Afraid of...I'm Not Sure What

So I chickened out. After waiting for day 3, waiting at CVS at 10:30 at night on a day when I'd been at work til 9, and after Yahoo-ing "Clomid side effects" for three hours, I chickened out and didn't take the Clomid.

I don't know what happened to me - whether it was part of this infertility insanity or what, but all of a sudden at midnight on Tuesday, I panicked. I made my husband hook up the DVD player in our bedroom (it's been sitting there unused since we moved in August) and dug out the "Understanding Infertility" DVD that I'd been given at the Domar Center in hopes that it would answer my questions about Clomid.

I know practically everyone takes it - and everyone undergoing infertility treatment certainly does - and my friend CC swears that half her friends use it as birth control (i.e. they don't take it unless they want to get pregnant). And my doctor never mentioned side effects or dangers, and no one else really has either (other than the people I know who are on it, who have told me plenty about hot flashes, night sweats, headaches, mood swings that are straight out of the Exorcist). But on the internet, little words here an there stuck in my mind.

"Effects on children conceived using Clomid: unknown."
"Changes in cervical mucus may be permanent and woman may not be able to conceive without IUI or other assisted reproductive technologies."
"Ovarian cancer..."

Plus, it was literally the worst week of the year for me for workload, and I just couldn't face getting up in front of three back-to-back two-hour classes full of grumpy law school students (grades were posted on what would have been Day 4 of my Clomid round - the day that side effects tend to be at their worst, apparently) while having nasty hot flashes and a headache and nausea and blurred vision (that's right, I'm an optimist) after a sleepless night (in addition to having to grade papers all night I fully expected to be in a bath of ice cubes, like Cheryl-Lynn from South Carolina who posted her story on an internet site - her husband Dan had to put her in an ice bath on her third night on Clomid because she was so hot she couldn't stop throwing up).

So I chickened out.

My husband was great about it - he watched the video with me (which said not a thing about Clomid side effects) and told me it was my body, and what was one more month, and I should find out as much as I could about it and then make my decision.

All that being said, I feel a little silly. Everyone else pops the pills like they were Skittles, and seems to think nothing of it. I guess it's the lawyer/professor/researcher in me - I have a hard time making any big decision before I know every last detail.

I'm going to call my doctor, and when I have answers to my questions, I'll share them here. Until then, it's sushi-city, and I'll be cracking a beer at the Patriots playoff game tonight, without worrying that anything other than the Jaguar's running game might make me sweat.

- L