Friday, November 13, 2009

IVF, Here We Come

So much has happened since our BFN and I have had zero motivation to post.  I kept thinking, "Man, I should really write about this", but I never did... This may be a long one, feel free to skim until something catches your fancy.

I finally went back to work again after my wreck. It's exhausting! 3.5 months off really affects your strength and stamina. I did nothing but work and sleep the first week back. I could barely stay awake long enough to eat. Luckily it's getting much better now. 

The day after Trina started her period, we had a tearful consultation with our wonderful RE. He said we basically had 2 options. We could do a 3rd injectable cycle, then move on to IVF if it didn't work, or we could just jump to IVF. He said first 3 injectable cycles all have about the same rate of success, but starting with the 4th, the success rates drop drastically. Having lost all confidence in basic infertility treatments, we chose to jump to IVF. He scheduled Trina for a hysteroscopy so he could look at the exact spot he'd place the embryos. If the spot was clear, we could start this cycle. If the spot had scar tissue that needed to be removed, we'd have to sit out a cycle so she could heal. The procedure showed that she didn't have scar tissue, but that she did have a uterine polyp that had to be removed. This caused some cramping and bleeding for a few days, but wasn't too terrible. At her post op appointment, Doc said the polyp was small enough that we could start this cycle if we wanted to. Between my work schedule, the holidays and a planned trip to Arizona in Jan, we decided to hold off for now. She'll call them when her Dec cycle starts to begin suppression. In the mean time, I plan to do an obsessive amount of research, pay off as much debt as possible, try to decide who's eggs to use and win the lotto if at all possible...

We went to a patient education seminar dealing with a spectrum of infertility causes and treatments put on by our fertility clinic. They were giving away a free IVF cycle at the end. We didn't win, of course, but it was nice to dream. The seminar was great. The doctors are all so laid back and answered everyone's questions in detail. It was so much fun to people watch there. Infertility really affects a wide variety of folks. I liked listening to how people phrased questions. Some of them acted like the questions were hypothetical. They'd say "What if "someone" had a blocked tube blah blah blah", like they were asking for a friend or out of pure curiosity. I was thinking "You're standing in an infertility seminar, we know it's your tube that's blocked, it's ok, we're all in the same boat." Then there were the people who were over sharing in a major way. One girl rambled on for 5 min about her whoas. Apparently she knows her boyfriend isn't the problem because he's gotten 2 other girls pregnant and she's never been pregnant even though she's never used protection and that's how her cheatin' ass ex boyfriend gave her chlamydia. Wow. Then there was the guy who guzzled wine throughout the whole thing and cringed at all of the pictures and diagrams on the power point presentation. He says, slurring,  "I've had quite a bit to drink so I'll be honest, we got mobility problems, her parts are fine..." It was hilarious. Who would have thought hearing about infertility would have made for such an amusing night?