The One with the Whining

The title of this post is your official warning.  This will be a post filled with complaining.  Stop now if you don't want to listen to me bitch.

I went back for my 85th monitoring appointment this morning.  My veins are so mad at me that I'm pretty sure they are on strike.  My vag has been probed so many times with the cam that she is awfully pissed there hasn't been an offer of a dinner date.  Or even a movie.

The ultrasound was up first today.  There has been some small progress with the ove's.  There are now 3 measurable follies on the left and 4 measurable follies on the right.  She said there were multiple ones on the left that were less than 12mm and 6 on the right that were less than 12mm.  I have been chatting with them lately telling them to get their asses in gear.  The numbers of follies is great; it's the size that needs to improve.

Whoever said size didn't matter was lying.

Vein assault was next.  I had the joy of being stuck twice this morning.  The first vein she tried has officially said FU to the lovely phlebotomists at my center.  It is closed for business.  She found another one toward the top of my arm and did a little digging to get the butterfly needle deep enough to pierce it.  The digging was awesome I tell you.

  The proof is in the bandages.  Just another war wound to add to the list.

I am nannying this week and next.  The family I work for is fantastic and I am so lucky to be able to share with them what is happening.  They are so understanding and have been so flexible with me needing time off in the near future for the retrieval and transfer.  Look, that whole paragraph was positive and didn't include one whine!

To counter that Pollyanna paragraph, I'm going to tell you what is happening in the side effects department.  There is really only one new joy to add to the list, but it's a doozie.  

So, here goes.

I am extremely aware of my ovaries.  I don't just mean that I think about them way more than is normal for any sane person.  I mean I can feel them growing.  Starting last night, I have been having these strange feelings in my lower abdomen.  I described it to my mother tonight as such, "It feels like period cramps, combined with needing to poop, combined with eating too much and drinking a ton of beer.  It's a full feeling."  It's not painful, just uncomfortable.  I know it's going to get worse too.  Clearly none of this compares to the pain of childbirth, which I am paying thousands of dollars to experience some day, so I really shouldn't bitch and moan too much over here.  But I am.  And will most likely continue to.  You're over it.

I heard back from the nurse this afternoon while I was at Barnes and Noble with the kiddos.  My super nice nurse said to keep stabbing myself with the same meds and set me up with another monitoring appointment for Wednesday morning.  Which means retrieval will not be until Friday at the earliest.  I totally forgot to ask her what my E2 level was as I was trying to wrangle three kids under 7 away from the plethora of toys at Barnes and Noble (isn't this supposed to be a book store?!).  So, more waiting.  I really do appreciate the fact that I am doing this crazy stuff during the summer while I'm not teaching because I don't know how people with jobs do this.  This IVF shit is a full time job.

I leave you with the proof of my vein assault and funny image that pretty much sums up this awesome IVF journey.

Bruise #129.  My body hates me and the general public thinks I'm being domestically assaulted.

Stolen from here

Hubs promised me froyo after my Follistim shot.  I'm off to require him make good on that promise.

The One with the Lazy Ovaries

Hi, my name is Jessica and I have lazy ovaries.  

(Here's your part)...

::Hi, Jessica::

Yesterday was my second monitoring appointment on day 6 of stims.  I went in for blood work and an ultrasound.  My date with the vampire was first and she asked if I wanted her to use the left arm since the right was already bruised.  Well maybe if you guys hadn't bruised me in the first place it wouldn't be an issue.  But I was nice and told her there's usually more luck in the right, so stab away she did.  Didn't hurt too much at that point and I headed down the hall for my ultrasound.  

As I stripped off my underwear, all I could think was, "Please let them be growing.  Please let something be happening with these ovaries."  Vag cam made an appearance, got lubed and condomed up, and the black and white blurry images appeared on the screen.  The tech was super sweet and told me my lining looked decent, but that it had some thickening to do.  She spotted 4 follicles on the left and 5 follicles on the right, but all of them were not measurable.  Damn it, this can't be good, I thought. Got myself cleaned up and the tech told me to expect a phone call that afternoon with my plan.

I interrupt this lazy ovary story with a quick recap of my trip to Almost-in-New-York-and-Vermont-at-the-same-time, Massachusetts on Tuesday.  I mentioned that I would be administering meds on the trip and I can now say that I have stabbed myself at...

...wait for it...

...McDonalds.  In the bathroom.  

I must say, McDonalds in random MA town, your bathroom was quite lovely.

I laughed at the absurdity of the situation most of the time I was prepping and giving myself the shot.  Only with infertility does this shit happen.  I had to laugh or I may have cried.

But, I digress.  Back to the stupid lazy ovaries.

