Medicinal Masturbation: The Man’s Role in IVF

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Rob Pollak

This is part two of a hopefully lifelong series about fatherhood. To read part one, Click Here

If you enjoy this, please support me by clicking through to the Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/01/medicinal-masturbation-the-mans-role-in-ivf-rob-pollak/

The IVF Process for Men:

The IVF process is horribly unbalanced.

The woman visits the hospital on an almost daily basis for monitoring and blood-testing, takes a slew of medications via injection (each with its own warning of side effects that eerily mirror PMS), and feels changes to her body that make it impossible to find the process anything other than all encompassing.

The male, on the other hand, is responsible for much much less.

In my case, I was responsible for parking the car near the hospital, guarding our coats in the waiting room, and making terribly unfunny and inappropriate jokes when I was allowed in the examination room. (An example: “You could have at least bought her a drink first.”)

Speaking of inappropriate things . . . That reminds me of the other task I had during the process. As a male donor, I had to visit the “Boom Boom Room.”

The Boom Boom Room

I visited the boom boom room (“BBR”) three times along the way. If you’re not familiar with the BBR, it’s a magical place where male patients “provide” a “sample” of “specimen” that a doctor “uses” “for” “IVF.”

In Japan, there are industries built around the BBR – even for the ladies. Although it sounds like the kind of place that one might want to visit every day, the room is actually equal parts terrifying and uncomfortable.

A typical visit to the BBR proceeds as follows:

First, you’re led to a waiting room where you and other patients desperately try to avoid eye contact.

Then, you wait for the nurse to ~~come~~ return to the waiting room and summon you to your stall.

The nurse then leads you to the room itself and explains the logistics of the room. For the most part, it looks like a regular hospital room.

It’s cold. There’s a sink and a generic painting of a tree. For the fetishists, there’s a blood pressure machine and a stethoscope hanging on the wall.

The primary differences between the BBR and a regular room are that:

the sterile hospital table has been replaced with a big brown barcalounger. It has a small sheet of paper that “protects” you from the nude man-ass that previously occupied the seat; and
there is a wide array of “recreational materials” around the room.

The office I visited included an assortment of sources to help stimulate the imagination. These included fine magazines such as Cherry, Barely Legal, and the aptly named, Juggs.

Or, for those with a more refined taste, a closed circuit television played a constant loop of three movies:

“The DaVinci Load,”
Spanish Asses (en espanol), and
Something that terrified me and is impossible to describe in either words or stick figures.

Once the nurse leaves, you try to figure out a way turn on the television without touching the remote or read the magazines without touching them.

If you can accomplish either of those tasks, then the anxiety kicks in and your mind fills with weird questions:

How long is too long to spend in the BBR?
Is the volume a little loud?
What does Chupas mis huevos mean?
Was the doctor serious when he said that if there were any problems that there’s a surgical procedure to remove the swimmers from the scrotum?
Isn’t scrotum a funny word?
Why can’t I have a room like this in my house?
Was there a DaVinci Load book? I bet it was better than the movie.
Did I lock the door?
What’s in the garbage can that says “do not put garbage here?”
If I finish now, is the nurse going to judge me?

Next thing you know, you’re all done, so you complete the survey the nurse left with you and place the cup of specimen into a secret panel in the wall (seriously). A magical fairy — (Please God let it be a magical fairy and not the andrologist who was sitting mere inches from me on the other side of the wall) — removes the sample, and then it’s out of your hands and up to science.

All that’s left to do is hope for a happy ending.

(Get it?? Happy ending?)

(Like the massage parlors)

(No, not the ABC sitcom)

——–

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Epididymis Isn’t a Greek Philosopher and Other Lessons I Wish I Learned in Health Class

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Rob Pollak

I learned a lot about life in 9th grade health class. I learned that condoms go on bananas, drugs are bad, and girls immediately get pregnant if you look at their boobs instead of their eyes.

Through a lot of trial and error — and one horribly embarrassing conversation in which I insisted that the Fallopian tube was part of a trombone — I now realize that health class didn’t teach me everything. Particularly when it comes to pregnancy. That’s because a wrestling coach who was coerced into teaching one semester of health may not have been the best person to teach me.

All of this is just a long winded way of saying that my wife Anne and I have spent the last few years trying to have a baby. It all started when we realized that there were times when kids could actually be cute. (Overalls, yes. Spit up, no. Sunglasses, yes. Afterbirth, no.).

