3/7/2017 0 Comments And then there was oneI'm not even sure how to start this post. I'm tired. I look like a junkie. I just keep getting bad news.
We went back Sunday for a follicle scan. The follicle on my left ovary grew a pretty good amount. One follicle shrank on my right side and the other one only grew one or two millimeters. They're supposed to grow 2 mm a day. It was pretty devastating news. I just held on to the hope that it would be like last time and it would just take some extra time. So this morning we went back for another scan. I saw the ultrasound and realized I only saw one follicle on the right side. It was nice and big. It was 18mm which is where they want it for the trigger shot. Where was the other follicle?! Gone...mostly. it was 5 mm. I had NO idea your follicles could shrink and go away. In my mind, that egg was already a baby. We were going to make it this month and have at least one more for another baby. But no. They checked the left side. It was only 15mm. Most likely, it will not be big enough to retrieve. So here we are, back where we were last time with one good egg. I thought for sure we would have at least two good eggs and I was really banking on that third one. On top of all this, the letrozole thinned my lining too much. We likely won't be able to do a fresh transfer because my endometrial lining is too thin for the embryo to attach. So if this follicle has an egg and if it fertilized and divides as its supposed to and if we get to freeze and if it survives thawing we can transfer but it will be over 2 months away. If we get that far and it doesn't work that means it will be months before we even get to start talking about donor eggs. So many ifs. If we had gotten pregnant the first month we tried (as it seems everyone else does), we would have a 15 month old baby. I can't stop thinking how different my life would be if I had a 15 month old baby. I have missed out on 24 months of the experience of being a mother. I know there are women who try for 10 years or even more before they get their baby. But I can't imagine doing that. I do not have much left in me. I'm not as strong as those women. I'm so bitter that I'm in this hell. I want to either give up a rend just live my life in whatever way I can or hurry up and get pregnant. I can't keep grieving month after month and not live a real life. I feel so trapped. My current best case scenario would be to have a baby next February. That is mind boggling. This is such a mind boggling process. I don't think anything can prepare you for how long this can take. Some people believe in multiverses. I'm not sure I do, but I like the idea. This is the idea that there's other hypothetical sets of universes in which we live. I like to think there's another universe where we started trying to have a baby sooner and got pregnant. I like to think I'm very happy and appreciative of my chance at motherhood. But I'd give anything to be in that universe. We have our consult with CNY at 7am tomorrow to talk about the donor egg process. Our retrieval is Thursday morning. Hopefully, we get at least one egg. Hopefully, it fertilizes with the ICSI this time. Hopefully, it makes it to freeze. Hopefully, it thaws. Hopefully, it sticks. Hopefully, hopefully. "Hope is the thing with feathers." -- Emily Dickinson
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3/3/2017 0 Comments March 03rd, 2017This has undoubtedly been the longest week ever. I think… I’m not actually sure. I hear that after you have a baby your brain blocks out how bad childbirth is so that you’ll want to have more babies. Apparently, the same thing happens during fertility treatments. I hear that most people love Letrozole way more than Clomid because they have zero side effects. I only did Clomid once and it was everything I heard it would be, but my Letrozole experience isn’t much better. I have been so sick all week. On Tuesday, I was beyond sick. I have no doubt if I hadn’t been trapped in the hell of back to back meetings I would’ve gone home early. I had the worst headache. I was barely functioning. I was mostly a lukewarm body in a room. I couldn’t wait to get home. I passed out as soon as I walked in the door and slept for two hours. I felt somewhat better when I woke up. I took two Tylenol (only thing I’m allowed to take), my fertility drugs and vitamins ate a little dinner and went back to sleep by 9:30. Unfortunately because I slept so much, I woke up at 2:30am from hot flashes and then again at 4:30am because I was shivering. I had just fallen back asleep when my alarm went off. Wednesday was a sleepless blur. Yesterday wasn’t much better. This has been a very busy work week for me and I must say I’m shocked I’ve gotten so much work done. It’s been very validating to know I have made it to Friday.
