the bathroom was all I could think about.  Once I emptied some of it and got back to the room we had to wait a little longer on the doctor so my bladder filled up again.  When the doctor started again on the mock transfer he saw that my bladder was again too full.  Back to the bathroom I went, covered only in the drop cloth.  Finally we were able to do the mock transfer.  As soon as he was done I got to go to the bathroom and completely empty my bladder.  It was great.  By the time we started on the next ultrasound they could tell my bladder was already filling up again.  I lost count of how many times I ran to the bathroom with my paper wrap.  Finally I said "I don't think I'll need to drink that much next time".  Both the doctor and nurse agreed that half that much would be more than sufficient.

Besides the overly full bladder everything else went well with the tests.  It wasn't the most comfortable thing I've ever been through but it wasn't awful.  The doctor did tell me that the transfer wouldn't be as bad as the appointment so that's at least something to look forward to.  The doctor said that he saw nothing that would keep us from having as good of a chance of anyone else of this working.  Weirdly enough they had a cancellation in July so we are down for then.  If this one doesn't take we will have another shot in September before our homestudy and blood tests have to be updated. 

For those of you wondering...here are some % we got that day... I think these are pretty accurate, but I did have to pee really bad while the doctor was telling us this so...

Chance of this being successful - 45%, which means in 3 tries we should have 135% chance of this working.  We aren't getting too excitied about this because with our IUI's we had 99% total chance.  You see how those turned out.

Chance of Twins - 25%
Chance of Triplets - 10%
Again those statistics don't concern us.  We've not had the best luck with one sticking so again we don't see any reason to get to ourselves in a bunch.  We'll just have to see what happens.

I don't know if we are excited about this or not.  I want to be, it's just hard with all of the disappointments we've had.  It's so hard to get past the point of thinking this is just another thing that won't work so don't get too excited.  I don't know...if I just had a crystal ball and could see in the future it would make things so much easier.