Almost there...

Well, I'm getting pretty hopped up on the drugs and it's finally doing something.  Today, my follies were much bigger than Friday, which made me very happy because I feel like I'm carrying around two grapefruits in my abdomen.  I'd be pretty sad if I had all that pressure and yuck and not have seen growth.  However, we aren't quite cooked enough I guess.  My doc likes to trigger when you have 4 follicles at or above 18mm big.  Today, we had 1 at 19mm, 2 around 17mm, and then a bunch around 12-15.  So, more needles, more drugs, and more waiting (impatiently). 

I go back tomorrow morning for another blood draw and ultrasound.  We will either get the green light to trigger tomorrow evening (mama gets to give me that shot) or I will have to go back again on Wednesday and we will trigger that evening.  At this point, it doesn't really matter to me.  We are already way off schedule, so I just will do whatever he says is the right thing to do.  Work can wait I suppose.

Speaking of work, we bought a building today.  No big deal.  hahah.
I'll include more about that later, but I think it's going to be awesome and I'm so happy that everything worked out.  So, now I have 2 practices, 2 buildings, 1 associate doctor, 1 house, 2 almost paid off cars, and 1 amazing husband... everything that I can control is in place... now, we just need 1 (or 2 or 3) babies to finish the picture.  If only I could control that too....  

Finally some growth... and a big dose of generosity

We had our second monitoring appointment on Friday morning and we finally have something happening.  The right ovary had 6 follicles, the largest one at 10mm and the left ovary had 5 that he measured, all less than 9mm.  I believe that there a few more smaller ones in there, but my doc was a little preoccupied talking to my husband about music and baseball.  This annoyed me a bit, but I was just so relieved to see something in there that I let it slide.  He told me to stay on the higher dose and that I don't have to come back until Monday morning. 

 Ovary with no follicles

Ovary with growing follicles.  Somewhere in those bubbles is a tiny egg.

Due to the increased dose of follistim that we did not anticipate, I was quickly running out of meds.  I had signed up for the Out Of Pocket Meds Donation program on my message board community.  The program matches women who had successful cycles and no longer need some of their pre-ordered medications to women who are getting ready to start their cycles and do not have insurance coverage for infertility.  Although friends and family try very hard to understand what this process can do to you, the only people that can possibly fully "get it" are those who have actually walked these treacherous footsteps. 

Friday, I was doubly blessed.  I was matched with a woman named Maria from New York who had a vial of 900 units of follistim.  I paid for her to overnight it to me.  900 units of follistim would have cost me another $762.  So, due to someones extreme generosity toward a perfect stranger who they only have an empathetic connection to, my day got better.  Then, at the doctor's office, my favorite nurse Leslie gave me 2 more vials of 300 units.  So, in one day, I was donated another $1,270.00 worth of egg producing meds.  I can't imagine having to put that much more money on my credit card at this point.  I am so thankful. 

My package with donated follistim... better than any Christmas present I've ever gotten.

Quinn was pretty happy too

My free meds for the cycle.  I wish all of them were free.

How it all works....

Today is day 7 of stims.  I'm starting to feel a little full in the ovary zone and the headaches are pretty constant at this point.  I am wishing and hoping and praying and begging that the increased dose of follistim was enough to get my ovaries to stop taking their sweet ass time.  We head to the doctor tomorrow at 8:30 for another check and I'm happy Ryan can go with me since he is off work.

I've had a few friends and family members say that they are kinda unsure how this whole thing works.  These 2 videos should give you a pretty good overview of what we are doing. 







 And because I'm a little tired from floating in the pool today, here's a little photo dump for you to finish off the night. 

Meds Schedule

Boxes of Meds

Here's what's going inside of me... olggggg.

 Few days old from day 5 of stims...

And here's my princess puppy hanging out with me in the pool today.

Slow Start

Well today was my first monitoring appointment after starting the stimulating injections 4 days ago.  I am on a dose that is almost 3 times stronger than what I've been on before.  One would think that this would produce a lot of eggs pretty quickly.... One would be wrong. 

The vag cam showed a bunch (maybe around 8) super tiny follicles on the right ovary.  And the left had one super tiny one.  I, of course, immediately started to panic as I was staring at the screen, begging to see some nice looking follicles.  Doc noticed this and calmly told me that everything is fine, and that my ovaries are just having a hard time waking up from the lupron that put them to sleep.  I, the skeptic, didn't buy into his calmness. 

Before he left the room he patted my head and told me to stay on the same dose unless they called later that afternoon.  They had to wait to get the estrogen levels back from my blood work before he would know for sure.  Well, around 4:30, the nurse called and said that my E2 levels were pretty darn low and that he wants to increase the dose to try to speed things up a little.  So tonight, instead of 300, I injected 450units at once.  I am scheduled to go back Friday morning and will have another blood draw and ultrasound.  The hope is that there will be some decent looking follicles and that I don't get set back too many days. 

It's getting a little stressful because I have taken off work for certain days this next week based on the estimates that they gave me, but now, it's looking like all of those estimates will end up being incorrect.  There's still a chance that they will catch up, but I guess I won't know that for sure until I see it happen. 

So, it's been a slightly disappointing day, but not awful.  I guess being a constant overachiever makes me feel like I'm not growing follies as well as I should or could be.  There's not much that I can do about it, other than keep jabbing myself in the stomach, so that's what I shall do. 

Ready or not... Commence the Crazy.

Annnnnnnnddddd.... We're Off!