Normally, I can feel my ovaries become engorged. The month that I didn’t respond to Letrozole and had zero follicles I only felt heavier in my uterus. That’s how I’ve felt all week. I was convinced I’d have to do this again next month. I’ve certainly had my fair share of breakdowns this week but luckily all in the comfort of my own home. My poor husband. I was a nervous wreck this morning waiting for our doctor’s appointment. I spilled coffee (decaf…mostly just coffee flavored water) all over myself fresh off the Keurig. I burned my chest like no other. I had to change my shirt and my skin was on fire. I cried and yelled. Most of the time I feel like I’m just walking around trying to carry all of my broken pieces in my arms and then I’ll get knocked over and drop all the pieces. Sometimes it’s hard to pick up all the pieces and I leave some behind. Spilling coffee all over myself this morning made me feel like I dropped all my pieces. Infertility is so heavy. The smallest thing can quickly become the biggest thing and you just can’t carry it anymore. So we went into our appointment with very little hope. When the doctor quickly saw two good sized follicles I could not believe my ears or eyes. Even Matt said he saw the two follicles next each other. It’s amazing how quickly you feel like an amateur ultrasound reader. Then the doctor said my left ovary even has a follicle. Way to finally show up left ovary! I was convinced it was dead and had nothing left to offer. My follicles are currently 9mm, 11mm, and 12mm. Before we left they took my blood and gave me some medications that had been donated by someone who became pregnant before using all their meds. I got my bloodwork results and our instructions for tonight. We are doing 150iu of Gonal-f tonight and tomorrow and one prefilled syringe (yay!) of Ganirelix (no clue if that’s spelled right and I’m too lazy to look it up) tonight and tomorrow at 10:15pm! What?! That’s past my bedtime. If only I could figure out a way to have my husband do the shot while I’m asleep…something tells me that won’t go well. At least it’s the weekend. We will take that medication until my trigger shot. The doctor called a bit ago to talk about if we want to do a fresh or frozen transfer. I did not realize until recently that a frozen transfer takes 8 weeks of preparation! WHAT?! WHO KNEW THIS?! Not me…obviously the doctors and everyone who has done one did. This also requires more medication that costs about $500 or so. Recent research has shown a frozen transfer increases your odds of pregnancy by about 10%. BUT, they have no idea why. The hypothesis is that your hormone levels are SO high (like normally your estrogen is in the 200 range and on IVF drugs it goes over 2000) that your body isn’t really ready for a transfer. With my case because I’m not producing 15 or 25 eggs because my ovaries are toast, my estrogen levels are within a more natural range. So, a fresh transfer could be fine but there’s no real way of knowing. In my blissfully ignorant state I thought we could say, “If there’s more than one embryo let’s transfer it fresh and freeze the rest.” The problem is they want to transfer the embryo on day three, but they have to be frozen on day 5 or 6. So we really won’t know if there’s more than one or not if we are lucky enough to retrieve more than one egg. So we have to make up our minds by Sunday-ish. So many serious decisions. I’m LITERALLY counting my chickens before they hatch. All day I kept thinking, “Three follicles! This is amazing!” We could have three eggs. And we could have three eggs. But just because we have three follicles doesn’t mean we will have three eggs. These follicles could all be empty. But in my mind there’s already three eggs and they’ve already fertilized. I can’t help it. Despite my naturally pessimistic demeanor these eggs are embryos and they’ve already implanted and I’m going to be pregnant and deliver a healthy baby. I have to constantly keep reminding myself this is the first step out of countless more steps to get pregnant and deliver a baby. I’ve had so many people ask me lately, “Why can’t they just go in and get your eggs?” I think this question stems from the mis-information we’ve all received that “women are born with all the eggs they’re ever going to have.” Which is a true statement. However, all of these people (including myself) are under the impression that our ovaries are full of all the eggs we are ever going to have and they’re just in there for the taking. That is not the case. The whole IVF process is to get the eggs to maturity so they’re able to be fertilized. If only it were as simple as going in to get the eggs. I’m really sad by how little women know about their bodies. I’ve even had women tell me if I just have more sex, I’ll start my period. Having sex has absolutely nothing to do with starting your period. It’s all about your hormone levels. Having sex does not alter those. I firmly believe this experience has made me want to advocate for better sex-ed classes in school. We should have the right to be taught about our bodies. I really don’t think teaching kids real stuff about their bodies is going to suddenly make them all go wild and have sex all over the place (they’re doing this regardless). And if it does, maybe they’ll be better informed about why they should use condoms and other birth controls. Knowledge is power. In my current Letrozole stupor, this has become a very rambly blog post. I’m reading Amy Schumer’s book at the moment, so I will end with a quote from her. She is my spirit animal. “I am a hot blood fighter and I am fearless.” I don’t always feel like this at all, but I love this quote and I love Amy. So I will keep channeling my inner Amy Schumer until this cycle is over. Our next appointment is Sunday. 2/24/2017 2 Comments Cycle Day 1 AgainHello cycle day one. We meet again. My stomach hurts so much. I never had period pain until my surgery. I kept reading the first 3 or 4 periods would be really bad. But this is period number 6 since surgery and I swear they keep getting worse.