My nurse called as I was pulling into the driveway yesterday afternoon after a morning at school (balls hot and so depressing yet again).  She told me that my meds were going to stay the same and that I just appeared to be a slow responder, but that I was responding.  She gave me the same info about the number of follies that the tech had told me about in the morning.  She also told me the lining of my uterus was at 6mm.  They want to see it to be at least 7mm.  I asked about my E2 level.  On Monday, it was 49 and yesterday it was at 90.  Still too low, but at least it had increased with the change in Follistim.  They like to see the E2 over 100 and closer to 150 at this point.  Again, lazy ovaries, lazy estrogen, lazy me!

I asked the nurse about our retrieval date.  At this point, I knew we'd be pushed back but I wanted to know if she had any idea when it would be now.  She told me they would know a lot more after my next appointment, but that she didn't expect the retrieval to happen before next Thursday the 16th.  That date actually works better because of Hubs' work schedule, but it's just one more delay.  I asked the nurse if I should be concerned at this point and she was very reassuring.  She told me I'm just a slow responder and that there are follicles there.  They are just being lazy and need a little more encouragement to get going.  She did make me feel better, but there is still a huge part of me that is petrified we will get canceled.  I honestly don't know if I can handle that.  This has been such a long journey and if we can't even get to the retrieval and transfer, I am going to feel like such a failure.  But, I trust Dr. Bow Tie and I know he knows what he's doing, so I put my ovaries and my future baby in his hands.  Now we wait.

My next appointment for blood work and an ultrasound is Saturday.  Hopefully, there will be some nice growth by then.  I started talking to them yesterday.  "Please little follies, grow nice and big so one of you can hold the special egg that will be our baby.  I need you to do your part and I promise to do mine."  Yeah, I'm probably going crazy, but I'll try anything at this point.

Oh, remember that vampire from the beginning of this post?  Well she nicked a vein when she stabbed me and I developed this awesome addition to the war wounds.

The blood from the vein pooled in my forearm.  Hurts like crazy.

My right arm looks like I've been in a battle.

Needless to say, we will be using my left arm on Saturday.

I'm home today waiting for a refill of the Follistim to be delivered.  I needed to get more once my dose got increased.  I'll be continuing to read Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected by Kelle Hampton while I wait for UPS.  She writes an amazing blog that I have been following for a while.  I have wanted to read this book since it came out this winter, but I hadn't gotten around to it.  When I saw it in the library yesterday, I was super happy to bring it home and start it.  I made it about 3 sentences in before the tears came.  I know the story through her blog, but her hopes and fears about motherhood and the unexpected diagnosis of her daughter with Down syndrome tugs at my heart right now.  These damn hormone meds don't help my stability either!

Think follie growth and smaller bruises for me, please.

The One with the Mother of All Bruises

As I write this, I have been "stimming" for two days.  That means I have started my stimulation medication to make my ovaries produce somewhere close to seventy bajillion eggs so that they can get sucked out of me and go frolic with Hubs' sperm.

On Friday morning, I cut my Lupron does in half down to 5 iu.  The leprechauns have happily departed and my head feels back to normal.  I did my first Follistim injection on Friday night.  Follistim is a different setup than the Lupron.  It involves a cartridge full of medicine that gets put inside a "pen" and injected through an attached needle.  Little more complicated to administer.  It also has to be refrigerated which can cause the medicine to hurt more going in if you don't follow the directions and let it get to room temperature first.  What idiot wouldn't follow the directions though?!  ::hangs head in shame::

Follistim comes in this super stylish case.  I may accessorize my next outfit with it.

Pen with the medicine cartridge underneath and the needles at the bottom.  Looks innocent enough, right?  I mean how much hurt can something that looks like a Bic pen cause?

Close-up of the pen without the cap.  And more importantly, without the needle.

So the needle gets attached and the medicine gets "dialed" up.  That means I use the yellow turny dial on the top to dial up to 175 iu of the medicine.  And then I stab inject myself.

I didn't exactly follow the whole let it get to room temp direction and it definitely hurt going in.  And it also hurt after it went it.  And it also caused quite a bit of blood when the needle came out.  And it also brought about the nastiest bruise yet.

I give you...the mother of all bruises.

I also had my first traveling with meds experience yesterday.  My cousin and her boyfriend were having a party in Connecticut and Hubs and I took the two hour drive to go see them.  Because I have to administer the Follistim at the same time every night, it had to come with us.  I packed the Follistim purse in a cooler with ice packs, along with my baby sharps container and the dip I was bringing to the party. 

Hello, thanks for having us.  Here is the dip I made.  Oh don't mind the needles.  It's all part of the roller coaster.

(Side note:  This dip was amaze-balls.  Highly recommend you make it and then maybe just eat it with a spoon.  Like now.)

This time, I set a reminder on my phone so I took the medicine out about fifteen minutes before I was ready to shoot myself up.  This helped a lot with the pain.  Snuck off to the bathroom with my cooler of drugs and needles and put my ove's to work.

I go in tomorrow morning for my first monitoring blood work appointment.  Fingers crossed that everything looks good.

I leave you with a picture of Hubs in his new shirt.

Pretty much sums it up right there.

Enjoy your Sunday!