Fertile yet Infertile ?

Having a 'Blast' . . .

Got the call at about 9:15 this morning from the embryologist.

13 of the 15 eggs retrieved were mature. They were all fertilized yesterday, and this morning we have 10 lovely, growing embryos. Ten! I'm certainly feeling good about that number.

She seems confident that a good number of them will get to blast stage, so she said transfer is scheduled for Sunday. She did hedge a bit and say there is still a slight chance we'll have to go Friday if things take a downward turn with a lot of embryos arresting, but told me she doesn't think that is likely.

So far, so good. I'm definitely a little less anxious after hearing this news this morning, but still terrified nonetheless.

I'm still somewhat shocked at exactly what kinds of feelings these past few days have brought up for me, and how intense they have been. I'm guessing some of it has to do with the finality of it all. During each of my cycles, I've always wondered how I could gather up the strength to do another one if it didn't work out. Before this one started, and even moreso as we were going through it, I knew this one was it. Its too hard, my body seems to be more crippled with side effects each time - and my emotions, ugh. Plus T and know if this isn't our time, we have to move on. Move on to what, we don't know, but there will not be any more treatments. Could I truly be mourning the end of my ART career?

I know its bigger than that - and that there's just so much we've lost over the past five years. So much more than I ever thought possible the day we were married. I wish it weren't so, but that's our truth; it's who we are now. I just hope this next bit doesn't end up being one more entry on that long, sad list that I carry around in my heart every day.

In the Numbers

Well, now we start up with playing the numbers game.

I waited until 3 o'clock this afternoon, and when I still hadn't had a call, I gave in and called our coordinator. Apparently they don't usually call with the number of eggs (HUH?!), rather they wait until the day after to call with the fertilization report.

Anyway, they retrieved 15 eggs from the donor this morning. I guess that is good? I feel like I have such a hard time putting it in context because I always get stimmed agressively and my output has been as high as 30.  I then end up thinking those are the kind of numbers I should expect out of a donor.  But then again, if this is 15 quality eggs, I'll take that over 30 crappy ones any day.

In any case, its better than the donor we used at the now-closed clinic, who only produced 10 eggs, 4 of which were immature. I'm just going to pray and hope tonight for the best and send good thoughts out to the little embryos growing in those petrie dishes in the lab.

Developments

DE cycles are the weirdest things. You can be going along, gracefully taking your shots and yet feeling like you're not getting anywhere. Day after day, the same gray scenery - dull and drab. You're going down this road slowly, like being pulled along on a horse drawn wagon.

Then one day - BOOM! You get a call on your cell phone on a Sunday (which luckily you turned on even though you almost never do if you're home on the weekends) and you're at the races. Instead of that horse drawn carriage, you're in one of those Grand Prix cars - reeling around turns, hurtling down hills with the wind screaming in your ears. And the worst part of it is this: you're not driving. You're in the passenger seat, frantically pressing the imaginary brake pedal, covering your eyes and yelling at someone, hell - everyone to just SLOW DOWN!

Donor is ready. Retrieval is tomorrow. I'm scared beyond belief. I've alternated between sheer panic and blinding sadness over the past 24 hours or so. For some reason, this has brought a lot of old pain up from my losses, the wounds somehow opened up again.

But I have to get it together. Focus somehow on doing the things I need to do this week to help us maybe, I hope, on finding a happier place.

More tomorrow after the retrieval in early am. In the meantime, all prayers and good thoughts are encouraged and humbly accepted!

Rolling along

Brief cycle update because there's not much to say:

I was in for blood work yesterday.  Thank goodness, it was either bossy nurse's day off, or she was at another office.  Apparently my E*strogen is lower than they want it to be, since they increased my dose of Del*estrogen for last night.  I didn't get to talk to the doctor - he called and left a message while I was away from my desk - so I don't know the details.  I am back in for more blood and an u/s to check my lining thickness on Thursday so I should get to talk to a doctor then.

The early morning thing, even though the monitoring is far less than a cycle with my own eggs, is getting old.  Mostly because I feel like crap.  I'm not sure if its the slightly different protocol than my first DE cycle or just my general intolerance of late for putting ivf drugs into my body, but YUK.  I'm just SO TIRED.  The tired that seems to have no relation to how much I sleep.  7 hours or 10 - I still feel like death warmed over when I wake up.  I could sleep until noon if I were allowed, which is completely out of character for me.  Also, I feel alternatively nauseous, then hungry but with no desire to eat anything - food has just been very unappealing to me.  Its a very strange feeling, somewhat similar to how I've felt before in early pregnancy.

