October 3, 2003 Harrisburg PA

Peggy woke in the recovery room. She lifted the sheets. Her belly had an object sticking out of it. Two ace bandages encircled her body, one above the object and one below it. She remembered. That is what they planned to do. Dr. Butler was there telling her things had gone fine. The next day she was given her corset, as she would call it and her padding which looked bigger than she remembered. On the third day she donned a maternity outfit and was ready to leave when Joan came in.

“You’re a little premature in getting ready to leave. We still have to show you how to examine your ovaries.” Joan had been busy and had not shown Peggy the control box. “Lay on your back on the bed, lift the padding and plug this into the top of the unit.” She handed Peggy the control unit and its cord.

Peggy did as she was told.

“Now flip this switch on and watch the screen.” She did and on a five inch color TV screen she saw a picture. There were three joysticks on the box. “This one moves the end of a fiber optic probe left – right, up – down, in – out, this zooms in and out, focuses left and right and the third changes the lighting. A light goes on inside you at the end of the fiber when the switch is turned on. There’s a pipette on the end too. We activate it to harvest the ova. That way we don’t have to open you at all. We pull them out with a suction hose here. The battery has about two hours of operation without the charger. There is a place to plug in a cord to the PC here and the battery charger is in the case. It plugs in here. Now move the camera. That’s it, up a little, left, more left, there’s your left ovary. You’ll feel the probe as it moves. OK, move right, more, more, there is the right one.” Joan described how the ovary would change when the eggs were ready. “There are sample pictures in the case. If in doubt, see this doctor in Washington. I’ve talked to him about possibly seeing you if needed. I have some other news too.”

“All bad, I bet. My opponent is killing me in the polls by over ten points, I can’t get pregnant, everyone questions my integrity, I feel bitchy and my belly still hurts. What else is going wrong?”