And since the entirety of my knowledge of human biology came from that health class, I was surprised at how difficult it was to add a little one to the family. Believe me, after we pulled the proverbial goalie, we gave it a valiant effort:

As it turned out, you don’t get a baby just by watching clips of trains driving into tunnels, geysers erupting, or fireworks exploding in midair. The real process involves way more than that. For many people, it can take years, involves elaborate scheduling, and includes a monitor that measure ovulation on a 3 point scale. If you pee a 1, you watch reruns of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. If you pee a 3, well let’s just say that one time Anne peed a 3 while she was in Delaware and I was summoned across three state lines. It was perhaps the greatest moment of my life.

And for us, none of that seemed to work, so the process involved asking for medical help in the form of in vitro fertilization (IVF). As if pregnancy wasn’t already scary and overwhelming enough, the IVF process is complex and intimidating. When Anne first called to set up an informational meeting, the nurse walked her through the schedule of an entire IVF cycle, our child’s birthdate, the theme for his first birthday party, the song he’d dance to at his wedding, and the massive inheritance he would receive from the proceeds of my million dollar blog.

If you’re freaking out at the level of oversharing that’s happening in this post, don’t fret. My intention in writing this post is to remove the veil of secrecy that prevents people from talking about this process and to help others navigate it. Because, for me, it took a while to realize that the lesson from high school Health class — that pregnancy is easy — turns out to be wrong. Pregnancy and fertility are way more complex and terrifying than I had ever imagined.

Orientation and Background Testing

If you also didn’t pay attention in your high school biology or health classes, then you may be in for a surprise when you start the IVF process. Thankfully our experience began with orientation, which consisted of an extremely patient nurse walking us through an interminable powerpoint presentation.

After the orientation we were herded into the blood room. I call it that because it’s the room where women go to provide vial upon vial of blood to a staff of nurses who constantly ask for their birth dates. That first day, I watched a nurse remove 25 gallons of blood, one 2-ounce vial at a time, from Anne’s vulnerable little arm. The experience looked terrible, and I thanked my lucky stars that I didn’t have to participate.

A moment later, however, the nurse asked me if I was Jewish. She probably had racially profiled me based on my massive schnoz, superior intellect, and yamulke tan. I answered yes, but was unprepared for what happened next. She sat me down in the chair, alcohol’ed up my arm, and stabbed me in the vein with an olympic javelin sized needle.

Moments later, when I came to, a group of amorphous blurs in scrubs were shoving smelling salts in my face. My shirt was sopping wet with sweat, and I had achieved a level of paleness that bordered on translucent. Our IVF experience was off to a great start!

Because I had thoroughly embarrassed the family, I was pleased to find that, from that day forward, my only responsibility was to hold Anne’s coat. Anne, on the other hand, was the subject of constant examination. Most of which involved a small army of doctors sending the Hubble telescope into areas of Anne’s body that she would be uncomfortable having me mention on the internet.

Up next: Part 2 – Actually, there was one other thing I had to do… My trip to the Boom Boom Room (Follow my facebook page to receive an update when I post)

A Reflection on my 2012 Goals that I’m Retroactively Setting for Myself Right Now

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Rob Pollak

Around Thanksgiving of last year, I set out to write a blog post reviewing my accomplishments from 2011 and setting my goals for 2012. I never got around to it though, because just the thought of embarking on such a task sent me into a tailspin of creative blocks and self-loating that lasted for the rest of my life. Or at least until my mom sent me on a yogic retreat intended for women experiencing midlife crises.

But now that a year has passed, my creative blocks have disappeared, and my outlook on life has shifted from severe cynicism to just mildly severe cynicism, it seems like a perfect time to reflect on 2012 and retroactively set the goals that I might have imagined for myself a year ago. Then, I can reflect on how successful I was at achieving those goals.

Goal 1: Set attainable goals for myself and then periodically measure my progress.

Damnit! How can I fail at retroactive goals, you moron? All I have to do is list out all of my achievements for the year and pretend that they were my goals and then I’ll feel really great about myself. But nooooo, instead the first one I list is an utter failure. Damn you mildly severe cynicism!

Okay. Start over. Goal number two can be to use the rest of this blog post to imagine what 2011 me might have written on New Year’s Eve 2011 for present me to reflect upon in a hilarious blog post that present me would write while wearing jeans that he had not washed for the entirety of the year.