I am useless at work.  I have no energy and am unmotivated.  I'm having a hard time focusing on tasks that must get done, and am also struggling with my reasoning skills.  For me - the logical, analytical, employee who relies on a clear head, this is tough.  Also it worries me that its blatantly obvious to the outside world and they will wonder what is up.  "Wow, lately Sherry's had those bags under her eyes and seems to be out of it in meetings.  She forgets things I ask her to do and makes a lot of mistakes.  I wonder if she's drinking on the job?"

And I won't even get started on what I've been like at home.  Cranky and useless sums it up mostly.  I cooked a big meal Sunday and it about killed me.  Me - the Food Network, cooking magazine fanatic who loves to cook and sees her Sundays as not the day of rest, but the day of chopping, simmering and sauteing.  And I was completely done in by turkey tettrazini.  Sad.

Cycle update

Just a quickie for anyone playing along with this cycle at home!

I've been on Lu*pron now since June 26th.  I've decided during this 10 or so days that Lu*pron is THE.EVIL-EST.IVF.DRUG.EVER.  Yuk.  I have felt sluggish, nauseous, head-achy, air-headed, and just generally blah now for days.  My hope is now that we decreased the dosage and added the Del*estrogen, maybe I will start feeling better.

First Del*estrogen shot was last night - not bad at all, even though its given via IM injection.  Too soon for side effects, so we'll see how this week goes.

I'm not completely sure when my donor starts stims - my guess is sometime this week.  I'm trying not to obsess. 

As a side note - while I was in getting my suppression blood work done yesterday, I innocently asked the nurse which syringe to use for the del*estrogen shot that night.  She was very nicely showing me and instructing me, when a bossy nurse from across the room butted in.  "Did you schedule a teaching session for this cycle?" she blurted out.  "Um, no," I choked. 

She then proceeded to scold me for not doing so.  I tried to explain that T and I are pretty skilled at this injection thing by now, didn't need teaching, and that I just had the one question about the one drug we hadn't used before.  I even joked that the two of us could probably teach the class, prompting a giggle from the other ivf-er getting her blood drawn amidst the scolding.  "Still, she said - whenever you do something new, you should schedule a teaching session."  At first I thought to myself - "well, she's only doing her job, trying to make sure I take my meds appropriately. . ." but the more I thought about it, the more annoyed I was.  First, she scolds me in front of all these other people, and second - without a  CLUE about my history.  For the number of times I've done this, and the number of shots T and I have administered collectively, I mean come on!  All I wanted to know was which syringe to use, and I was good to go!  Otherwise I would have had to waste a half day of work PLUS pay whatever my co-pay was for attending this session!  It still gets me sometimes that ivf nurses can be so insensitive to the hoops we are jumping through as patients!

Anyway - lesson learned.  My info packet that came with my drug schedule had instructions for injecting the del*estrogen.  If I had just read the darn thing, I never would have had to hear it from bossy nurse.

In which we try again

Well, the day back in March that we went to see the "egg donor lady," (edl) as we affectionately call her, I was faking it.  We weren't sure we really wanted to do it again.  Our most recent IVF failure was too raw; I was still too depressed to even consider the option.

But we figured, since there was minimal cost involved with doing our intake session with her, and getting on "the list," we'd do it anyway.  We breezed through the session mostly, talking with edl at length about what we'd be looking for in a donor.  I was fairly impressed with her.  This was clearly a whole different operation than the last program we'd been through.  This woman was actually the first DE recipient in my state to successfully go through the procedure and give birth, accomplished while being treated at my clinic.  Her twins are 12 or so - beautiful red heads, a girl and a boy.

In any case, I felt comfortable chatting with her, but still not over the moon about the idea.  We left the clinic after discussing, at length, our desire to utilize a proven donor, preferably one who'd produced lots of eggs, and an established pregnancy in the recipient.

Fast forward a couple months, to a couple days before T and I left for a much needed vacation to Mexico.  EDL called me at work, excited as hell.  "When are you going on vacation?!" she asks.  When I told her "in two days," she said "Well I hope you have a chance to open the profile I sent you first!"

I was dumbfounded.  It had really only been a couple months.  I expected closer to six, based on our request of a repeat donor - which usually requires a wait longer than my clinic's three month average.  Turns out she was not a repeater, but EDL just thought she was such a perfect match that she HAD to send the profile my way.  She excitedly suggested that we bring the profile with us, and "read it on the beach!"

