I have always relied on the kindness of strangers

Four hours of aggressive phone war, one ride in a car with a stranger, and 3 mini-wholewheat pancakes and I am feeling much better.

I notified the following people of my news this morning:
a. JD
b. the internets
c. My travel insurance. With a desperate plea to help me find a doctor who could do a BETA or an u/s here.
d. A colleague.

Little snippets of the phone war should suffice. Basically, this country has socialized health care. Great if you're in the system, awful if you're not. They simply would. not. see. me. 3 big research hospitals declined to even let me do bloodwork there with my American RE reading the results.

"The IVF 'apartment is only open from 2 to 4 pm."
"If you started this is in America, than it is their problem."
"We have an excellent dentist and 2 funeral homes on record in X, but no hospitals."
"Germany is not that far away."
"Consider checking into a very expensive hotel to see if the doctor on call can give you a referral."
"In a pinch, you can go to London."

And me, plaintively: "But I took drugs. I can't wait till mid-May to know what's going on." And I have to admit a little bit of my fear is irrational: the pee-stick showed 2 double lines immediately this morning. Less than 5 seconds. I'm worried my hcg might already be getting high. Research indicates this is probably irrational, but it still makes me nervous.

So at 9:05 am I called my colleague here. Let me explain: I met this woman in November when I was the respondent for her paper at a conference. That's right, I was the one making nasty comments like 'Well, seems like you should consider the following' and 'More research needed here.' I have seen her face to face about 6 times since then. Once being this past Sunday when I invited myself over to her place for dinner, she graciously accepted, and we spent the afternoon at the playground with her kids and then she had to cook me a special dinner of poached eggs since I clearly couldn't eat what the rest of the family was having. To put it concisely, she is incredibly nice.

And as soon as I could be sure that her kids were at daycare, I called to ask for help. She congratulated me, said she'd make some calls, and left it at that. I received an e-mail about 2 hours later with the name of a highly-recommended hospital that had agreed to see me. And the last line of the e-mail was the times that she was free to come with me should I want a friend and native speaker along.

The hospital does not do Betas, and the doctor said they aren't that helpful for gauging multiples anyway. So I am schedule for an u/s for April 21st at 5 pm. That seems incredibly, incredibly soon. At most 21dpo. But she thought they could probably count egg sacs by then. And this infertile woman thought, well, worst comes to worst I just get another u/s. Please let me know if you've had any experience with an u/s that early.

Oh, the hitchhiking part. I found a kosher butcher and asked the woman in line in front of me if there are any stores with more pesach food around. She said not in that part of town, but offered me a ride across the city. Which I graciously accepted. I didn't catch her name until a good half hour and 8 or so neighborhoods later.

So that's what's going on. I will clearly test again Sunday (I bought another stick) and I will get an u/s on April 21st. JD is supposed to call my RE and ask the basics like: stop metformin? (I know, there is one very small study that it reduces m/c risk, but that's it. He's generally opposed to it during pg) vitamins? calcium? carbs? exercise?

Final dilemma, what do I tell my parents when they call this weekend? I was hoping to go with a Don't ask, don't tell policy but I'm worried my mother will ask how I'm feeling and whether I'm back on bcp. I've been looking at a lot of blogs where people waited to tell their parents until the end of the 1st trimester. I clearly can't do that: my parents have been very involved with our IF treatments and they are going to notice if we don't start up again immediately. And I guess that I would tell them eventually if anything went wrong, it's just nice now that nobody here has any idea what's going on. I mean, not even my apartment-mate, which is great. And I would kind-of like to not talk about it too much, at least until the 21st. But of course if anything is wrong then and I have to fly back to the U.S. I would need their help paying for it in the short-term, and then it would be awful not to have given them some warning. Sorry, just rambling.

I will admit that I tested this morning with the intention of keeping the result a secret from JD until my official test day of Sunday. I thought it would be a nice little secret for me if it was positive and no harm lost if it wasn't. But I was so shaky and puzzled by the result and desperately wanting to talk to someone that I called him immediately. Poor JD, notified while at a bar, over a bad skype connection of 2 lines.

And he responded beautifully. At noon today these roses were delivered to my apartment. Of course, he couldn't sure that they would be lost on Wednesday morning in transit and not arrive until Friday, but it all worked out for the best. I am going to go nap on the couch by my roses, having clearly decided to take the entire day off to recuperate.