JULY 6th, 2007

FRIDAY July 6th, 2007

Diminishing Returns

As Hardy likes to remind me, and Dr. Naj liked to remind us both, this is a game of diminishing returns. In other words, we are down to one egg. Today, my E2 sank instead of rose, and that indicated that we were probably losing the other eggs. After an early morning E2, and a scan, my left ovary (remember my right is a complete no-show), had one well-rounded (literally) egg, that was almost the size it needed to be. The two other follicles were smaller and still oddly shaped, so they are most likely not candidates, although they probably will be extracted and fertilized on the off-chance that something happens with them. My extraction will be early on Monday morning and is supposed to take about 20 minutes.
And, at long last, we were able to pay the hospital the money for the surrogate, and the head-hunter, or in the literature “the woman who finds the surrogate.”
We had brought Travellers Checks for the purpose of paying for our Hospital charges, as getting a lot of money out via credit card is difficult. All our other expenses could be paid for by taking money out of the numerous ATMs-but not large sums. The day before yesterday we made a trip down to the American Express office in Fort, but after waiting for the teller to return from lunch, we were informed you are not allowed to exchange more than $2000 per passport per month, and besides which, he didn’t have that kind of money available and to come back tomorrow. When we did come back tomorrow, it was first to Thomas Cook, whose offices are spacious (and air-conditioned) where they helped us right away, and then to AmEx, to change the rest of our money, before anyone was the wiser. So although we know Regal Square well, we have managed to do almost no sight seeing.
So today, after exchanging the last of our Travellers Checks (at the HSBC right around the corner) we went off to see the Haji Ali Mosque. This Mosque is located on an “island” in the bay, and you have to take a walkway that they say is occasionally covered by a high tide. The story goes that the Prophet Haji Ali went off to fight a Holy War (against who I wonder?), and was killed in battle, but his coffin miraculously floated back to this point in Bombay. So, they built a Mosque here, that I think even (or maybe especially) Haji Ali would find somewhat dilapidated. While there I had my first encounter with urchins- of the child variety- who initially ripped a 20 Rupee piece from my hand and ran away, but later ended up giving me several one rupee pieces which I think they figured I wouldn’t take, and walking back with us all the way back down the walkway- to the Coke vendor, where, even though they were very charming, we did not buy them a Coke.