Tricks of the Trade

My friend (who has three IVF babies) called me the other day to check on me, and then to tell quite strongly the things I need to do this week.

Make chicken soup. My way of making chicken soup is chicken stock (from a box from the store) with veggies in a crock pot. The chicken is an already cooked rotisserie also from the store. She told me how wrong I was. "No, Ellie....you need a raw chicken, you need to make your own broth. You need the bone marrow to seep into the broth."

Three-pound raw chicken, check.

Drink molasses with hot water. "And not just regular molasses, Ellie. You need to get blackstrap molasses." It's not as bad as it sounds. It actually tasted like what I think coffee tastes like (I'm not a coffee drinker.) I added milk and I got it down without gagging.

Drink molasses, check.

Full-fat yogurt. That one I knew. That one makes sense. But in this day of health-conscious, fat-free or low-fat this, sugar-free that, do you know how hard it is to find yogurt made with whole milk? I ended up buying YoBaby yogurt.

Yogurt, check.

The chicken is in the crock pot. I drank my molasses and had a yogurt for breakfast. I'm continuing all my meds this week, including the inter-muscular shot, which has gotten much easier, despite the bruises and tenderness all over my backside.

I've decided not to tell anyone when my blood test is. I feel like too many people knew. Too many people were anxious about the results, which in turn made me anxious. My friend Jill, who drove me to Syracuse last week, is the only one who knows the date because she was there when the nurse gave me the lab slip.

So I'll continue on this path -- chicken soup, molasses, yogurt, shots, pills, suppositories -- until my blood test.