One day at a time

Yesterday morning I had an appointment for bloodwork and an ultrasound, but before that I needed to give myself two injections at 7am. One of them is a bit complicated - you have to take 2mL of sterile water up into a syringe and then mix it with some powder in the powder bottle. Then you take that 2mL of medicine and put it into an empty sterile vial. Next you take 3mL more of sterile water and mix that in with the 2mL of medicine in the sterile vial for a total of 5mL of medicine. Then I am to take 0.8mL of that medication each morning.

I had done this once successfully last week. I had no hesitation in doing it again yesterday morning. But, something went wrong. Horribly wrong. The needle that I use to mix the water with the medication wasn't screwed all the way onto the syringe (they come attached, so I never thought to check). When I put the 2mL of water into the medicine vial to mix them together, the pressure inside the vial caused liquid to flow back up the needle and then out through the threads between the syringe and the needle. It happened so fast and before I knew it, the bottle was empty, and most of the medicine/water mix was in my hand. It was all the wrong concentration at that point, and not sterile anymore, and with no good way of me getting it back into any container. So, I dumped what was in my hand into the sink and sulked. Then I took the half-dose left from last week's mixing with me to my appointment where I figured I could ask the nurse what to do.

The ultrasound showed all the follicles in my right ovary growing well, and at the same pace as each other, which is an improvement over last time. The left ovary finally did show some follicle growth, but they are much smaller on that side than on the right. I don't know if they'll have time before the retrieval to catch up, but I've stepped up the acupuncture hoping that it will make a difference. After the ultrasound, I talked to the nurse about what happened with the medication and she said she'd talk to Dr. B about whether he thought I should buy another dose or not. She had doubts whether he would say yes since she thinks that the retrieval may end up being as soon as Saturday. I told her I was willing to buy it if he thought it would do me good, though. She said to take the half-dose that I had with me, and that she would email me as soon as she heard from Dr. B, and that there was one place in town that carried it so I could go pick it up that afternoon. Turns out, Dr. B did think it was a good idea, so I went to buy more...to the tune of $555.55. The lady at the pharmacy said, "Oh it's your lucky day! $555.55 is your total!" I laughed along with her while I thought, "Lady, if it was my lucky day I wouldn't be spending $555.55 in the first place!"

So, this morning I did the mixing again, making sure the needle was tight on the syringe, and it went fine.

I've been to acupuncture every day since Sunday but I get tomorrow off! I have a massage lined up for after work and I'm super excited about it. Things have been pretty hectic this week with work and the cycle and friends coming in town on Thursday for the weekend, so I'm looking forward to an hour of pure relaxation.

Hopefully tomorrow's ultrasound shows things still progressing nicely on the right, and a big improvement on the left!

Catching up

Oops. I had no idea I never posted an ending to our IVF cycle back in August. It didn't work. Turns out that my eggs and the resulting embryos that we had transferred weren't of the best quality and probably were not viable.

At the follow-up appointment, our doctor suggested a different protocol for next time, as well as genetic testing of the Day 5 embryos to ensure that we only transfer back viable ones. This means that the embryos would be frozen on Day 5 and then we'd do a Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) at a later date. It sounded logical to us, but we went to go get a second opinion at another clinic first.

The doctor there suggested a very similar protocol, said that it would produce a greater number of higher-quality eggs than I had the last time. He did not, however, mention the testing. We thought long and hard about it, and decided to try one more time with our current doctor, do the testing, and then if we have no viable embryos we know that we probably can't make babies with each other, and if we have viable ones, then we at least have another data point. Either way, we'll know more.

So earlier this week, I started back on injections and pills. I've been seeing an acupuncturist for a couple of months, too, as well as doing a relaxation exercise daily during the cycle. At yesterday's ultrasound the right ovary looked like it has a few good follicles growing in it, and nothing was really happening on the left side. So, at acupuncture today, he pulled out the big guns and hooked me up to the electricity to try to jump-start things.

I go back for another ultrasound tomorrow, and acupuncture again, too. I imagine that egg retrieval will be around next weekend sometime, and then hopefully a couple weeks after that we'll know if we have any viable embryos that we can transfer in a few months. Fingers crossed!!