Saturday, August 1, 2009

Taking the Bad with the Good

Today I knew it wasn't going to be good when the nurse told me that Dr. S would be in to talk to me without much fanfare. Ut oh.

I knew from my 8 am U/S that I had some bigger eggs. In fact lefty has: 18, 16, 14, 14, 13 mm follicles. Righty is the champ today with: 24, 20, 18, 16, 16, 15. So, while we waited for Dr. S to finish with his egg retrieval at the hospital, we went for a little IHOP and Target run.

Gold-star sister and I came back at 10 am and waited awhile for our turn. That's when my first inclination that something was wrong, hit me. Yep, Dr. S calmly explained that the bad news was that my E2 (type of estrogen) level was only at 604 when it should be at least around 1200. Uh huh, this is the same blasted problem I have had all ten days of my stim meds!

So he said that his inclination was to go forward because of the U/S, but Dr. S needed to hear where I was coming from based on his scenarios:

Scenario 1 - If this is the only time we plan to do IVF, then we should cancel and do an IUI instead. Then start again next month.

Scenario 2 - If this isn't the only time we plan to do IVF, then we could go ahead and try it to see what would happen because he puts my chances at about 45% instead of his usual 55% success rate.

The fact is that the Army has us moving by October to Missouri. I loathe to switch doctors. So, I think that I would honestly come back and do a cycle if I needed to and stay with some friends. However, this is definitely not the best scenario. The other fact is that my hubby and I have been saving and do plan to do at least two IVF cycles. While I don't want to waste money, if I have a good chance, I think I should take it. So I am!

I still didn't get the correlation between follicles and the E2 level. So I asked Dr. S. to explain. As I had learned from the nurse. Generally a mature follicle will correlate with a 200 E2 level. So, if you have six mature follicles, you would have a 1200 E2 level. Since my E2 level and U/S don't match up, there is a hesitation to proceed. There could be follicles growing without any eggs in them... So, while we're going ahead with it, they could get in there and not find the mature eggs they are expecting. What I figure is that it's better to know what is going on now than later.

You would think the word "cancelled" would strike fear into my heart after the emotional and financial investment. Sometimes I'm surprised that I'm not bursting into tears or hysterically gulping down oxygen. I'm okay though. V called on the drive home and is fine with my decision (although I was barely coherent at the time because I was napping). One step at a time baby!

So here we go, HCG shot tonight 8:45 pm and going to the hospital Monday at 7:15 am for the egg retrieval.

By the way today is our 4th anniversary! I love that man! xoxo





2 comments:

  1. Oh my, that's stressful. But if the doc is suggesting to move forward with IVF (knowing that if it were truly bleak, they'd be less likely to suggest it, because it would hurt their stats), then that has to be a good sign.

    Good luck, and happy anniversary!!

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  2. Good luck tomorrow! We both triggered at the same time last night, and both have our ER's tomorrow! =] Hoping we both come out with something positive!

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