Celine – Part 2

Yeah I know I said I might quit. But I haven’t figured it out yet and I’m still here. I hope you don’t mind.

I read yesterday in the tabloids that Celine Dion is no longer pregnant with her frozen embryos. The articles that came out about it were a reminder of how little people understand the hurt of infertility. Take Perez Hilton for example. His comments on it were:

“Maybe 3rd time’s a charm – or adopt!!!
We’re sure they’re some long-haired French Canadian kiddies in need of a good home!”

The last thing a woman with infertility issues needs, is to be told that they should ADOPT! So fucking insensitive! And what the fuck is the fertility doctor doing announcing Celine’s pregnancy and then announcing that it never took. He also announced that her and her husband would be traveling to NY this weekend to attempt another transfer. While on one hand, it’s about time that a celebrity owned up to having infertility treatments instead of being ashamed and lying about it, I sure hope that she gave the blabber mouth doctor permission to release this information because every woman also has the right to her privacy.

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Downgraded

Went back to the RE today and it’s official. We’re being converted to an IUI. This is a major blow for me. All those stupid shots and all I got was an IUI – we all know that the chances of anything coming of this after 3 failed IUIs is pretty slim. Ironically, my RE had moved me straight to IVF because he felt that doing an injectable cycle in between the Femara/IUI cycles and IVF was a waste of time.

I feel like someone is playing a cruel joke on me. The RE who saw me today saw 1x18mm and 2x17mm follicles. He said if we did a retrieval we would get 3 mature eggs at best, maybe less, and he and the other REs think they can do better, especially when I had 13 antral follicles. They are all on the same page that this should be converted to an IUI. Then he gave me the speech about the possibilities of multiples and I said, yeah whatever. I’ll be lucky if I get pregnant at all, let alone multiples. He fell silent, and my husband mumbled some joke about how his lovely wife can just be so positive sometimes!

This is pretty devastating. I cannot believe IVF was so close and now it’s slipped through my fingers. My next attempt at IVF wouldn’t even start until the end of October because I’ll have to go through another month of pre-IVF BCP prep after I get my period when this one fails. That’s forever away. And I now know that IVF is not that simple. Just like a natural pregnancy, EVERYTHING has to go right to get you to the end goal – first to egg retrieval and then more miracles are required to get you to transfer and then you have to move heaven and earth to get to a positive pregnancy test. It’s no simple task and certainly not the answer to all of my problems.

Tonight I trigger and go in on Monday for the IUI. I know this is horribly negative but this feels like a complete waste of time. Here goes Injectible IUI#1/IUI#4 – not without tears of frustration though. Bleh.

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It’s not so great

My first follicle check was not so great and I left sorely depressed and disappointed. As I mentioned in my last post, my initial E2 level was at 156. Even though the nurse who called me after the first test said that is right where they expect me to be, according to the RE that saw me today, 156 is pretty high for day 3 of stims, and that is why they dropped my dosage down a little bit. Today’s E2 was 402 so they are going to keep me on the same dosage but more worrisome is my follicle development and count. At baseline I had 13 antrafollicles. Today I had a 13mm, 11mm, 2x9mm, 8mm, and 4x6mm – that’s 5 follicles that are in the same range, the other 4 are probably out for the count. At this rate, I only have about 5 follicles in the running.

As you know, this is a numbers game. If I only have 5 follicles that make it to the right size by retrieval, then only a percentage of those will be mature, another percentage of those will fertilize and then another percentage of that will make it to Day 3 or Day 5 and transfer. When you start with 5 follicles, that could mean at the end of it, I could end up with ZERO embryos. My RE has said from the beginning, he would rather have fewer good quality embryos than lots of crappy ones. But I’m sure that even for him, he would consider 5 to be too low. The REs are trained to be positive in order to not stress you out. They said, “ohhhhhh well, lets just hope that the smaller ones catch up!” – “hope” being the key word here, people. My fucking hand is hovering over the red panic button. When that hand lands on the panic button, that is when I will really start to freak the fuck out and I’m dangerously close. If my RE would tell me that this is where he wants me to be at this point, then I could relax but right now, my hope is fading by the minute. The nurse who called to report my E2 levels said that this is still early and that hopefully the smaller ones will catch up by retrieval. There’s that word again – “hope”. But you know, I’ve done enough IUIs to know that uneven follicle development is not so great.

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Lupron Day 3

There you have it. The meds that arrived in a huge box at my work. Holy crap, it’s intimidating to sit there and stare at all that stuff. Most of it is syringes, alcohol swabs etc. but it’s the syringes after all, that scare the shit out of me. The IVF injection class was informational and I’m glad my husband came with me. Our clinic does progesterone injections, not suppositories, so after the transfer, he will need to do intramuscular injections into my ass! The needles are huge and are very very scary. Not looking forward to that part. They say that should there be a positive pregnancy test, the progesterone injections will have to continue for 9 weeks!

Now lets talk about Lupron. I’m on day 3 of this stuff and it is having quite an effect on me. I’m zoned out pretty much all day (my boss did a little wave in front of my face in a meeting this afternoon) and holy shit, am I irritable. It’s going to take me a while to get used to feeling this way. Right now, I’m taking BCP and 10 units of lupron in the evening. I’ll stop the BCPs on Thursday and expect my period mid-week and then after that is when it’s going to be really on – with all the stimulants.

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Protocol for IVF

I got my IVF calendar. I’ll be on what they call the long luteal protocol.
Next week, I start the lupron shots and then there’s a whole of lot of injections and finally the estimated egg transfer is mid-September.
Daunting, exciting, scary.
We’re finally here. This has to work…..right?

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Hysteroscopy

Tomorrow is surgery day…is this considered surgery? I don’t know. I still feeling nothing inside. It’s like the desire to have kids all of a sudden died inside of me. Now I can’t stop thinking about how much time I’ve wasted being miserable and pining about having a baby and the fact that I’ll never get that time back. I’m always so negative. I need a break from myself!

In the meantime, I’m been getting back into running shape, lost a little bit of the chubbiness and getting closer to what I was before. Just in time for injections and IVF! It’s amazing how much better I feel about myself though.

Hope everyone out there is doing ok! It sounds like quite a few of us are about to go through our first IVF cycle. Lets hold hands and get through this together.

Goodbye little polyp. You were an uninvited guest in my uterus and I will be glad to be rid of you.

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Barfed

I took my first dose of antibiotics (Doxycycline) yesterday morning. The RE is having both my husband and I take them to kill microorganisms that may decrease fertility. Oh so stupid me, took an antibiotic on an early morning empty stomach and then downed some hot tea! Lets just say that I spent the next half an hour barfing my guts out…except there was nothing to barf out. Dry heaving and tea was all that was in there. Lesson learned! I’m on a regimen now of:

• Doxycycline (with food and water)
• BCPs
• Prenatal vitamins
• Acidophilus (to put back in the good bacteria that the antibiotics kill)

I now have an official “pill drawer” to keep all of my pills in one place. Today I added some Vicodin and Valium and some other drugs that I picked up at the pharmacy today – these will be used post-hysteroscopy on Friday. As much as I hate pill popping, it sounds so much better than stabbing myself with a needle. Holy shitballs.

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