Protocol!

Today C and I went up to learn how to do shots, and get the medication! I feel weird now, like a weight was lifted (in that now I know when and how everything is happening), and like another one has settled down (in that now I have to actually DO this stuff, not just talk about it happening someday).

The nurse was a cute, very Portlandy-looking lady with an eastern European accent. She sat us down in front of a table littered with little vials and syringes and round skin-colored lumps, and C practiced drawing liquid out of the vials and sticking it into the round lumps. It kind of reminded me of CPR class, with the victim stand-ins.

Then we went downstairs and sat for about an hour waiting for the meds to be gathered together in the pharmacy. They gave us a little pager a la restaurants-with-a-long-wait, and I crocheted and C used the wifi for a bit.

When the pager flashed at us, we went back to the pharmacy, dropped $3045, and came away with a cooler and a grocery-sized paper bag full of medications.



So here's the protocol:

Continue taking birth control until 8/13.
On 8/6 (this Saturday), start taking Lupron daily.
Go up to the RE for an ultrasound and estradiol test on 8/19, and wait for a phone call that says all is well. (If it's not, they'll rewrite my protocol.)
If all is well, decrease Lupron by half and begin Follistim in the morning and Menopur in the evening.
Go to the RE for a blood test on 8/23 and then again every 1-3 days while they check my hormone levels.
Retrieval between 8/28 and 9/2 (enema the night before, and of course trigger shot 36 hours before)
2 days after retrieval, take progesterone in oil daily until a positive pregnancy test and weekly for several weeks after that
Transfer 3-6 days after retrieval

Bada bing, bada boom. Hopefully. For now, we're squarely in the hopeful and happy phase.

Rawr.

The clinic just called. "We got your fax for your husband's blood draw results and we noticed that he didn't get an RPR done [for syphillus]! If he can get it done before Thursday we can go ahead with the procedure even though we're technically not supposed to without the results..."

So my local lab is supposed to be calling me back. They'd better be quick. (They also forgot to check his cholesterol levels when they tested him last time, so I guess I'm not surprised that they missed the syphillus screen too.) Thanks, clinic, for being so quick to look at my fax and call me back! (It was only a week!)

Update: Crisis averted. C was able to get a hold of the local clinic after they should have been closed and he's got his blood test tomorrow morning. We'll likely have the results by our Thursday RE appointment if they hurry up!

CD1!

My body enjoyed teasing me for the past three days, spotting ever so slightly and then stopping. But my temp dropped yesterday and then again today, just in time to go away to work the renaissance faire all weekend. Yay for navigating port-a-potties in giant skirts AND having to deal with a period. However, I am assuming(/hoping) it'll be the last one I have for a year so I'm trying to be nice to it.

So, for now, the plan is to fax some paperwork in to the doc on Monday, have C pick birth control up for me tomorrow while I'm at the faire and I'll start taking it on Sunday when I get home, for 12-21 days. And on the 4th I have an appointment with the nurses to go over my protocol and learn how to give myself injections and figure out where and when and how everything is going to happen.

I'm excited, but this really feels more like another step in the hurry-up-and-wait process and so I'm being very conscious not to let it be the main focus of my life. That makes it way easier to wait.

19

Today was trial transfer day. C was busy at work so he couldn't come, which was OK because I'd read the procedure wasn't that big of a deal. (My grandma came, though, to keep me company in the car and so she could be a part of the process, which was nice!)

The doctor (mine was on call, which was nice) inserted a catheter through my cervix and measured my uterus, and then he inserted an ultrasound wand as well and his assistant injected saline into my uterus while he looked at the ultrasound. He counted about a half dozen fibroids and measured them; but he said they were far enough away from the uterus that they shouldn't pose a problem for implantation. I have no idea how he could see them; I had a hard time seeing what he was looking at and I wondered why that black spot was a fibroid when this other black spot wasn't.

He also counted my follicles: 7 on one side and 12 on the other. I found a table of follicle counts and their IVF success; it looks like my 19 is a pretty good score!

It was over in 10 minutes, and then we talked briefly about the future. The doc asked if I had done all of my other screening, and I told him I'd brought the results the last time I was there; so he planned to start putting together my protocol. I didn't think quickly enough to ask when that would be ready, but I know it'll be in the next three weeks and I suppose it's OK not to know exactly when to expect their call.

