Waiting around

I am just sitting at my house - trying to work from home, and impatiently waiting for my delivery from Shraft pharmacy. This is one of the things that kills me about IVF. As if having to take time off for all of the various appointments isn't enough; you also have to wait around for the delivery of your meds. The reasoning is that some of the items have to be put in the fridge, and the box technically contains hazardous materials - so they can't just leave it on your doorstep.

I feel lucky that I can work from home on days like today, but I am probably the world's most impatient person. They told me my delivery would come "sometime before noon" - a pretty large window of time if you ask me.

This time my box of meds should be smaller since I don't need nearly as much. The Lupron has to be refrigerated, but everything else can go into my box 'o fun. My shots start on Saturday. If I can talk Bobby into taking a picture, I will post a lovely pic of me giving the shot.

I will write again Friday after my hysteroscopy. - Oh, and my insurance might actually cover this one (after I pay my co-pay of course) if I can get my regular Ob to give me a referral. I am waiting to hear if that will happen. I really hope it works out - It would be nice to actually have my insurance cover something!
Anywho - hope you all have a Happy New Year!

Officially Started Round 2b

I decided I will call this round, Round 2b. Since it is sort of a continuation of Round 2. I started on my birth control pills a few days ago. I called my pharmacy to have them refilled and was told that they wouldn't be able to get them in until this weekend or Monday at the latest because their shipments came out of Seattle and at the time apparently nothing was coming out of Seattle because of the weather. Ugh! Luckily I had enough packs that had some left over active pills so I am covered until my pills get in. Oh, the reason I had leftover active pills is because during IVF they put you on birth control for random amounts of time. It seems you never use a whole pack. And (I found out during all of this IVF stuff) every "active" pill has the same amount of estradial or whatever is in it, so you could totally take them out of order and it wouldn't matter. That's a little fun fact from me to you :-)

So, Round 2b is getting off to a good start. I am officially back to my normal weight and feeling no bloat what-so-ever. Thank goodness! I am still caffeine free - I decided not to jump back on the caffeine wagon, since I would have to give it up soon anyway.

I got my call from Shraft pharmacy, a specialty pharmacy that is part of Walgreens and specializes in fertility meds. I am going to be giving myself injections of Lupron and Progesterone. And will be taking Estrace (a tablet), baby asprin, doxycyclene and medrol. My total for the order came to....$145! I told the lady over the phone that I wanted to kiss her since every order I have had so far has been in the thousands. I made her repeat the total twice to be sure I heard correctly. $145 seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the cost so far.

I won't go into details on everything we have spent (although I have a pretty hefty spreadsheet with an astonishing tally) - but we have surpassed the $20,000 mark and keep in mind that is the total since May of 2008. I am not including the nearly $9000 we spent on fertility treatments before we adopted our wonderful baby boy (which is a whole other spreadsheet). I guess at a certain point, you just have to laugh, say "it's just money" and commit to not buying any new furniture for awhile. ha ha!

I go in to the Doctor's office this coming Friday for my hysteroscopy. I pray the roads will be ok - right now we have about 2 feet of fresh snow, on top of the 2 feet we already had.

I am excited to get started again. I really hope we have success this time. This whole process just seems to wear on body and emotion.

I will post again later in the week. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy and Safe New Year.

New Series

So, the January series officially starts tomorrow for me. I have been instructed to start my birth control pills tomorrow. I also was faxed my calendar so now I have the plan on when to take my pills, shots, and when to go to my appointments.

My first appointment is January 2nd in Spokane. I am having a hysteroscopy (yes, this will be the third one that I have had so far) to remove the fibroid and anything else that might have decided to grow in my uterus. Because for some reason everything But a baby wants to grow in there.

I start my shots on on January 3rd and it looks like I will do the Doxyflush on January 19th and my transfer will be February 2nd.

I will blog about this as I go along. The frozen embryo transfer is a different protocol, so if anyone is interested...I am sure I will have some interesting stories.

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and let's all hope for an especially Happy New Year!

Halleluja, I can wear jeans!!!

I feel a ton better today! I actually put on jeans and they fit - woo hoo!

My ovarian hyperstimluation has been very uncomfortable. I have gained anywhere from 10 - 12 pounds a day (it goes away after a night of sleep). I had a terrible pain in my left shoulder the other night, and swear I thought I was having a heart attack it hurt so bad.
But, today I feel better. I am a little bloated, but I can tell I am getting better. My weight is down a bit and I just don't feel the pain I did earlier this week.

Thank goodness my parents were here earlier this week. They made me sit and drink lots of fluids, and let's be honest...I wouldn't have done that as well if it were just me. I needed the pushing. I am happy to be on the mend and hope I never feel that sort of pain/uncomfortableness again. On a side note, I think the reason this might be going away is that I am about to start my cycle, which I will take over the pain of this last week. Never thought I would be so happy to have my little friend visit!

