Monday, February 17, 2014

IVF Monitoring Appointment #4: Good and Bad News

The Good News:

On Stim Day #10, I have lots of follicles. Twenty measuring over 9mm to be exact, with another 18 or so that are smaller. The exact break down is as follows: 1@21mm; 1@19mm; 2@16mm; 4@15mm; 2@13mm; 3@12 mm; 3@10mm; 4@9mm. Everyone kept asking if I "felt full". That's one way of putting it. At least it felt validating for all the discomfort I've been feeling. I was actually beginning to understand how some women complain in their 8th month of pregnancy and say that they "just want this baby out of here already". Replace "baby" with "eggs" and that's how I feeling. Right up until I was told that I might have to trigger today if my bloodwork is too high. Then I began to get panicky. But we get there, there's more good news. 

Our nurse today was great and I love her. Ok, that's not really news, but it made my morning better. 

I got an email today from my administrator. Apparently my hormonal hissy-fit last week caught the attention of several people, and not entirely in a bad way. The higher-ups decided that they could understand how daily harassing (my words, not theirs) emails "devalues your hard work" (their words, not mine), and have a proposed a compromise of sending only one email per week of a summary of any outstanding notes on that day. What's more, they decided to make this a policy for my entire department so everyone else will be able to benefit as well. Honestly, I couldn't have asked for a better outcome. This was actually more exciting than my morning appointment, probably because of mixed news of this appointment. 

The Bad News:

My estroidal levels more than doubled again, from 1100ish to 3100ish in 48 hours. The big concern is that they would make me trigger early and we'd miss a majority of those smaller follicle that would never have an opportunity to mature. Luckily, the doctor on service today is known for pushing people and is allowing me to stim for one more day. The reality is that I am now almost guaranteed to have to trigger with Lupron. Which means that will certainly require the Progesterone in Oil, intra-muscular injections, along with extra estrogen support. I was really hoping to avoid the daily ass-shots. 

They hired a new phlebotomist and today was her first day. She was horrible! I have small veins to begin with, but I purposefully drank a large glass of water this morning to help waken my veins up. This was not helpful and despite two pokes and lots of prodding, she was still completely unable to find my vein. Plus, she left the computer screen open to the list of all the patients on today's schedule, a total HIPAA violation, and C was very upset about the increased infection risk she created by feeling my arm for the vein after she rubbed me with alcohol. Luckily, the very lovely nurse asked how our experience was with her, given that she's new, and we were both very honest. 

C just informed me that he bombed his nursing test and is in jeopardy of failing this class. If that happens, he will likely be kicked out of the program because it's just ridiculous. So, yeah, this is very stressful and a huge damper on an otherwise pretty good day. 

The Bottom Line:

You can't win them all. I go in for another monitoring appointment tomorrow morning. I will very likely be triggering tomorrow and scheduling my retrieval for Thursday. I am remaining calm and trusting in the professionals and trusting the universe, not getting bogged down in the numerous hypotheticals (with both my body and C's education). 



2 comments:

  1. Yikes, that is a mix of good and bad. Hoping the good stays good and the bad becomes better.

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  2. Yikes. That is good and bad. Hoping your trigger goes smoothly and that your hubby did pass his test. Sweet victory on the new email policy!

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