2/22/2017 2 Comments All AboardHello, crazy train driver? Ticket for two please.
Just as I thought I was getting off this emotional roller coaster, it seems I am willingly (perhaps, enthusiastically…) getting right back on. Yesterday, I received an amazing email that our clinic was going to be willing to price match the egg donor costs from CNY. CNY charges less than half the price of our clinic. This was fantastic news! What I didn’t know was that I had missed a call from the doctor while my phone was dead. I didn’t get home until almost 6:30 last night so it was really late when I realized this. The doctor had also emailed me to find a time that I could chat at night. He called me at 8:00pm to give me news I was not expecting. He expressed his frustrations with not doing the ICSI right away (as we had asked.) He felt that if we could get just one, maybe even two more eggs he felt confident we could get pregnant with MY eggs. Of course what I was thinking was “Well we just spent a little over $13,100 on our last IVF cycle/medications AND we didn’t even make it to transfer. There is NO WAY we can justify spending that kind of money again…especially since we convinced them to let us out of the two cycle contract.” I did explain that I would rather use donor eggs as it was a more cost effective (albeit expensive) approach. He agreed that donor eggs is a valid option, but offered to do our next IVF cycle at minimal costs. He said it was about us getting closure, but even he felt he hadn’t had proper closure yet. Instead of using the heavy duty $4,000+ drugs we would just be going back to using either Clomid ($5) or Letrozole ($11). Now those are numbers I can work with. He explained some things had to be charged because it is done through the hospital and they have no control over that. This is exciting news! … I think… Unfortunately, Matt wasn’t home from school yet. My gut response was: YES LET’S DO THIS! Assuming their idea of minimal costs is my idea of minimal costs. But then I started thinking. I had just canceled all of my acupuncture appointments. I had just unpacked my scented hair products and perfumes. I had half a cup of coffee and it was wonderful. I made plans to hang out with people. I looked up prices for Lady Gaga tickets. I was starting to remember what it was like to be a person again. Now I’m going to go back to being the infertile again. My one day of freedom made me remember what it was like to not be infertile, but to be Heather. That was a nice feeling. I can’t even remember the last time I felt like Heather. When Matt got home we decided to go for it, if it was under $5,000. Who knew I would be saying something like, “What’s another $5,000?” If I ever go to Vegas, someone make sure to keep me away from the Craps table. We budgeted $25,000 for two rounds of IVF. So we still “have” $11,900, right? I got the quote today that the TOTAL cost of EVERYTHING (except meds…of course) would be $2,500. Yes. That is only four numbers and only one of them is in front of that comma. I stared at the screen for so long trying to comprehend that number. Last night one of my friends joked that I should use a Magic 8 ball to decide my fate. I don’t have one anymore, but they do have apps for this now. Before I hit the “ask question” button I said to myself, “Should we give it one more try.” I literally held my breath for the split second it took load and the 8 ball said, “Without a doubt.” I almost started crying. If I weren’t convinced I was out of tears, I may have cried. So I’ll unpack my unscented soaps and hair products. I’ll call the acupuncturist to schedule more appointments. I’ll be doing my nightly “please hurry up and show your face, aunt Flow” dance. I will continue to cling to hope like a lifesaver in the middle of the Atlantic. I’ll que up my “you can get through it” playlist on Spotify. I will put my heart back on my sleeve and be very, very vulnerable again. I will wait and wait the endless wait. Our next appointment is Monday. “Suffer. You could say it means endure, but that’s not exactly right.” –Erin Lockhart, We Were Liars 2/20/2017 6 Comments The Little Embryo that Couldn'tOn Saturday afternoon we got the call that our lonely little embryo did not make it to freeze. I was gutted. I really felt like it had overcome so many obstacles already and it was a little fighter. I really felt like that would’ve become our baby. When I hung up the phone I was crying. I was filled with so many emotions. Sadness, anger, jealousy, resentment. I was screaming. I was screaming at a pitch I didn’t know my voice was capable of. I didn’t even recognize my own voice. I screamed so high and so loud it hurt my throat. I wanted to throw everything. Matt grabbed me and my intended projectile and told me to hit him. I couldn’t hit him. I just cried and screamed until I felt numb. I just laid on the couch staring at the walls for hours. Occasionally I would sob a guttural cry. I cried until there were no tears – only noises. I wondered how long I could go without eating or drinking until my body gave out. I prayed to all of the gods –any god—that would listen. I wanted my body to just stop working. If only my mother would’ve been serious just one of those times she said, “I brought you into this world and I can take you out.”
