IVF Update

I was wanded and had blood draws both Friday and Saturday. My left ovary made an appearance but only after some coaxing and it still didn't come perfectly into view. They could basically tell that I had several follicles over there, but that they were running smaller than the ones on my right side. I had a total of 14 follicles, but they were of varying sizes. My estradiol went from 1591 to 1727 over those two visits. No wonder I was acting like an emotional freak! Sat afternoon I got the call telling me my egg retrieval would be Monday morning at 6:30AM. I was both excited and nervous. That night I took my first HCG injection and Trina started her PIO.

Monday mornig we showed up at the doctor's office bright and early. They checked me in, I filled out a ton of paperwork, they asked me a million questions, told me to change into some very stylish operating room attire and hooked me up to an IV to patiently wait my turn. When the nurse came to get me I wasn't nervous at all. I was dying to know how many "good eggs" I had since Lefty was causing so many problems. The anesthesiologist was a nice guy who talked me through all of the injections he was putting into my IV. He told me "OK, I just gave you the good stuff, you'll be sleeping in a second". I knocked out almost immediately. The last thing I remember was someone bringing in the isolette for my eggs.

The next thing I remember was being rolled into recovery. I was barely conscious when I heard myself ask "How many eggs did they get?" The nurse chuckled and said 8. Then I remembered I had a dream that I had 8 and almost shared that with the nurse when it dawned on me that it wasn't a dream. It was a memory of when I had asked the nurse before. I said "I've asked before haven't I?" The nurse chuckled again and said "It's OK, it's the anesthesia". Her phrase and the chuckle brought back another fuzzy memory of my apologizing and her saying it was "ok". Doh, I wonder how many times I asked... After a short stint in recovery, Trina got me dressed and we were out of there. The next day we got word that of the 8 mature eggs, 7 fertilized with ICSI. We're doing a 5 day embryo transfer Sat morning at 8:45.

I can't believe it's almost time. Depending on the moment, I'm either excitedly optimistic or completely terrified. This is it, the big cycle. It's out of my hands and there's nothing else I can do to sway the odds. It just HAS to work, right?