Ugh, I thought - one of the main reasons we wanted this vacation was to clear our heads and regroup - to think about what we really wanted to do next in the IF battle.  We very wisely decided to not open it when we finally got it in the mail the Friday before we left, putting it off until we returned.

We had a great vacation.  Wonderful weather, plenty of margaritas, sun, sand, holding hands, and just getting back to being a regular couple totally in love.

Well, as was probably obvious from my last post, once we were home we decided to go for it.  Even as I opened the envelope and pulled the profile out, I remember thinking, "this is futile.  I need to be done using my body as a science experiment."  But then, there she was.  There was just something in that profile - beyond the physical characteristics and boring stats . . . something in between the lines.  This could be her, I thought.  The more I thought about her, and discussed her with edl, the more I really liked her.  I mean REALLY.  I fell even more in love when they emailed me her childhood picture.  She was a total cutie!  All the doubts I had - all the lingering feelings from the last time we did this, when I never felt one bit comfortable with that donor, when my gut told me "No, don't do it!" and I ignored it.  All of that was gone.  This was her.

After some deliberations and discussions and even the presentation of a second donor (didn't like her much), we accepted.  YIKES!

So here I am - on my Lu*pron since Friday.  It's totally kicking my ass.  First del*estrogen shot (I've never done those before - has anyone else reading here?  Any info to share?) is tentatively scheduled for Monday the 7th.  ET is estimated to be late in the week of 7/21. 

Oh please - let this be the answer to our prayers!

Exposed

Well, I have to admit I never thought I would take as long a writing hiatus as I just did.

But if there were one reason behind it, which I am now ashamed to admit - it was that I felt overexposed somehow - like I had just put to much of myself out there, and it didn't feel good.

Truly, it was a comment on that last post that pushed me over the edge of feeling that way.  Why would this person defend the friend I was writing about?  Maybe it wasn't clear from what I wrote, but this "falling out" we had was not only about her insensitive comment about the donor sperm - it has been building up over years of her failing woefully to measure up to even the most basic expectations I have of my friends.

I went through a couple of days where I feared this commenter was her - J, the friend I wrote about.  After all, conveniently there is no profile associated with her initials.  Her IP address seemed to trace back to the general geographical area where J lives.  She doesn't appear to be an IF or former IF either, based on the comment she left.  I struggled as to how someone outside of the IF world would just stumble across this blog and feel inclined to leave such an unsupportive comment.

As time went on, I just got to feeling alternatively angry about it, (the comment) and feeling guilty that I had aired my personal grievances online.  But the time and distance I've had to reflect on it have helped me make the scar feel a lot less raw, and I've gained some perspective - and am ready to move on.  If the odd comments persist, I always have options in limiting that person's influence and access to my blog.  The bottom line is I get too much out of blogging that I don't get irl to stop doing it now; the kinship, the support, and the release I get in just writing about my frustrations is just too valuable to me right now.

A brief, non-update to the friend story.  She never reached out to me, nor I to her.  My birthday was about a week after that last post, and I got not as much as an electronic card from her.  That was enough for me to move firmly over to the "let it go" side of my dilemma.  I can't say it doesn't still hurt that she chose to walk away from me like that, albeit during such a bad time in my life.  But based on past history, I can't say I'm surprised either.  It doesn't sting me every day like it used to - just once in a while, or when a mutual friend mentions getting together with her.

So - moving on.  Lots has been happening over here at casa F but IF.  Such as - I'm currently typing this while in a Lu*pron induced haze.

Intrigued anyone?  : )   

Friends in Low Places

I have so many things to write about, its just plain silly that I haven’t posted lately.

Sometimes, after a cycle craps out, I just get to this place. Its like the deep dark pit of no return. Ok – who am I kidding? After every cycle failure, and moreso – after all of my miscarriages, I go to this place. Not sometimes. EVERY time.

And every time, it seems to get worse. It takes me longer to climb out of it, to remember who I am again. It’s often a very difficult time for T and I, and this time is no exception. In fact, I think this is the worst its been so far – in the five years we’ve been walking down this road together.

But that’s not what I intended to write about today. Actually, I wanted to talk about how isolated I feel these days. This five years has been long and hard. Its been tough on me, and T no doubt, but truthfully what I’ve been turning over in my head the past couple of weeks is how its been devastating to the majority of my friendships. I read around the internets about women who either have infertile friends in real-life, ones who really "get-it." Also, I’ve read about bloggers who have real-life friends that, while they have not experienced infertility themselves, find ways to try and comprehend, or at the very least remain supportive and helpful even in the worst of times.