–A brief aside: Disregarding for a second that what I am about to say addresses a topic that most certainly has a correct answer, and that I am not sure whether I fall on the good side or bad side of that answer, or that I don’t care about which side I am, here’s something that’s bothering me:

I hate people that use the word “an” instead of the word “a” before a word that starts with H and has a hard H sound. That’s why I said “a hilarious” not “an hilarious.” I would also say “an hour” because I don’t say “an how-er,” I say “an ow-er.” Ow starts with a vowel. How doesn’t. Did I make this more confusing because hour and how both start with Hs? How would one spell the sound a hard H makes? Eight-ch? Speaking of eight-ch, who decided that g and h should go together? Ghod? Probably not, right? Any way, this whole thought process is giving me an headache. It’s a probably as ghood a time as any to return to the list of ~~failures~~ goals I set for 2012.

Goal 2: Run the New York City Marathon

In December of last year, I had hit the nadir of my running life.

Unless nadir means top, in which case I mean zenith. So in an effort to get back in the game and enjoy running again, I came up with an elaborate plan:

Step 1: I forced myself to run the NYC half marathon (check)

Step 2: I swore I would run my personal record time for that race (check)

Step 3: Right now, I amended step two to clarify the the word “record” could mean either the fastest or slowest time I’d ever run. Both would be records, right? (nailed it!) (suck it mildly severe cynicism!)

Step 4: While on the 45 minute walk home from the finish line, shivering from the cold, dehydrated, hating running and myself, thinking of nothing other than how I never wanted to ever run ever again in my life for any reason whatsoever, decide that I should definitely run the New York City marathon this year. (check)

Step 5: Cancel my entry for the marathon even though canceling does not benefit in me in any way. It is a courtesy to the New York Road Runners so that they can plan their race accordingly and order one less water.

Step 6: Have ING and NYRR cancel the marathon and allow all entrants to run the race in a future year! Except for those who canceled their entry as a courtesy to ING and NYRR.

So, I’m doubly screwed. Since even if I had spent the entire year training for the marathon my dreams would have been shattered, I am calling this one a win! Mission accomplished, MF’ers! I’m a marathoner!

runpic2

Goal 3: Visit the gym 120 times.

120 visits has been a steady goal of mine since 2008, when I first joined fancy pants Equinox on a whim. I remember it well because Anne and I had just moved to the Upper West Side, and we both agreed that me joining the fancier (but closer & eucalyptus towel sporting) gym would most likely turn out to be an enormous waste of money. But I was really lazy, so I disregarded our collective common sense and signed up for Equinox with the promise that I would make sure to visit 120 times for the year. An impossible goal to achieve, but one that would justify the cost.

Turns out that it worked! Maybe it was the eucalyptus towels, maybe it was the angle of the mirrors that made me appear slightly less pudgy than I really was, or maybe it was the layout of the locker room in the Connecticut gyms that ensures every other guy will walk nude for an extremely inappropriate distance before grabbing a towel. No one can be sure.

Whatever it was that got me 120 times in 2008 did not help me this year, when I only had 110 visits. Why even bother? I did some research on this, and for optimal results, you should be working out 2 hours a day. At least according to science:

Goal 4: Write a blog post that is published by an online media outlet that shares a name with an animal typically found in zoos:

Whoa! Nailed this one. Great job, 2012 Rob!:

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/12/9-things-i-learned-from-my-first-year-of-yoga-rob-pollak/

Readers, I’ll need your help to achieve a related goal in 2013. Even after a really great day, fewer people viewed my article than viewed an article titled, “Your ugly vagina is normal and gorgeous.” So if you want to make me more popular than an ugly vagina, then share my link! By the way, I’m not linking to the ugly VJJ article for obvious reasons. (the obvious reason being that you will click and then it will continue to rack up more views than my article).

Goal 5: Build up my blog a little bit and then lose all of my followers.

Wait, that doesn’t seem like something 2011 me would set out to do. Oh, ok 2012 Rob. Then why mention an article about ugly vaginas? You’re going to drive everyone away. Or will I? Google Analytics says that in 2012 the search term that most often directed people to my blog was “Jamaican Penis?” (This is the space where I am providing a link to the post about Jamaica so no one has to click on a link with the word penis [but if you like clicking on penises, then this is for you: 8======> ) (FYI if you’re reading this mom – that’s internet slang for a picture of a penis). So if you’ve found me through either of these search terms, Welcome! Bienvenue! Bonvenon! G’Day! And if that offended you, I’m sorry to see you go. But at least I won’t have to draw any more thank you pictures. See ya suckers.

Goal 6: Eat 200 pints of ice cream.

Finally! I totally nailed this one. And not only did I accomplish it, I completed the whole thing by February.