For the last 2 weeks, I've been on Lupron, birth control pills, baby aspirin, antibiotics, and prenatal vitamins in the hopes to shut all my hormones and ovaries down.  My doc explains IVF to me like this... you can either ramp up your ovaries super fast and then try to quickly shut them back down to retrieve the eggs before you can ovulate, or you can suppress your system so you cook your eggs low and slow (like a good brisket) and then hopefully have better timing in retrieval.  He says it's the difference between driving down a hill as fast as your car will go and slamming on the brakes at the bottom, or coasting down with your foot constantly lightly on the brake.  It's a lot easier to stop if you are coasting. 

My Lupron packet

So, anyhoo, we were on what they call the long lupron protocol.  Downfall was 5 pound weight gain, and having to wait a longer time before you start growing follicles.  Good news is that we will hopefully get more mature eggs at the end of the road.  It has been extremely frustrating though to wake up at 6am every morning, weekends included, and shoot myself in the stomach knowing that it's shutting everything down and not getting any closer to growing some follies.  It's like a kid on Christmas morning having to wait while everyone opens their presents in a circle one at a time.  It Takes For-FREAKING-Ever!

Well today, it's my turn on Christmas morning.  I went to Akron yesterday.  Had a vag cam & bloodwork and was told that I was sufficiently suppressed.  So now, we get to grow some eggs.  I dropped the lupron down to 5 units (from 10) and will continue taking that each morning (the foot gently on the brake).  But this evening, I got to start my Follistim. 

When we were doing IUI, I would inject 125units every night.  This usually resulted in 3-4 follicles at the end of the cycle.  Now, with IVF, we go big.  300units every night.  I like this needle much more than the lupron one.  Less pinch for sure. 

This is what $254 dollars looks like.

One of these every night...

 Day #1

I injected the Follistim about an hour ago and can already feel a nice little headache coming on.  But I'll take it.  Give me headaches, give me fatness, give me bruises like this from hitting veins:

Give it all to me... just please give me a baby when it's all over and done.  

5 pounds in 6 days... Impressive

Last Friday, I started my suppressing injections.  The drug is called Lupron, but it might as well be called sticks-of-pure-butter-every-fried-food-chocolate-coated-everything.  I have put on an additional 5 pounds... on top of the 15 that I have already gained during this 2 year process.  I have a double chin, my face is swollen, my arms jiggle, my ass has a nametag that says 'Kardashian', and my stomach is already starting to swell.  Sweet Baby Jesus. 

The kicker is that Lupron is not stimulating anything good to grow.  It's job is to put my ovaries and reproductive organs to sleep.  5 pounds may not sound terrible, but I just keep imagining how much more will come when I actually start stimulating eggs.  I would post a picture of me, except for I don't want to, so you'll just have to imagine the puffiness. 

Tomorrow is my last birth control pill (hopefully for my entire life).  I will continue injecting 10units of Lupron, taking doxycycline twice a day, baby aspirin, and prenatals until Friday the 12th, which is when the craziness starts and we get to finally grow some (hopefully lots) of eggs. 

So basically, the point of this post is to whine.  That's the great thing about this blog is I get to say whatever I want.  I want to say that I'm pissed off that I look like this.  Grr. 

Sometimes the best things in life are NOT free.

Today, we are ALL IN. 

We signed our consent form for our upcoming IVF. 
And we paid for it. 
In full. 
::Trigger the vomit reflex::

I haven't blogged in awhile due to a myriad of reasons, but today everything got serious, so today I'm back.  My first injections for IVF start Friday morning and I will continue shooting up until around the 3rd week of July.  While signing all 27 pages of the consent form, I kept reading about how there are never any guarantees.  There's no guarantee that our egg and sperm will make an embryo, no guarantee I will become pregnant with that embryo, no guarantee that I won't miscarry the baby if I do get pregnant, no guarantee that the baby won't have any birth defects, etc. etc. etc.

The odds of me actually getting knocked up is a little less that 50%. 

So roulette wheel, right?  Put your money down.  50% of the time you'll double your money and walk away a winner.  50% of the time, you lose it all. 

Well, today we bet $10,656.90 so far.  Allllllllll in.

Basic IVF= $7,300 
(includes visits, blood work, ultrasounds, trial transfer, egg retrieval with anesthesia, embryo care, embryo transfer back into me)
ICSI = $1,500
(intracytoplasmic sperm injection: This is an extra process we decided to pay for.  The embryologist will specifically pick the sperm that look the best and actually inject each mature egg with a hopefully super smart sperm.  This has been shown to lead to better fertilization rates.)
Medications =$1,856.90
(so far... I need to contact the second pharmacy in the morning to make a payment on the other half of the medications we need.  the office is really good at calling all the pharmacies to determine what to order from where to result in the lowest out of pocket costs)

At a time when everyone tells you to lower your stress and remain calm, they also ask you for 10K.  Now, don't get me wrong, we would pay it over and over and over again if we had to.  It's just really dis-concerning when we have now emptied our savings, checking, and every spare dollar we had just for a 50/50 chance.  Any normal person would say that's crazy.  But any infertile couple would do it at the blink of an eye.  We luckily got a very generous gift from my parents to help towards the payment this time, without which, we would have had to wait a few months until we saved up.  Regardless, it's a shit-ton of cash.  I asked for a shot of Petron after they handed me my receipt today.  The nurses laughed, but I was 100% serious. 

So today it begins... we are scared, nervous, excited, hopeful, doubtful... and officially broke.