After several hours, I crawled off the couch and took all of my empty medicine bottles and syringes and made a broken heart out of them. I always imagined I’d be making them into a heart with a picture of our embryo and hopefully a sonogram instead. Matt saw it and we both cried again. This is all that we have of our baby. We’ve lost two babies this year and that’s all we had to show. I’ll never know if my babies would’ve had green eyes and brown hair like me. Or if I would’ve spent a lifetime apologizing that he or she got my nose or my sense of direction. I’ll never know what it’s like to see myself in someone else. There are so many things that I’ll never know. I’ll always wonder who my babies could have been. I haven’t written a blog post in so many days because I don’t know what to say. What do you say when you get to the end of the tunnel, but there is no light? I always assumed I’d be a mother. When I found out it was going to be difficult for us to have a baby, I thought it would be that—difficult. Not impossible. I really hate it when people say, “You never know. Miracles happen.” No they don’t. Not to me anyway. I paid thousands and thousands of dollars for my miracle and I still didn’t get it. I suffered through dozens of acupuncture sessions, vaginal probing, blood draws. My hair has fallen out. I’ve experienced the worst hot flashes and headaches and memory loss. I’ve gained 25 pounds and lost 15. I’ve gone months without a period. I’ve had surgery and been left with permanent scarring. I lost a fallopian tube and several friends. I’ve given up caffeine, sugar, and carbohydrates. My emotions have been stretched to the lowest lows I could have ever imagined. This experience is something words cannot capture. And for it to have all been very much not worth it, is truly unimaginable. When people’s hearts stop working and they die to people say, “You never know, their heart might start working again and they’ll come alive.” No. They don’t. At least I hope not. My ovaries do not work. There is no miracle for me. There is no treatment that will fix my ovaries. I will never have my own biological child. I’m so grateful for all those that reached out through Facebook or who sent texts or called. Having such a phenomenal support system has been my only saving grace. Everyone always says how strong I am, but really the strong ones are the ones that carry this burden alone. I could never do that. I don’t know how they manage. I could never have done this alone. Even when people say things that aren’t quite helpful at least I did know they were trying and thinking about us. On Sunday, I decided to get two tattoos (and perhaps very intoxicated—the tattoos came first.) I’ve been tossing the idea around for several months now. I decided to get a lyric from a song that means a lot to me. I love the song The Middle by Jimmy Eat World. I woke up with Bell’s palsy on my 15th birthday. After I got out of the neurologist’s office, my parents took me to get a birthday present and I picked out the Bleed American album. I love every single song on that album and wore that CD out. I always listened to The Middle whenever I felt bad, but wanted a happy, upbeat song. It always put me in a better mood and no matter how many times I listen to it, I will always play it at least twice in a row when it pops up on my playlist. When I first found out I was infertile a friend said to me, “This isn’t the first time something bad has happened in your life. Think about what got you through the hard events in your life and use that to get you through this.” Listening to music and writing are how I’ve always gotten through hard things. I immediately put together a playlist of familiar songs and of course The Middle was right there. So, I got “Everything, everything will be all right” tattooed on the top of my left foot. I recently saw a quote that said, “Everything will be all right does not mean that everything will remain the same.” How profound. Once I saw that quote I knew that song lyric was the right choice for me. My other tattoo is a semi-colon cat. Because I love cats and I love project semicolon. Project semicolon is a movement to present hope to those struggling with depression, suicide, addiction, and self-injury. The semicolon was selected because when used in a sentence the semicolon represents when an author chose not to end a sentence, but to continue. I chose the semicolon tattoo because my journey is not over. I could choose to end my journey here (interpret this how you may), but I am not. I have a very different definition of “okay” these days, but I really think I’m doing okay. It was actually really nice to hang out with friends yesterday while getting tatted and have some drinks. Life felt normal again. We’ve given up so much through this process that I forgot what it was like to have a little self-indulgence. It felt familiar and fun. It felt like things were going to be all right no matter how things end up. I almost feel a little relieved that it’s over for now. We have a phone consultation with CNY fertility in Syracuse New York on March 8th. We will be looking into donor eggs. It’s going to be crazy expensive. But what is a family worth? I hear it’s priceless. I’m so lucky to have four people genuinely offer to be my egg donor and for that I am grateful. But we do prefer to have an anonymous donor. I’ve had people ask questions or say things like, “But