11/14/2016 0 Comments 20th Time is the Charm?I’m literally not sure what to write tonight. I’ve been putting it off all weekend. I’ve had so many people asking me for updates. I’m truly humbled by how many people are interested in my uterus – especially those who aren’t making a profit. This week I hit over 10,000 view on my blog. Never did I imagine that would happen. Thank you guys who reached out to ask me how things are going. I don’t think I could keep this blog up if there weren’t so many of you checking in! We had our appointment on Saturday. Somehow although we were one of the first appointments the doctor we were supposed to see was backed up so we got the crappy doctor. He is seriously a hateful man that needs to retire. He was so negative. I even truly question if he put us on the regimen that the other doctor would’ve done. He even smiled as he said, “we need to realize the end game is IVF.” Those are the most crushing words one could ever hear. He didn’t even seem to want us to try an IUI this month. He told us that since we had an ectopic pregnancy we now have a 15% chance of having another one even though my other tube is supposedly fine. The other doctor never mentioned that. In fact, he was extremely optimistic about our chances of having a normal pregnancy because of the ectopic. I hate all the second opinions. I truly only want a second opinion if the first opinion doesn’t match my expectations. I say that somewhat tongue in check. But really, at this point, ignorance is bliss. I wish they would just confidently tell me what I want to hear so that one of us is optimistic.
To kill time waiting for the day to pass for our appointment, I did some research on the different types of injectable medications. I discovered there is one type of injectable called a HMG (Human Menopausal Gonadotropin). It is actually made out of the urine of post-menopausal Italian nuns. At $2,500 a pop who wouldn’t want to try that?! This discovery made me realize I have absolutely no idea what medication is made out of and I never bother to read about how it works. So after reading and re-reading a few articles I discovered it somehow tricks your pituitary gland into making more hormones and somehow that makes it more likely for you to get pregnant. It’s truly fascinating that someone figured all this stuff out. So, at our appointment we were given prescriptions for Letrozole again. This time I’m taking 5mg instead of 2.5mg. We are also doing cycle days 3-7 instead of 5-9. On cycle day 9 I’ll take a shot of Gonal F which is unfortunately not made from the urine of lovely Italian ladies. This involves mixing the medication. So, Matt got to practice mixing the medication and injecting it into the lid of a cardboard box. Something tells me the box was a better subject than I’ll be. So, side effects: headache, nausea, vomiting, stomach/abdominal pain, runny/stuff nose, sore throat, bloating, acne, and the worst side effect: poverty. This shot is $318 per shot! I almost fell over. Although that is substantially cheaper than the holy urine. On cycle day 11 we go in for monitoring to see how many follicles we have and where they are. If things look good we will do our HCG trigger shot and come back in a couple days for the IUI. Then, we wait. (Just want to do a shout out to Costco pharmacy. The Letrozole would have been $150 at this dosage at Wal-Mart, but it was $7.00 at Costco!) Today I got a call from the pharmacy (our clinic uses Mandell’s out of New Jersey) to secure shipping and payment. They automatically apply a coupon and the cost was “only” $159 instead of $318! That was some pretty great news. The two times we’ve had injections shipped from them has been an overly positive experience. They are really very, very nice people. Tonight on the way home I heard “I Got My Mind Set On You.” I haven’t heard this song in such a long time. George Harrison is always good for a picker upper. I never realized just how applicable that song is to infertility. This song will definitely be my new anthem when I’m feeling down. So until then, we will be sitting, waiting, wishing (is this how Jack Johnson came up with that song?) to see what comes next. I’ve never needed something to work as badly as I do now. For the closing quote tonight, you should really read it in a Linus voice and end the quote with “Charlie Brown.” “And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” —Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
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Heather Joyce
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