Now I cross my fingers that this stuff doesn't get in the way of the renaissance faire I'm performing at next month!

FSH and Estradiol

A few weeks ago, I realized that a long-planned camping trip with my two best friends might be cut short by needing to get my CD3 blood draw for FSH and estradiol tests (measuring follicle stimulating hormone and sex hormone levels), and then the vitamin D was wreaking havoc so I thought maybe it'd come after camping was over. But of course last Thursday night, the night before we left, there it was. Luckily that meant that we only had to leave early on Sunday instead of late morning. So we had a good trip, and woke up early yesterday to tear down camp and run up to Portland for the test.

While the nurse (Annabel - she made sure to introduce herself to me and I realized later it was because I'd most likely be seeing a lot of her in the next two months) was labeling my blood vial, a woman poked her head around the corner and whispered "Annabel! I'm so sorry, but I'm going to explode!" Annabel went off with her to the bathroom and I could hear her telling the patient that she could only pee this much; and then she came back and smiled at me and said "that's going to be you soon!" Heh.

So the blood draw was over quickly, and then on Thursday I go back up for my trial transfer. I sort of know what to expect, but like any procedure you read about on the internet, reactions and pain levels go from zero to horrible. I'm aiming for zero. After all, C can't make it on Thursday so I'm gonna do it by myself! It mostly involves a trans-vaginal ultrasound, counting follicles, measuring the uterus and filling it with saline. Gonna be a spendy visit though; I thought for some reason that it was covered in my financing plan but it's not. And of course it's the last day before I get paid. So I'll be cashing in those savings bonds on Wednesday at the latest so I can be ready!

We also looked into Aflac today, for short term disability (helping pay for maternity leave) and another plan that helps pay for the delivery (insurance covers a lot of it but not all of it). It would definitely pay for itself by the time I'm done using it, but another $100/month is an awful lot when we're still paying off the car and about to start paying off the IVF loan, on top of all of our other monthly expenses. We'll make it through but ack.

Waiting already? But I haven't even started!

When my doctor sent my six vials of blood to the lab, he had them do a full workup, which included cholesterol and glucose and all that stuff, just for funsies. The day after I gave the blood, his assistant called and said "you have a Vitamin D deficiency, so the doctor put in a prescription at your pharmacy for some D." So off I went to the pharmacy, and picked me up a bottle of dark green pills, with 50,000 units of vitamin D in each one. Whoa. Guess I was pretty deficient.

Anyway, I took them twice a week like a good patient, and I got back into temping every day so I could gauge when it would be about time to call the fertility clinic to get my HSG/Estradiol test done. We also tried baby-making the old-fashioned way just for kicks, right around the time I usually ovulate. Except my temp didn't jump on CD17 like usual. It waited aaaaalll the way until CD23. I'm only 8 DPO now, but I'm already to CD31 which is a couple of days longer than my average cycle. I'm assuming it's the D, but I'm not completely sure. (I s'pose it could be stress from waiting for the dang cycle to be over so I can get the show on the road - how meta.) At any rate, I hope the RE doesn't judge all my cycles on this one. And I hope I get back to normal after I'm done with the D (supposed to be next month). And I hope it doesn't take too much longer for my cycle to end so I can get going on the procedures!

A Sign?

I like making signs out of things that probably aren't signs. Like, when things come together I say "oh yes, that's because this is supposed to be happening!" Of course, when they don't come together I just pout and don't usually say "oh yes, that's because this is NOT supposed to be happening!" I am such an optimist.

Anyway, when I called to get financing for the IVF, the account manager asked if I wanted to also finance the medications. I said no, because I was flustered and wasn't ready to commit. (I actually first said "can I think about it and add it later?" and the answer was no. So I said no.) After I got off the phone, I had a nagging feeling that I probably should have financed the meds, since they were going to be about $3100. I didn't want to have to try to foot that from our savings; we probably would be able to but I wasn't sure.

Then I remembered that my dad had given my sister and me about 50 savings bonds over the course of 14 years. I dug them out and did the online calculator, and the bonds that had met or exceeded their face value as of today are almost exactly $3100.

It's a sign! :D