The Gambler

Kenny Rogers is right: you gotta know when to hold'em, know when to fold'em. And we for now, are holding'em -- on two fronts.

One: my ultrasound on Monday morning showed at least six follicles now that were growing nicely. Our doctor needed no convincing that we should move forward with the cycle! But they still were in the 11-13mm range, not mature-egg size -- about 18mm -- so we decided on an additional round of hormone injections that night and another check-up on Tuesday, to decide one last thing: whether we would aspirate (i.e. harvest) the eggs on Thursday, fertilize them, and replace them on Friday... or make it a Friday-Saturday procedure.

My choir concert is Saturday night. If it was a Saturday surgery, there's no way I'd be able to sing. And we're not a large group.

So, we spent another day/night coaxing these little guys to grow. When we do the injections, I say "gambare gambare!" (Japanese for "go! go! you can do it!"), and Mark says "j'a yoh, j'a yoh!" (Mandarin for "go! go! step on it!", or literally, "throw oil on it!" which inevitably reminds me of a flaming, juicy wok).

Apparently it all worked, because Tuesday morning a bunch of the follicles were between 16-21 mm -- and I think we were up to seven possibilities (I lost count in the excitement). So we are a definite go for Thursday-Friday!

I had one last mini-round of hormones last night, and one big injection of HCG, a hormone that will trigger the release of my eggs in 36 hours -- the time of the aspiration, at 8am. Today I start taking antibiotics to prepare for the back-to-back procedures. Barring any catastrophes, I should even be able to sing by Saturday night! Hurrah!

MEANWHILE... two: the store is coming along nicely: each day we seem to be just a little bit busier, which is just the way we want it. In time, we want to be at least two times as busy/profitable as we were, say, on Sunday -- but the only publicity we've done so far has been word-of-mouth, so more extensive campaining and ad placements (if any) and reach-outs should get us there no problem. Especially if the people who come keep coming back. Which, so far, they all are!

BTW, we were "yelped" already -- yelp.com is a VERY popular, peer-review, Citysearch-type search engine -- check it out here.

Must get on a conf call now with New York for my day job. More later!