IVF#2 - FSH Day 10 Monitoring Visit

I had my fourth and final monitoring visit today. I’ve been feeling pretty uncomfortable in my ovarian area. The ultrasound lady said “I can see why” as soon as she got a glimpse of my ovaries. Here’s my results:

Right: 10, 13.5, 15.5, 16.5, 17, 17, 17.5, 18, 18.5, 2<10.
Left: 10, 10, 11, 11.5, 15, 15.5, 16, 19, 20, 21, 2<10.

So I have a total of 23 follicles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A max of 13 follies will have a chance of being mature at egg retrieval.

My lining is 8.9mm, much lower than last IVF, but still in an acceptable range.

I unfortunately do have some more bad news, despite reducing my meds twice, my E2 has sky-rocketed to 8380!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It jumped by almost 4000 in just 2 days and it’s going to continue to rise over the next 2 days. Remember the highest they ever want it to get to is 4000. Peak E2 in a normal non-stimulated cycle is about 150-600, so as you can imagine, the body is not used to this extreme level.

They are having me trigger tonight at 9:30p with one and a half Ovidrels. Tue I go for one last E2 blood draw. Then Wed is my egg retrieval at 8:30a.

I talked to my doctor and she’s pretty concerned about me developing Ovarian Hyper-Stimulation Syndrome. I heard this is NOT fun at all. But I’m NOT going to get it, right!!!!! The excessively high E2 could damage the egg quality, boo! She is going forward with egg retrieval, will fertilize the eggs and then decide if she wants to do a fresh or frozen transfer. Based on impaired uterine receptivity to implantation, she feels I’d still be better off with the fresh over frozen. Based on the risk of OHSS, she thinks the frozen transfer would be much safer. The risk of OHSS goes way up if you become pregnant. I checked my clinics success rates for my age group and a fresh transfer has a 45% chance of resulting in a pregnancy and a frozen transfer has a 39% chance.

Prior to IVF#1, I was pre-diagnosed as a poor responder. After IVF#1 I was upgraded to a low responder. Today I was upgraded to a normal responder. So that’s some good news!

For those of you interested, here’s a recap of my E2 levels:

IVF#1
Day 5: 1640
Day 7: 3428
Day 8: 4245
Day 9: Trigger
Day 10: 6867

IVF#2
Day 4: 668
Day 6: 1742
Day 8: 4385
Day 10: 8380 (Trigger tonight)
Day 11: ?