I just got my estradiol level back and it’s now 9029, zoiks Scooby!!!! I’ve been given instructions to stay very well hydrated and eat lots of protein. It won’t prevent OHSS, but will help with the symptoms. But since I’m NOT going to get it, it’s just a precaution. Egg retrieval is tomorrow morning. While I’m having surgery, Kerry has an appt with the Lazy Boy in the collection room. I'll ask again, how fair is that???
I talked to my IVF nurse today and got some more info. I asked her what will determine if they will go forward with a fresh transfer or freeze everything. One consideration is my insane E2 level, the other is she wants to see how many eggs fertilize and what the quality is. If I have a good count and quality, she feels it would be ok to freeze them and I could have a good chance with a frozen transfer later. If I have a low count or poo poo quality and freezing/thawing them would probably result in losing them all, she would rather chance the fresh transfer. So sounds like she wants to keep me safe but at the same time, really wants me to have a good chance at pregnancy. I’m at peace, whatever she decides.
I next asked about the frozen embryo transfer process (FET). If I have to go frozen, the real bummer part is that it will be 3 months from now before I get to transfer them, ugh. Did I mention I’m tired of waiting already? Well I am, let’s get me pregnant already! I would have to wait for this cycle to end, go through a normal cycle on my own, and then start the process the following cycle. The process is unexpectedly more than I realized. It is identical to going through IVF minus the stim injections and egg retrieval. It’s a 6-week process of birth control pills, lupron to shut down your hormone system, estrogen supplements, monitoring visits, transfer and progesterone injections. Basically it’s HRT (hormone replacement therapy). The scary part is that you can’t thaw the embies until you’re ready for transfer, so you have to go through the all the prep work before you even know if your embies are going to survive the thaw. I asked her how many they will unthaw. If they are frozen right after fertilization, they unthaw them all and see what develops. If they are frozen at day 3-5, they will only unthaw how many you want to transfer. They will keep unthawing one at a time until they have that amount or run out. The embryologist will determine when they think is best to freeze. I never thought I’d ever be at the mercy of so many people to get me pregnant. If anyone ever wants some advice on how to NOT get pregnant, I’m your woman! =)
I’m off to go take it easy before delivering all my little follies. =)
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
IVF#2 - Trigger
I'm officially triggered! I can soooo relate to women who are one week from giving birth right now. I am so bloated and uncomfortable, I cannot wait to give birth to these follies and get them out of me!
I don't know if it's 100+ injections in my stomach over the last 2 IVFs or my high E2, but wow is my skin getting tough to pierce. Thank God I'm done with injections, at least in my stomach!
Now I wait on pins and needles, will they choose fresh or frozen transfer?
I don't know if it's 100+ injections in my stomach over the last 2 IVFs or my high E2, but wow is my skin getting tough to pierce. Thank God I'm done with injections, at least in my stomach!
Now I wait on pins and needles, will they choose fresh or frozen transfer?
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: ?
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: ?
Saturday, July 19, 2008
IVF#2 - FSH Day 8 Monitoring
Today was my third monitoring visit. I have some good and bad news this time. Here's the results:
Right: 10, 13, 13, 14.5, 15, 15.5, 17
Left: 10.5, 11.5, 12, 12, 13.5, 13.5, 15.5, 16.5
So that is the good news, I have 15 measurable follies plus some less than 10 that they didn't bother counting as they won't have time to catch up.
Lining: 7.8mm (down from 8.5mm, that has to be an error!)
Here's the bad news:
E2: 4385!!!! (up from 1742) This is NOT good! This jumped big time and is now higher than IVF#1. This was something that we were all hoping would not happen again. They don't want it to be over 4000 at trigger time and I still have a couple of days to go, so it's going to get much higher. As a side note, trigger is an hcg hormone injection that causes your follies to fully mature and be ready for retrieval. They have no choice but to keep me going as the follies need more time to mature. This puts me at risk of Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS), but because I didn't get this last time with an E2 of 6867 at trigger, hopefully I can escape it again. That's not what I'm worried about though, my concern is that excessively high E2 levels are detrimental to implantation. So even if I have perfect embryos transfered, there's a risk that my uterine lining will not be receptive to them implanting. One option is to go forward with egg retrieval, freeze all the fertilized embryos and then do a frozen embryo transfer next cycle when all my hormone levels are back to normal. This is a risk as well as frozen embryos have a lower chance of surviving than fresh. I'm going to talk to my RE Monday and see what she thinks. Our prayer is that we have enough embryos to go forward with this cycle and a few to freeze as a backup. Last time we only had one embryo to work with.