I have to admit posts like that make me jealous – because I really don’t have much, if any of those friends in my circle.

Some of the drifting apart is understandable. Most of my friends are married, and in the past 2-3 years, all of them have been pumping out kids. I usually don’t go to the gatherings where all the kids are in attendance, and they never have adult-only get-togethers. In addition, all of them at one time or another have proven through words and actions that they either don’t care about our plight, or that it makes them so uncomfortable that they can't deal with it. All of this just left me feeling empty or upset or angry – over and over again, every time it happened. So I just stopped. No emails, no calls, no get-togethers. Polite conversation when we see each other. Nothing more. And I’ve finally gotten to the place where it doesn’t bother me.

Then, there’s J. J has been a friend for years. While we were close and had fun hanging out when we were young and wild (well, wild for me anyway), things have been more complicated with J since I got married. She is still immature, acting like she’s in college even though she’s older than me. She mismanages her money, lives beyond her means in a tiny Manhattan apartment, and hasn’t had a serious relationship since high school.

But we continue to do this dance around one another, trying to pretend we’re still friends. We’ve had some difficult conversations in the last year or two – ones where I have confronted her about one thing or another, but we’ve survived. She’s always maintained that despite our obvious lifestyle differences, she wants to stay friends.

BUT.

During my pregnancies, my miscarriages, my IVF cycles over the years, she’s shown less and less of an interest in what happened, how it’s going, how I am dealing, etc. I mean, we’ve gotten to the point where we lately, we only chat about it occasionally via IM. No in-person discussions, no phone calls. It really bugs me.

Flash forward to this latest cycle. As I’ve written about here, we decided to take a shot at using a sperm donor to fertilize half my eggs and see if that created better quality embryos than last time. J and I, discussing this over IM, had the following conversation:

J: So you’re using the sperm donor this time?

S: Yeah.

J: What’s he like?

S: Ummm.

S: He has a PhD. in Geology.

J: Oh, so he’s a dork LOL

I signed off. I was mad. I KNOW this was a joke, and I doubt she had any intent of being hurtful. But hell – WHY would you joke about such a thing? The fact that T and I had even come to this option, that we were considering it…the drama that went into picking another man to be a biological part of our children. NOT. FUNNY.

From that point forward, I blocked her ID from my AIM. Weeks went by – all while I was going through the cycle. Nothing. No e-mails, no calls, nothing. Egg retrieval and then embryo transfer came and went. A couple days into the 2ww, I get a text message on my cell phone: "thinking of ya." WHAT IS THAT? Like I’m supposed to believe that was a genuine expression of concern or support? I ignored it. Finally a few days after we got the negative result, she sent me an email that essentially said she hadn’t heard from me, assumed things hadn't gone well and that I’m just taking my time, but she’s "hear (sic) for me." Again, I was flummoxed. Why wouldn’t she call? Just to check in? She covers this topic in an email? And she doesn’t even know my test was negative at this point, she’s just assuming?

Needless to say, I ignored it again. Later that week I shared with a mutual friend that the cycle didn’t work and we were heartbroken. I know he subsequently told her. She ended up calling me almost a week later, while I was away at my leadership retreat.  I emailed quickly to say I was away to which she replied: "joy."  And then came her email again a couple weeks later: "Hello?"

In any case, I couldn’t deal with her on top of all the other emotional bulk, so I just ignored it all. She finally called me at work one day (where she knows I can’t talk – I work in cubicle land) after a week or two and left a message that could be interpreted as hostile. She basically said she hadn’t heard from me, and to at least call and get in touch, she ‘gets it’ if I am laying low, but she wants to be "here for me."

I thought about it for a few days and eventually decided to email. I wanted to talk to her about everything, get it out on the table, but not over the phone. I conveniently was going to be in NYC that week for a meeting, so I suggested we get together, making evident I needed to talk to her about a couple things – implication being I’m angry or upset or something. This commences an email string where she lets me know she can’t make it that night because she has some community response training class to go to (like she couldn’t skip or try to get out a tad early?) and offers to meet me for lunch. I had already said I was in an all day meeting, so lunch was not an option, and couldn’t stay late (she wanted to meet at 10pm) etc. Well the end result is this statement from her "oh well, maybe next time I’m at my parents."

Her parents live about an hour from me, and she goes there for the weekend occasionally. I was stunned. I mean, could she be any more non-committal? Make it clearer she doesn’t REALLY want to sit down and have a tough conversation with me?