you don’t know what you’re getting” or “Won’t it be a little weird having someone else’s baby?” To the first statement I can attest that no one knows what they are getting when they have kids. As a school psychologist, I have seen it all. There is no way of knowing how your genes will match up with your partner’s genes. I’ve heard parents time and time again say things like, “I have no idea where they get this from.” To the second question, my answer is, “No. It will not be weird having someone else’s baby because it will be my baby.” Ironically enough, these are the people suggesting adoption. Why would it be any weirder to have a donor egg than to adopt a baby? There’s actual evidence in research to suggest that donor egg babies might actually acquire DNA from all three parents. How cool and special is that? Someone shared an analogy with me that described an egg donor as an architect drawing up the plans for the house and the mother as the one actually creating the walls and building the house. I like that idea. Plus, whenever my child complains about something inherent I will know for sure that is not my fault and I can blame someone else. It sounds like a win-win situation. And to quote my favorite song, “Just live right now. Just be yourself. It doesn’t matter if that’s good enough for someone else” – The Middle 2/14/2017 0 Comments February 14th, 2017A quick update tonight. Guess what...more waiting!!!! Ugh!!!! I kept playing phone tag with the doctor all day. When he called when I was able to answer of course 5 people were standing in my doorway. It made it really difficult to ask questions. But what I heard was because the egg took an extra 24 hours to fertilize we kind of missed our opportune transfer time. They want to make sure my uterine lining is ready for a transfer. So now we are going to freeze the embryo on day 5 and transfer the embryo next cycle. UGH. He said things look good so far, but it's still really to early to tell. So now our embryo must make it to day 5 and survive thawing. I've used about $90 worth of progesterone for no reason at this point and now I have to start Provera tomorrow. When I start my next cycle they'll do whatever they do and transfer the embryo. I have no idea what that will involve. But freezing the embryo is another $700. The money just keeps wracking up.
So, we won't get another update until Friday or Saturday. That's all we know for now. This is a waiting game. 2/13/2017 4 Comments Egg UpdateToday at approximately 9:30 I received the call I was anxiously awaiting. I knew immediately what the nurse had to say. She did not sound happy or hopeful. Our egg did not fertilize naturally. The egg looked perfect and Matt’s super sperm still showed up. But they apparently were not communicating for whatever reason. We had previously elected to do “rescue ICSI” in case such an event occurred. This is an extra $1,700. During this procedure they pick a sperm and inject it into the egg and hope it fertilizes. When I told one of my friends this she responded by saying, “Okay, well maybe they are just shy and need a little help. Kinda like a school dance and they don’t know how to approach each other. I’m hoping they just need someone to ‘hook them up.’” These are the kind of people you need in your life when you’re going through this horrible ordeal. Matt and I were both shy and awkward and needed someone to hook us up, maybe our egg and sperm are the same. The nurse said they would call back around 6:00pm for an update.
It has been a long day. I kept thinking how we are not the Patriots. If we are down 25 points at half-time we aren’t the kinds of people to come back and beat the other team. In our case I’m feeling like we are down an infinite number of points and infertility is the other team. Google is your worst enemy in this battle. Don’t ever Google things. I think I’ve said this before. But, I keep doing it. I read that only 57% of embryos reach fertilization with rescue ICSI and only 9% of rescued embryos make it to a live birth. I really wish I didn’t understand statistics. Six and a half excruciating hours later they called back at four instead of six. The embryologist said he went in to check a little early to see how things were going and our egg had fertilized. In some states this little embryo is considered a full blown human. I’ve never been one to think of embryos as people, but this process has truly changed my perspective. I considered my unfertilized egg as much of a baby as an 8 month gestation fetus. To have a real live embryo is promising, exciting, and terrifying. How can I love a barely fertilized egg so much? I called my husband to deliver the hopeful news. I told him, “Maybe our embryo is a real Hokie. Maybe it’s a second half developer.” Perhaps, in second overtime we could really pull this off. So now we just hold our breath and see how the next few days go. Because it fertilized a little late if we make it to transfer it could be Thursday now instead of Wednesday. “Perseverance is not a long race; It is many short races one after the other.” Walter Elliot 2/12/2017 0 Comments Egg RetrievalToday was egg retrieval day! Last night around bedtime, my husband had the realization that we totally forgot to pick up our anti-nausea patch from the pharmacy. That made me very nervous. We went to bed fairly early last night since we had to get up at 6 this morning. I couldn't eat or drink after midnight.
