Monday, January 23, 2006

False Alarm

Could this be anymore of a roller coaster? I don't think so...

That 16mm follicle was an imposter. If it were a real follicle my estrogen level would have been around 200. That day it was only 45. Two days later at the Saturday check that 16mm was nowhere to be found, and my estrogen level went down to 25. Plus my uterine lining went from 7mm to 5.1mm...not in the right direction.

So no ovulation occuring this cycle, now i need to start taking injections of lupron at the end of this cycle (next week sometime) and estrogen to grow my lining (they don't actually care if I grow a follicle or not...just if the lining is big enough. Normally if you produce a follicle on your own, the follicle produces the estrogen which grows the lining, but with taking the estrogen in pill form I can skip the follicle growth.)

Again, learning something new every day...stuff I never wanted to know about and stuff I wouldn't want my worst enemy to have to know about.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Good News!

Follicle check this morning was positive! I have one measuring 16mm on my left ovary (go lefty!) I go back on Saturday for another check. If it is 18mm or more they will have me take the hcg injection to ovulate. If that happens Saturday I believe the transfer will be next Thursday.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

What's next?

The day after my canceled transfer I spoke with the dr's office and they told me to call them when I got my next period. So here we go...more waiting!!! It's all I do!

Luckily my cycle was only 21 days so I got my period WAY earlier than I was expecting so I am already almost half way into my next cycle. Even though they don't need to get any more eggs from me this time because we will be transferring the frozen embryos, I still need to hormonally be at the right stage for my body to accept any embryos. Basically I still need to grow follicles and release them (ovulate). So tomorrow I find out if I have any follicles growing. The problem is I already know that I only grow one follicle on my left ovary every other cycle (unless I am taking hoards of hormones to grow 37) , so it's possible I won't even be able to have the transfer with this cycle either! But as Chris always tells me...think positive.

Keep your fingers crossed!

UGH!

We had 14 eggs that were able to fertilize. Of those only 6 were of good enough quality to transfer back/freeze. However, things got bad after the retrieval. The pain I was feeling kept getting worse as the days went on. I was scheduled to have two embryos transfered three days after the retrieval (Monday after new years). I was in so much pain ie. couldn't walk or go to work, that they wanted me to come in for bloodwork to make sure my levels were normal. Chris practically carried me into the dr's office and based on the way I was feeling they canceled the transfer. My bloodwork came back normal so noone was worried about me. So they froze 4 of my embryos and kept 2 fresh so we could try again two days later. That day I got a tip from someone who went through the same thing to stay sitting up...never lay down not even to sleep. By Tuesday I was feeling "better" but still in a lot of pain. Wednesday I felt 80% better so I was excited to get to the dr's office to have the transfer. I went into the room with the dr and they did an external ultrasound of my abdomen and we all clearly saw what had been making me so uncomfortable. My ENTIRE mid section was filled with fluid...even up into my armpits! The dr immediately said "no, we can't do this". He said that if I ended up getting pregnant that the problem would just get worse and my kidneys and liver would shut down. It was heartbreaking and the worse part was the dr showed me a picture of the two embryos he was going to transfer. We understood it was for the best but it really was no comfort. By Friday I was completely better and was able to go back to work.