And so it begins. Today was my day 2 appointment after completing the "prep" meds last Thursday. I had to go into my local monitoring office this morning to ensure the blood work and ultrasound showed no concerns or cysts. It's pretty gross to have to have a trans vaginal ultrasound on day 2 of your menstrual cycle, especially when the technician asks me about making a payment while inserting the wand. It's a great start to the day. Maybe I'm over sensitive from the injections I had to do in prep for the heavy dose of medication to stimulate my ovaries, but it was still rude in my opinion. So I just got the call from the weekend nurse later on to tell me to "start whatever your protocol says." Next doctor's appointment will be in 3 days.
Here we are, I'm 3 days into injecting and waiting to go to the doctor's. I hate that I have to go in the AM before 9am, but then I never hear back about what is going on until around 3-4pm later that day. Its torcher! Anyhow I've been doing double doses of Menopur (150IU), and Follistim (450 IU). Both injections go into my stomach at night before bed, and the needles aren't huge or anything, but the Follistim is a weird pen that you have to load and when the medicine is being dispersed, it kind of clicks so that is just a little uncomfortable. It also stings after the injection is done for 20 minutes or so. Menopur is crappy because I can always feel when the liquid hits because it stings. It could be because of my having to double the dose mixed with the liquid that is injected, but I am not sure. Here's hoping the appointment today goes well.
Day 5: Well I know I'm probably jumping the gun, but its day 5, and according to the ultrasound technician, I have no follicles on either side right now that are measurable. I'm trying not to get upset because now I have to function for another 9 hours of work....hopefully this is just too soon to have them or something. I don't remember what happened on my last IVF cycle. Hours later the nurse called and said I did have follicles but they were not large enough to measure. So far 8 are showing up, but there's no use in counting on that because last time I started with 11 then ended up with only 5 to fertilize.
Day 7: Another doctor visit. Ultrasound tech said no changes, one follicle is 10 mm. Lining is still only at 5mm. These numbers are not good, I just know it. Now they say I have ten follicles, but then I have to remember each tech sees something different and there's a chance a follicle could in fact be a cyst (the things you learn). Eventually my nurse calls me right at the end of a meeting I had to put together for my one project. At least the timing was good. Other than that meeting, I've been a mess all day at work. I had to squat in a private CR all day just to keep it together. My husband and I tried to go to Chic fil-a at lunch, which was a horrible idea because I ended up having a mini panic attack over the amount of people and babies and pregnant women there were everywhere. It was so loud and there were no seats so we were just standing there in the way. OMG. Anyhow my mind is racing because I feel so in the dark about what is going on with this cycle. ts. I'm starting to feel the effects of the hormones at this point I think. Good thing tomorrow is my 35th birthday... :(
Day 9: Another local monitoring visit. I made the husband come with me today, I just have so much anxiety about going to them anymore. I can almost watch them put the needle in my arm to draw blood because they have done it so many hundreds of times at this point now that I almost feel like its just something I have to get used to as if I had some deadly disease. The only change today was that my lining went to 6mm and my estrogen went up to 139. The estrogen level is still super low compared to the 800 or higher it should probably have been at this point (don't quote me on it, because nobody told me that I just remember how high it got before the retrieval last time).
I had to deal with a weekend nurse on the phone today again, who was not very helpful and basically was just reading off numbers to me and had no idea about anything further. She had no idea that I was out of state or needing orders to go for my next monitoring appointment. She had to put me on hold twice to finally decide to email them to me. I was instructed to take the same dosing tonight, then start a higher dose of Menopur as well as a morning injection of Ganirelix. At this point I had increased my medications to 675 IU's, which was 75IU's over the limit plus the addition of Ganirelix. Ganirelix was apparently added to prevent ovulation of the one lowly follicle I have ready to go. I wish I could have had a conversation with the doctor before increasing because I just had it in my mind that I couldn't do an IVF retrieval with anesthesia and everything for one egg. I mean I ovulate the same thing every god damn month and it doesn't cost us 12k. Ugh - its just very frustrating because I knew where this was headed despite never having gone through it before this.
Day 11: Another doctor's appointment today before work. Its stressful always getting bad news. I have a hard time going to these constant appointments with the same result anymore, its like yet another thing to give me anxiety. Today was more of the same. My lining went up to a 7 which was probably the only good news. The one follicle that actually was progressing was at 16mm now. The remaining 7 were too small to count moving forward so I was essentially down to one chance. I left worked up and anxious as usual. I contacted the doctor when I got to work looking for the chance to talk to him finally (he's been on a vacation which I'm sure was much needed).
Later in the day, the doctor calls around 1:30, and he essentially says its probably a good idea to cancel although he hasn't yet got my results. Despite the lining being better, the follicle isn't sufficient nor is it a good enough reason to wipe out all the money we put towards IVF. So we decide to cancel the cycle and I am beyond devastated. I cried harder than I've cried in years, I couldn't stop crying, almost like I was mourning the death of the possibly perfect little follicle waiting to become a baby. Ugh. Just one blow after another. So here goes the end of another cancelled cycle where I went all the way through with the medication until the point of go/no go on a retrieval. I hope I made the right decision. I can only try to believe we did what we thought was best for our chances.
Here's all the meds I went through this cycle:
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