We woke up early this morning. I was nervous and excited. We got to the hospital and into the egg retrieval suite. It was nice being the first appointment. The room we stayed in was literally smaller than our closet (granted we do have a nice closet.) I had mentioned to my husband it was almost smaller than our closet, but he insisted our closet is actually bigger. The nurses working with us were very nice. Unfortunately, my veins were not cooperative. They prefer doing the IV on the right hand, but there were no veins to be had there. She thumped and tapped my hand. She had me squeeze my fist and had the tourniquet so tight I thought my arm would turn purple...but nothing. So I had to go through the same thing on the left side. Finally, a little vein made an appearance. When she went for the vein, I guess she missed. I swear she dug around on my hand with the needle for at least 5 minutes. It hurt so much I thought I was going to start crying. I was alternating between holding my breath and taking deep breaths. She finally got it in, but my hand hurt so much she was worried the saline was going in my skin. After several minutes of monitoring, it seemed everything was fine. The anesthesiologist came in for some more questions. I swear she was younger than me. I was shocked at how concerned that made me. My emotions were teetering on the edge of being too much. We had to wait about 20 more years...I mean minutes...for the doctor to come in. My husband and I made funny faces at each other in silence to pass the time. In our very small, beige room there was a nice sized window with an incredible few of Charlottesville and the mountains. In my mind I was singing Country Roads by John Denver. There was stained glass artwork hanging in the window that had pink and white lilies. It was really remarkable how calming that was in such a sterile room. The doctor came in and day wheeled me into adjacent room where they did the retrieval. My heart was racing. I was worried about how they were going to keep my legs up. Of course I picked the most random thing to fixate on. I started getting a little panicky. I was trying to ground myself: "The ceiling is beige. The walls are beige. This really isn't helping." When they got me into this dark room (that was literally two feet away) they immediately put my legs in these large, plastic leg holders (I'm sure that's not the scientific term.) They strapped my legs down and spread my legs about as far as I would imagine they can go. I'm still trying not to panic: "What if there's no egg? This is a lot to endure for no egg. Should we really have ordered that progesterone without knowing if we have an egg?!" There was a door directly across from me that would stay open for about 5 years before it would self close after a person left or entered the room. No big deal. At this point in my fertility journey I have little to no dignity left. Then they put the oxygen in my nose. It's crazy how fast I felt light headed. The next thing I remember was the nurse telling me they got the egg! I think she must have said that 3 or 4 times. I woke up so fast hearing this amazing news. She said the whole team cheered when they got the egg. I felt really good, but I was freezing (normal) and had really blurry vision (not uncommon). The nurse wrapped me up like a mummy with warm blankets to get the shivering to stop. I think I said something like, "I hope my face doesn't look like a mummy." They had me drink some water and I ate some Teddy Grahams (20 carbohydrates! Ahh...whatever they were the most delicious Teddy Grahams I've ever had.) They checked my vitals 5 or 6 times and I had to pee before I could go. I think we left by 10 or 10:30. I can't really remember. We drove to Duck Donuts and picked up some donuts to bring home. By the time we got home I felt pretty good. I did take a nice nap at some point. My stomach feels a little bloated and my ovary hurts a little, but nothing bad at all. We have so many more steps to go and it could all end in an instant. I'm just trying to focus on each minute. Right now I feel good. Perhaps even happy and hopeful. It's weird how terrifying it is to be happy or hopeful. To feel both of those at the same time is pretty scary. The devastation of bad news is pretty unbearable these days. But I'm working very hard to not think about the future until we get there and not dwell on the past. We will get a call tomorrow afternoon sometime to find out if the egg fertilized or not. If it does, then we have to wait to see if we can do the transfer on Wednesday. Today's quote is more poignant than I intended, but no less true. "After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting."