Thursday, September 1, 2011

Three strikes and we keep on going

Since our new doctor had told us that the final protocol he thought might work was similar to the one we used for IVF 2.0, and we had 10 eggs retrieved that time, we decided to give it one last go. We planned on starting off of my July cycle but I had a cyst on my left ovary that benched us until August.

I'd kept up with my acupuncture during the time between these two cycles, and I'd been watching what I ate, and taking what the new doctor called their "vitamin cocktail." This meant I was taking upwards of 35 pills every single day. There were herbs from my acupuncturist, L-Arginine, CoQ-10, pycnogenol, myo inositol, royal jelly, Vitamin D, my prenatal vitamin, DHA, folic acid, my Zoloft since all this unsuccessful babymaking has made me cranky(crankier?), and I'm sure I'm forgetting at least one or two other things.

IVF 4.0 was another estrogen priming protocol with no suppression. I took estrogen leading up to the cycle, and then the stimulating medications were Menopur and Gonal-F. The medication to keep me from ovulating early was Cetrotide, and my trigger shot was HCG. In the beginning of the cycle, my ovaries both seemed to be responding pretty well, according to bloodwork and ultrasounds I was having done every other day or so. Then the right ovary started to lag behind a bit. I started to lose hope a little, but at my next appointment it had caught up with the left and they were still both progressing. One day when the ultrasound tech measured 7 good-sized follicles on each side, I got the call that afternoon to trigger that night and that my retrieval would be on Monday the 29th. This was exactly what my predicted calendar said. Not earlier, not later, but right on schedule.

Mr. Sprout did my trigger shot for me at 11pm Saturday night. It's intramuscular and pretty difficult to do yourself, plus the needle is much longer than the ones used for the stims. Then after midnight on Sunday I was not allowed to eat or drink anything until after the retrieval.

We showed up at the clinic at 9am and boy oh boy are those guys in the surgery center efficient. I was quickly ushered in from the waiting room and told to change into a surgical gown, some booties, and I was given a warm blanket to drape over myself on the hospital bed. A nurse came and started an IV, and I signed some release forms. The anesthesiologist came in and introduced himself and asked if I'd ever had adverse reactions to anesthesia before. When I mentioned nausea, he said that he'd put some Zofran in the mixture towards the end of the procedure. The doctor doing the retrieval also came in to introduce himself (he's not my doctor but he's part of the practice) and wish me luck. At exactly 10am a few nurses came to get me, and wheeled my bed down the hall. Mr. Sprout was taken downstairs at this point. On the way down the hall, the anesthesiologist said he was putting some "relaxing medicine" into my IV and he asked if I felt it. I said I didn't and then a second or two later I started to feel really light and floaty and told him that I did indeed feel it! And that's all I remember until I woke up in recovery.

After I'd been awake for a little while I was allowed to move from the bed to a chair, and they gave me some ginger ale and crackers. Then the embryologist came up to talk to us. He said that they had retrieved NINETEEN eggs! He also said that the sperm count and motility looked good and that they would be performing ICSI/IMSI on the mature eggs that afternoon and then calling us the next day with a fertilization report. We hadn't heard of IMSI before so we asked what it meant. He said that it's ICSI on steroids. Not only do they inject one sperm into each mature egg, but they look at the sperm under a more powerful microscope and choose the ones that have the best morphology. This sounded great to us, since we know we have a morphology issue.

Once I asked if I could get up to go to the bathroom they said that was a sign I could go home. I changed back into my own clothes and they wheeled me to the elevator, down to the garage, and to the car. As soon as we got home I went upstairs to bed and slept for about two hours. I took it easy the rest of the day and then felt fine by the next day.

Tuesday morning the lab called and the embryologist told me that of the 19 eggs retrieved, 16 were mature and that of those 16, 10 had fertilized normally. So, we had 10 embryos growing. He also said that of the other three, two had matured overnight so they would do IMSI on those two on Tuesday and call again Wednesday with an update. On Wednesday, they called and said that one of the two had fertilized normally so we now have 11 embryos in the incubator. Since our goal this cycle is to let the embryos grow to the blastocyst stage and then have them biopsied, we won't get another call about their status until Monday. MONDAY!

So in the meantime we're thinking good thoughts and at the same time trying not to think about it too much since there's nothing we can do besides wait. We have a four-day weekend and we plan on enjoying it!

No comments:

Post a Comment