They are lowering my stim dose again by a small amount.
From: 150 Gonal am / 75 Menopur pm
To: 75 Gonal am / 75 Menopur pm
I go back for another monitoring visit Monday morning. Hopefully my follies will be big enough by then for trigger. My ovaries are becoming quite achy and I'm having to slow down. I'm trying to remain positive, hopeful, and trust in God, but honestly I'm scared to death. I just want to be a mom, why does this have to be so hard?
Right: 10, 13, 13, 14.5, 15, 15.5, 17
Left: 10.5, 11.5, 12, 12, 13.5, 13.5, 15.5, 16.5
So that is the good news, I have 15 measurable follies plus some less than 10 that they didn't bother counting as they won't have time to catch up.
Lining: 7.8mm (down from 8.5mm, that has to be an error!)
Here's the bad news:
E2: 4385!!!! (up from 1742) This is NOT good! This jumped big time and is now higher than IVF#1. This was something that we were all hoping would not happen again. They don't want it to be over 4000 at trigger time and I still have a couple of days to go, so it's going to get much higher. As a side note, trigger is an hcg hormone injection that causes your follies to fully mature and be ready for retrieval. They have no choice but to keep me going as the follies need more time to mature. This puts me at risk of Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS), but because I didn't get this last time with an E2 of 6867 at trigger, hopefully I can escape it again. That's not what I'm worried about though, my concern is that excessively high E2 levels are detrimental to implantation. So even if I have perfect embryos transfered, there's a risk that my uterine lining will not be receptive to them implanting. One option is to go forward with egg retrieval, freeze all the fertilized embryos and then do a frozen embryo transfer next cycle when all my hormone levels are back to normal. This is a risk as well as frozen embryos have a lower chance of surviving than fresh. I'm going to talk to my RE Monday and see what she thinks. Our prayer is that we have enough embryos to go forward with this cycle and a few to freeze as a backup. Last time we only had one embryo to work with.
They are lowering my stim dose again by a small amount.
From: 150 Gonal am / 75 Menopur pm
To: 75 Gonal am / 75 Menopur pm
I go back for another monitoring visit Monday morning. Hopefully my follies will be big enough by then for trigger. My ovaries are becoming quite achy and I'm having to slow down. I'm trying to remain positive, hopeful, and trust in God, but honestly I'm scared to death. I just want to be a mom, why does this have to be so hard?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
IVF#2 - FSH Day 6 Monitoring
I'm here to deliver some more good news! Today was my second monitoring visit. Still going good!!! Here's the results:
Right: 10, 11, 11.5, 12.5, 14.5, 3<10
Left: 9, 11.5, 11.5, 13, 5<10
Lining: 8.5mm (up from 6mm, yeah!)
E2: 1742 (up from 668, pretty high, but still lower than last time)
So that gives me 9 measurable follicles and 17 total, wahoo! She said the <10 are around 9mm, so they may catch up. The goal is to get my follicles to 18mm and have them be at the same size so they are all mature at the same time.
They are lowering my stim dose by a small amount.
From: 150 Gonal am / 75 Gonal + 75 Menopur pm
To: 150 Gonal am / 75 Menopur pm
That drops my 5 injections/day to 4, my tummy is happy about that! I think they are trying to slow down my estradiol level.
I go back for another monitoring visit Sat morning.
I'm feeling pretty good. The bloating kicked in big time yesterday, I look so pregnant! I keep looking at myself in the mirror sideways and get so tickled at the thought.
Right: 10, 11, 11.5, 12.5, 14.5, 3<10
Left: 9, 11.5, 11.5, 13, 5<10
Lining: 8.5mm (up from 6mm, yeah!)
E2: 1742 (up from 668, pretty high, but still lower than last time)
So that gives me 9 measurable follicles and 17 total, wahoo! She said the <10 are around 9mm, so they may catch up. The goal is to get my follicles to 18mm and have them be at the same size so they are all mature at the same time.
They are lowering my stim dose by a small amount.
From: 150 Gonal am / 75 Gonal + 75 Menopur pm
To: 150 Gonal am / 75 Menopur pm
That drops my 5 injections/day to 4, my tummy is happy about that! I think they are trying to slow down my estradiol level.
I go back for another monitoring visit Sat morning.
I'm feeling pretty good. The bloating kicked in big time yesterday, I look so pregnant! I keep looking at myself in the mirror sideways and get so tickled at the thought.
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