--Chuck Palahniuk, Choke 2/10/2017 0 Comments Trigger DayAfter all this nothing and waiting things finally feel like they’re moving along! We made the decision to keep going with this cycle. We’ve already sank so much energy and money into it, it would be a shame to not try. I ended up having to order an additional $1,100 worth of medicine. That brings the total to about $4,000 give or take for our medicines. We had our $180 consult with another clinic and the news was disappointing, but I’m glad we had a second opinion. He actually encouraged us to stop this cycle and move straight to donor eggs. He said that it’s often difficult to retrieve one egg because they tend to move around a little more and they’re harder to get out successfully when there’s only one. He also agreed that if I’m not responding to high doses of medication there’s no point in trying again. He recommended a mini IVF if we had to have our own eggs. But that process can take up to a year or more. I’m really not feeling like I can do that. The difference is that you are put on Clomid for 10 days instead of 5. But if you don’t have 3 follicles you don’t go to retrieval. At this point, it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever have 3 follicles. I gained 22 pounds in one month on Clomid and took two cycles to get my period back. (Not to mention the hot flashes, night sweats, headaches, and general moodiness.) I just don’t think I can risk those side effects again for several months and still have the same results. So, although this was disappointing at least we have a plan. In the last 7 days, I’ve had 5 sonograms and 5 blood draws. My estrogen and progesterone are in the right range, my uterine lining is nice, and my little follicle is maturing! On Wednesday the follicle was 15mm and yesterday it was 15.5mm. They want it to be at least 18 before triggering. Because of this we had to order three more boxes of Gonal-f (~$1100). But today, my follicle jumped up to 19mm! So we ended up not even needing one of the boxes we ordered ($357.75) and we had an extra dosage left between some of our other vials. So we have about $700 wort of medicine we will never use. We get to stop Lupron, low dose HCG, and Gonal-f today in addition to DHEA and CoQ10. Tonight at exactly 9:30 we are doing our trigger shot! We have had this thing for months and I was convinced we would never get to use it. On Sunday we go in for our retrieval. We have about a 70% chance of having an egg in our follicle. So if there’s an egg it will be ready for fertilization. If the egg fertilizes it will then become a blastocyst. If the blastocyst develops correctly it will become an embryo. If the embryo does what it’s supposed to by day 3 we will transfer the embryo into my uterus on day 3. (This all may not be exactly scientifically accurate…it has been a while since my last biology class.) Day 3 will be Wednesday! As you can see there’s a lot of places where this ship could all go down. Even if the embryo does implant we aren’t free from the threat of miscarriage. This tunnel keeps getting longer and longer. I am literally living one day at a time which ironically makes days feel MUCH longer. If we get to do a transfer it will be two weeks before we know if it worked. Because I am a worst case scenario thinker, I did more research on the donor egg programs. A donor egg at our clinic is $17,950 and medications range between $2500-$4500. Our clinic has just started doing frozen donor eggs this year, but it’s even more expensive than the fresh ones! Originally when I looked at CNY in New York their frozen eggs were $6,000. But it seems their prices have changed effective February 1st and they are now $9,000 or we could do fresh eggs for $12,000. You are also guaranteed six mature eggs. It doesn’t appear that our clinic has a guarantee. The science for frozen eggs is very new and our doctor told us they’ve really only been using frozen donor eggs for 3-ish years. It’s fascinating how all of this is really in its infancy. Because our situation is a “mutually disappointing event” we are getting back at least $6950 of the $15,000 we’ve already paid. But for now, I’m going to really just hope this is our egg. I have felt a real since of calm and peace the last few days. At first, I felt like if IVF didn’t work it was a waste of money. Matt kept reassuring me it was not a waste of money because we had to try. I’m now finally understanding that. Even if this doesn’t work, I know we gave it our all. I’ve changed my diet drastically, given up caffeine and alcohol as well as scented products and switched to all natural products, and attended over $2,000 worth of acupuncture appointments. I have really left no stone un-turned to try to make this work. I found a nice quote from Mulan that is so poignant: “You’re at peace because you know it’s okay to be afraid.” I wish I had realized this weeks ago. 2/8/2017 2 Comments Tough DecisionsUGH. I literally don’t even know where to start. I walked into the doctor’s office today expecting the absolute worst news. I cried all morning. My chest physically hurt. I knew it wasn’t a heart attack because that would be far too convenient. I barely managed through a few hours of work. I quickly realized I have to take a few days off work. Luckily, my supervisors are amazing and understanding. It feels overwhelming to take time off work because this is my busy season. But it feels overwhelming not to take the time off work. One of my friends pointed out that no matter what I choose to do it’s going to be overwhelming. When my supervisor gave me the green light to “put on my own oxygen mask” to help myself first I wrapped up things quickly at work and left. I’ve never spontaneously taken three days off work before. It is overwhelming and relieving all at the same time.
