I feel like a prize chicken

So--for the past two weeks I've been taking a medication called Bravelle, which is supposed to improve the quality and quantity of my craptastic eggs.

By "taking" I mean injecting into my stomach. Each time I do this I have to erase from my mind the fact that the stuff is made from urine, or I'd never be able to push that plunger all the way in. (Urine... plunger... STOP.) *shakes it off*

The weirdest side effect is that my appetite has skyrocketed. I'm eating about twice as much as I normally eat and craving foods with lots of protein and fat. The other day I ate an entire block of tofu -- plain. (I'm like a vegan Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby.) And yes, I have gained weight. I'm trying to ignore this because it's only 5 lbs and I know it's temporary, but it does create a mild sense of panic because it's the result of The Appetite That Will Not Be Denied. I don't have this appetite, it has me. I'm just its host.

One of the many fertility websites I visit featured a thread called "What was your diet like during the cycle that you got pregnant?" In answer, about eight women all wrote the same thing: "It was my 6th IVF cycle, and I said to hell with low fat, and ate nothing but chicken and hamburger and cheese and eggs and nuts, and whaddya know, I produced 20 eggs and 10 of them fertilized and now I have triplets."

Stories like this, paired with my own experience craving the kind of foods that they pump into livestock to promote tissue growth, remind me that I am an animal, and my physicians aren't so much treating me as they are farming me.

Fortunately, tomorrow they'll induce ovulation and I can knock off the Bravelle and replace it in another week with Prometrium, which is debilitatingly constipating. Please excuse me if I don't post again until then; I plan to spend the next week pooping.