Also, I am feeling really optimistic about this frozen embryo transfer. I know this sounds odd, but it is kind of nice to have a little break from it all for the holidays and then start again in January. It feels like a fresh start.

I will write more this week. I have a feeling I will be starting in on the series in a few days, so I will keep you all posted!

Transfer was....

....Cancelled!

Yep, you heard me right...we did not have a transfer for this round. I swear sometimes I think God is trying to tell us something. Let me back up and explain what happened.

I had been feeling sore after my retrieval, as is to be expected. But the soreness didn't go away and in fact made me feel quite uncomfortable. On Monday of this week, my stomach was bloated, I was uncomfortable and I had gained about 10 pounds over the course of the weekend. I called my nurse to tell her and she said that Bobby and I should arrive at 7am on Tuesday so the Dr. could check me out before they decided if they were going to do the transfer. It sounded like I had Ovarian Hyperstimulation. If that was the case, she told me the transfer most likely wouldn't happen.

~ Ovarian Hyperstimulation happens to about 10% of IVF patients. It means that your ovaries get too stimulated and enlarge and then you start collecting fluid in your abdomen. It can be serious if not treated. ~

Bobby and I got up early Tuesday morning and headed to Spokane. We were both kind of crabby not knowing what was going to happen and I was overly crabby because it had now become uncomfortable for me to breathe.

When we got there, they took blood and then Bobby and I had to wait in a room for the Dr. to finish ultrasounds with other patients. We waited forever! Karen took my vitals and all that stuff and said I didn't look very bad and maybe I just had a mild case. We were told we were assigned the last transfer spot at 11:30 that day and I felt hopeful that we would get to continue. On the off chance the transfer would occur, I was told to drink my 32 oz. of water between 10:15 and 10:30am.

Well, when the Dr. finally came in, he had me lay down, pressed on my belly and said I definitely have Ovarian Hyperstimulation. He said that if they did do a transfer, they would only be able to transfer 1 embryo back because apparently it is a really painfull thing to have when you are pregnant. He said the other option would be to freeze the embryos and do a frozen transfer later.
Basically he wanted to see what my bloodwork said before he made the decision. We were told to go to breakfast and hang out until they got my results back. Oh, and he said, "you are going to get much sicker...in fact you might be spending Christmas with me". I looked at him like he was on crack, and my nurse explained that this will probably get worse. I can look forward to pain, severe bloating , and vomiting. Basically fluid is building up in my abdomen and I will most likely have to go back in to have tubes put in my stomach in order for the fluid to be drained - yuck!

We went to breakfast and I kept my cell phone within a fingers reach at all times, in case the call came in. When we were done, we still hadn't heard and we weren't sure what to do with ourselves. Nothing was really open yet, we didn't want to check into a hotel in case they just told us to go home so we drove around and hung out in the jeep and listened to Christmas music - we waited in the car for one hour, hadn't heard anything, and it was about to turn 10:15am...the time I was supposed to start drinking my water. I called my nurse and left a message, and decided I probably should drink my water just in case. I still felt like we might do the transfer that day. I knew that they had 6 other transfers before ours and they probably didn't have time to go over our blood results till those were complete.

Sure enough, Karen called at 10:32. I could tell by the tone in her voice that we were cancelled. She confirmed and said that my levels were kind of high and that Dr. Robins thought it would be in our best interest to delay transfer. Bummer! I felt horrible that we weren't transferring, but then again, my body felt horrible because of the Ovarian Hyperstimlulation. Karen said to stop my projesterone shots, and to call her on the first day of my cycle. They will put be on birth control, and then they will schedule me to do a uterine cavity search thingy. During this, they will remove my fibroid and do some sort of doxy flush with antibiotics to clean out my uterus. Then I start back on shots January 9th, and hopefully do the transfer on the 19th of Jan. This time my shots will only be Lupron and Progesterone since we aren't trying to make eggs, we are just trying to get my body ready to be pregnant.

The good news is, they were able to freeze 8 good quality embryos, and we will take care of that pesky fibroid. The bad news is I feel horrible, am not looking forward to a possible abdomen drain on Christmas day, and 2008 will pass without a pregnancy. This has been a long year....

I will continue to Blog, since this round doesn't feel final until that frozen transfer takes place. Hopefully I will be able to manage the OHSS with rest and fluids - let's hope so anyway.

More later this week...

Day 3 update

Today is day 3 and luckily I didn't have to wait very long to hear from Karen, my nurse. She called first thing this morning. I truly think she understands the torture of having to wait and does her best to call as soon as she can - God Bless her!