I cried on the way to the doctor. I get to the doctor’s office and they have the radio on. They rarely have the radio on. And of course the Pharrell song Happy was on. WHO PLAYS THIS IN A FERTILITY OFFICE?! I seriously considered taking the radio and throwing it against the window. I figured that might be frowned upon, but I’m quite certain all the ladies in the waiting room would’ve been appreciative. Because of the scheduling snafu (no idea if I mentioned this in the last post because my memory is totally shot, but let’s just say it was ugly on their part) the office staff was overly nice to me today. I barely sat down before they called me into the ultrasound room. The nurses were asking me which person I talked to that messed up my appointment time. Even if it was all for show, I appreciate the effort. Our regular doctor came in to do the ultrasound. Apparently my sad little follicle has done some serious growing since Sunday. Dr. Bateman was very optimistic about our little follicle. This was not expected. I cannot handle the inconsistent responses. The emotional rollercoaster of all of this is bad enough. To constantly be getting drastically different opinions is infuriating. I don’t even care if everyone is recommending us to stop IVF at this point. I just want them to all agree on something. Although reproductive medicine is quite miraculous, it certainly has a long way to go in terms of inter-doctor agreement. If you ask 3 doctors don’t be shocked to get 5 opinions. He also didn’t seem to think not trying IVF a second time was the worst thing to do. I literally cannot take the inconsistencies. However, when he was running through the statistics on the chances of this one little follicle actually becoming a live baby it was concerning. When doctors rattle off statistics I wonder if they expect the listener to really understanding. Realizing that our chances of having a live baby with this follicle is in the single digit percentages is a lot to gamble thousands of dollars on. As much as I say I have no hope, obviously there’s some shred of hope somewhere or I wouldn’t be doing this. All I can think of are all the people who get their miracle baby under the most ridiculous of conditions. Why couldn’t I be one of those people? Am I not deserving of a miracle? I feel like I’m due for one. But then I remember the most poignant quote from House, MD, “People don’t get what they deserve. They get what they get.” Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. Life’s not fair (I’ve certainly learned this lesson over and over.) Do we really want to sink THOUSANDS of dollars on less than a shred of hope? At any point this whole thing could go south. The doctor said this is more of a philosophical discussion. Boy, is he right. While I was getting my blood work done the nurse was talking to me. I can literally carry on a conversation without so much as flinching or pausing my conversation. Who would’ve ever thought that would happen? Then we spoke with the financial person. If we stopped our treatment now we would get all of our money back minus about $1100. That would give us a lot of money to proceed with a donor egg. The financial lady initially told us if we proceed with the transfer we are out all $15,000+. I started bawling. Through heavy breath and tears I said, “I want my own baby. What if this is my only chance?” Quickly, she began calculating the cost of one cycle. She ran so many numbers I don’t even know what they went with. It sounded like worst case scenario one cycle would cost about $11,000 and best case scenario one cycle would cost $8800. If we don’t actually get to a transfer we would recoup another $1200-ish. Then we would get the rest of our money back. It seems silly to cancel if we do spend $11,000 because it’s “only another $4,000” for another try. But the medicines for another try will cost at least $4,000-$5,000 in addition to that extra $4,000. Not counting the extra $1,000+worth of medicine that we will need to buy to finish out this cycle. That’s enough money to go to New York for a donor egg. If we spend all of this money plus another $5,000 for meds we would still need $10,000-ish for our donor egg cycle. If money were no object I’d try the two cycles and a donor egg. But...money is a pretty big object. Do we risk having no baby at all? Or do we cut our losses and try with someone else’s eggs. These are big decisions to make while in an extreme emotional crisis. I don’t think I could ever articulate the weight of this. I don’t think there’s any way anyone could ever imagine how terrible this is. We also have to make somewhat of a decision by 7:30 tonight. We have to at least decide if we are finishing this cycle or not. Our doctor is calling us by the end of the day and we have consult with another clinic at 7:00. I’m really not sure this could be more stressful. It’s so unfair that insurance doesn’t cover this. If I lived in a state that had fertility coverage I wouldn’t be trying to decide between keeping my house and car or having a child. All of this is so unbelievably unfair. When the nurse called to tell me my estrogen was looking pretty good, I just asked her what she would do. She recommended finishing this cycle and pursuing this retrieval and if this doesn’t work out just go for a donor egg. This is kind of my gut. I hope the financial person doesn’t change her mind about letting us out of our two cycle program. So now I wait again for the doctor to call and talk about our options while I try and figure out how to spend all the money I have to my name. I don’t know who said this quote, but it is often floating around the infertility circles: “One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever face in life is choosing whether to walk away or try harder.” |
Heather Joyce
Trying to conceive. Archives
April 2018
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