Ugh, just ugh. Why do people have so many issues that end up being my problem?  Where have all the normal people gone?

So I let the email go. I didn’t reply. I don’t know what else to do. I’m trying to find a way in my mind to get some kind of closure to it – to not be so upset about it, not to reflect on the whole situation all the time. All it does is bring me sadness. But I can’t. I keep reviewing the whole thing in my head - the past couple years of our drifting apart, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do next, how I’m supposed to move off this spot.

I suppose writing this is part of it; I’m trying to find a way to get it out of me and onto something else. Put it out there, out of my head where I just keep turning it over and looking at it, to look at it more objectively.

If anyone is still reading, you deserve a shout-out for hanging in there with me…

I’m planning on writing more over the weekend more specific to the next part of our IF journey. And oh yeah, stay tuned for an uplifting post about my depression.

Regrouping

I know - I've been among the missing the past couple of weeks.

The week after my negative beta, I had a week long leadership institute 'thing' to go to for work.  It was 9 hours of classes a day, combined with being broken into working groups that are given these large strategic problems to solve.  We have 6 weeks to work through them, go back for another week, and then present our solutions to senior management.

The week was hellacious.  12 hour days, being trapped in a small room with a bunch of people you've just met, many of them with very strong, controlling personalities.  ugh.  I was in a very vulnerable place that week, I just found getting through it was very hard.  I called T one night in tears, saying "I want to come home..."

Things are somewhat better now, but not great.  I have my moments.  Sometimes I'm philosophical, knowing we've tried so hard and done so much to try to reach this goal, there's no sense in any regret.  But then there are times when I am just so ANGRY.  Why me?  Why us?  Why can't we just have ONE baby.  That is all I asking for.  And other times I'm just uncontrollably sad.  Mourning the normal life we were supposed to have the past five years - as compared with our days that have instead been full of loss, pain, sadness, anger, needles, anxiety . . .

In any case we met with the RE today.  She was kind, and without saying so directly, basically told us its time to give up on using my eggs.  The embryologist apparently felt strongly that my egg quality is pretty compromised.  And after having been through so many cycles over the past couple of years, there's not a lot of reason to hope for pregnancy with my eggs.

So we can switch gears to a donor at this point, and/or consider donated embryos.  They don't have much of a supply of donated embryos, but you never know.  We had them put us on the list - there is no cost associated with it, and we can always say no when/if there are embryos offered to us.

So we have the egg donor packet, and we are seriously considering it.  Its odd - before we started this cycle, I was certain if it didn't work, and they recommended donor eggs, I would say no - and that we've had enough.  But yet, here and now, I don't feel 'done' yet.  Call me crazy, but somewhere down there, I think I still have hope.  Who knew?

The RE mentioned, and I completely agree, that we should use a proven donor.  We had such a bad experience before - I have no interest in repeating that.  Apparently they have a pretty good supply of donors, and the average wait time is around 3 months or so.

So we're thinking about it, but leaning strongly that way.  And that's where we are. 

How are all of you?

Hope Defeated

Well ladies, first I want to thank all of you for your hope-boosting comments.  They meant a lot to me on a day I had let myself sink low down into the pit of despair you all know so well.  And for the past 48 hours, I was able to climb out of it and still see hope peeking into the window, even if it was only through the crack in the curtains that were almost fully drawn.

Unfortunately, the hope was short-lived, as today was beta day.  The doctor called about an hour ago and told me my test was negative.  He told me my case would be reviewed in a group meeting tonight with input from embryology, and that they would discuss what could be improved upon and future steps.  I have to schedule a follow-up appointment with them to go over all of this.

I feel pretty numb right now.  I'm going to leave work in a bit - about an hour early.  T wanted me to go home now, but there is no point in it.  I'll just go home, curl up in a ball on the couch and wallow if I do that.  There's work to be done here and I can pretend for a couple more hours that my world isn't falling completely apart.

T and I have already briefly chatted about the future - and though I never would have thought we'd feel this way, we're actually considering another cycle.  Everything went so well this time (well except for the 'sorta' over-stimulation causing half my eggs to be unusable!) that we felt like we had the best shot at this so far in our long IF career.  So we'll see what conclusions the docs come to, and go from there I guess.

By sheer coincidence I have a therapy appointment tonight.  I don't even know if I feel enough right now to talk about - like I said, I feel pretty numb.  But I'm sure it will be helpful nonetheless.

Again, thank you all so much for the support and stopping by to leave comments.  It means the world to me to have strong women like all of you by my side while we all go through this crap that is infertility.