Today's news was really good and I am feeling really hopeful. Here is what she said:

We still have 17 fertilized eggs going (so we only lost 2 since Friday). Out of those 17, we have 14 that are 8 cell (this is the point they should be at by day 3, so these are the good ones). We have 1 at 7 cells, 1 at 5 cells, and 1 at 2 cells. These are the stragglers and more than likely won't make it longer than a day or two.

Karen said that we should plan to do transfer on day 5, which is Tuesday. Since we are at the end of the series, they don't have any retrievals that day, so they are starting transfers bright and early. She said to be prepared for the phone call from her and I reminded her that we have a 2 hour drive, and she said to go ahead and plan to be there at 9am. Our transfer might be first thing or it might be later, but that way we will be there ready. She said there is a possibility that we might get a call telling us to turn around and go home because the transfer might get moved to day 6. Let's hope for day 5 - Everyone think "DAY FIVE"!

She said to make sure I have my water in the car, because she will call me and tell me when it is time to start drinking it. Oh, I don't think I ever mentioned my water. So, basically you have to drink 32 ounces of water 1 hour before your procedure. You are not allowed to use the bathroom after drinking said water. Then when you get there, they will do an ultrasound to see how full your bladder is. This is important because your full bladder pushes your uterus into an optimal position. If your bladder is too full, they mark a little line on a plastic cup and send you to the bathroom to "unfill" your bladder a little bit. This is tricky because you are only allowed to "unfill" your bladder enough so that it reaches the line. Then you go back in, they ultrasound again, and so on and so on. Last time I got sent to the bathroom 3 times - and let me tell ya, 3 times of going and stopping mid stream is quite a talent that I am sure not everyone can do. Not exactly something you put on a resume, but a talent none-the-less.

Oh, and I also asked about the possibility of transferring 3 embryos, and Karen made a note of it and we will talk to Dr. Robins about it on the day of transfer. He might not let us if the quality of embryos is really exceptional. So, I'll keep you updated on that.

The progesterone shots are going pretty good. Bobby had the hiccups the other night and that one was actually a little uncomfortable. Note to future IVFers: find someone without the hiccups to give you a shot with a huge needle.

So, now we wait until Tuesday. We will head up to Spokane first thing in the morning. If we get moved to day 6 (Wednesday), I will let you all know. Otherwise, if we go on Tuesday, I will give a full blog report on Wednesday night when we return home.

Please continue thinking good thoughts - I think all of them have helped so far :-)

The number of eggs fertilized is.....

19! This is fantastic news for us. Here is what they told me:
They were able to retrieve 34 eggs. Of those 34, they perfomed ICSI on 20 and let 14 of them fertilize naturally. ICSI is a procedure where they actually inject the sperm into the egg. Naturally is when they just sort of let them find eachother in the little petri dish.

Out of the 20 that they performed ICSI on, 17 were mature. Out of those 17, 11 fertilized.
Out of the 14 they let go au na-tur-al, 10 were mature. Out of those 10, 8 were fertilized.
For a total of 19 little fertilized eggs.

This is officially day 1. The day of conception. Weird that it is in a petri dish, but that is the way things go.
Since I have been through this before I know the reality of things. I will get a phone call on Sunday (day 3) with an update on the embryos. More than likely only half of the 19 will make it to that point (if even that many). Than I get another update on day 4 and 5 - where we will probably be down by half again. Transfer should take place on day 5 or 6 (last time it was day 6). At this point we will probably have about 4 or 5 good embryos to choose from. This is really great news for us since last time we had one good embryo and one that was iffy.

I am going to talk to Dr. Robins about the fibroid and if he thinks it might be a good idea to implant 3 embryos instead of 2 since our odds of them implanting went down. I know when we failed the last round, he said that this is an option because of all of the troubles we have - I just want to see what he thinks.

I am really sore today! I didn't take any Tylenol with codiene and decided that I would come to work. Only now, I am regretting that decision, but nobody else is here and we have a mini-broadcast this afternoon that I have to stick around for. I'm not complaining too much; the people I work with have always been so awesome about working with me and my scheduling. I just really wish I was home, in sweat pants watching a Lifetime Original Movie.

We started my projesterone shots last night. Bobby was great as usual and it didn't hurt at all. I will try to take a picture of the needle, so you can see the size (it is really big!). I am also taking an antibiotic and a steriod, but luckily these are in pill form.

My parents are coming this weekend to help out. Since we don't know what day they will call us up to Spokane for the transfer we are kind of in a holding pattern. Having my parents here will relieve stress because I know that Connor will be well taken care of (we have to stay the night in Spokane). Last round, my dad came up during the week I had to be in Spokane every day and he was a tremendous help. Connor really missed "nanny papa" when he left :-)

Well, I will of course keep you all updated. Please keep us and our little fertilized eggs in your thoughts.