Chips on the side!

Where was I? Oh yes, trigger shot day.
August 10th. At exactly 7:30pm I needed to take my "trigger" to make me ovulate about 38 hours later. This medication had been in the fridge since the Big Box O' Meds had arrived a few weeks prior. It was two pre-filled syringes of a drug called Ovidrel. Unlike the trigger shots I had to take for the IUIs this didn't need to be reconstituted and I was told to inject it subcutaneously in my abdomen so I wouldn't need any help. Yay! Also, we had plans this night to go play poker with friends so I packed the Ovidrel into my insulated lunch tote cooler thing and off we went. Right at 7:30 I excused myself to the bathroom, did my thing and then we played some poker!
August 11th. I'd stopped all my stims the day before, but on this day I had to start taking a profilactic round of antiobiotics, Doxycycline, twice a day. And before bedtime, they wanted me to drink about 14 oz of juice, either grape, apple, or cranberry. I found a bottle of cran-apple-raspberry at the store and had that. I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything after the juice until after the retrieval the next morning.
August 12th. Egg retrieval day. This was going to be my first experience with anesthesia and I was a little nervous. Probably more nervous about that than the outcome of the actual egg retrieval procedure. We got to the clinic right at 7am and within 5 minutes they called us back. We were taken to a room with a few comfortable chairs and an adjustable hospital stretch in it. I was given a gown and told to take off everything but my bra, and have the gown open in the back. But before we were left alone in there, we were introduced to the nurse anesthetist who had to go over a few questions and answers with us first and also who we had to pay $400. At some point in the conversation with the anesthetist the subject of what kinds of food I'd be able to have later that day came up. He advised us that I should be able to eat a little bit once I was hungry, but that he wouldn't recommend a 2-lb burrito from Chipotle. No problem, there.
Once the anesthetist left the room, I changed into the gown and just kind of stood around until the nurses came to get me and take me to the operating room at the clinic. It was at this time that the husband was whisked away to his own room to make his donation. We waved goodbye to each other and wished each other good luck.
I lay down on the OR table and the anesthetist started an IV line and then the room started to get crowded. There were two nurses, and then the doctor came in, greeted me, said that he was excited about the Big 5 follicles and I expressed a bit of confusion/frustration at there being only five, but he insisted it only takes one!
I remember the nurses making some small talk with me as somebody put my legs into the proper position and had me scoot down a bit lower, and the anesthetist must have brought up Chipotle again because I recall saying that I prefer the gumbo at Qdoba to almost everything at Chipotle. And the next thing I remember is waking up in the OR and being asked if I thought I could stand up and go back to the room I'd been in earlier to lie down on the stretcher. The two nurses helped me walk down the hall and then I lay down on the stretcher for a bit. I think they let me sleep a little bit longer, and then the husband was there, and then I was propped up a bit, given an anti-nausea pill to dissolve under my tongue, and I started to ask about the procedure.
They told me that 7 eggs were retrieved and that the last thing I said before I went under was about the gumbo at Qdoba and how when you get it to go, you have to insist that they put the chips on the side so they don't get soggy. So we all had a good laugh and then they brought in the embryologist for us to talk to.
She reiterated that they had retrieved seven eggs, and that the doctor said we would most likely to doing a Day 5 embryo transfer on Tuesday. She told us that she'd call us the next morning and let us know how many of the eggs were mature and how many fertilized, and asked if we had any other questions. At that point, we did not.
The nurses came back a few minutes later to go over the post-retrieval meds protocol. I'd need to start taking baby asprin, oral estrogen, progesterone, and a steroid called Medrol. All of these drugs combined are supposed to help soften the uterine lining, promote implantation of the embryo, and sustain a pregnancy.
At about 9:45am they said that I looked ok, asked if I felt ok (I did), and then sent us home where I was to take it easy the rest of the day, and the day after.

To be continued...