The Blunt Optic

E2 is now at 2,400 but they don’t do ultrasounds on a Sunday, so I have to go back tomorrow for a look at the follie situation, and have another blood test while I am at it.  I thought perhaps I could still trigger Monday and go for collection Tuesday but clinic seems to think it will be Wed/Thurs and possibly even Friday.  Doctor seems to want to breed up a big batch.  Whatever.  I’m unlikely to overstim, so I’m happy to go along with it.

Bumped into a friend as we finished coffee and pancakes post blood test this morning, (luckily clinic is next to a top notch cafe) so went back into the cafe for a chat with him and his partner, and watched them eat delicious looking poached eggs.  The pancakes had been our second breakfast so we decided to skip a third (saving room for curry lunch) but DH had another single shot to be sociable (on top of the the two double shots he’d had previously- one with each for his breakfasts..).  I stuck to sipping water.

I wasn’t needed in the kitchen (too many cooks in there already) so I cleaned the house instead, before the guests arrived.  Had a pleasant curry afternoon, and managed to catch up with another friend at the same time, which was handy.  Dabbled with my watercolours this evening while DH was out.   Evenings are fast being booked up with dinners hither and thither.  Tuesday I am planning on making a wool dress, and printing it with gocco.  Why not?  Well only because I haven’t managed to find fabric or a pattern.  So best be off to search goog.le for both.

On on…

E2 is at 1800 today.  Yesterday it was 1400, and I had an ultrasound that showed one 13mm follie on the left, and a dominant 19mm follie on the right, along with another four ranging from 12-15mm.

Bloods again tomorrow 8am, no ultrasound.  My guess is ultrasound monday, maybe trigger, but more realistically trigger Tuesday.  Waiting, waiting, waiting.  Getting in the way of scheduling my social life.  Luckily all my friends are pretty flexible.  It will be lovely to catch up with long-time-no-see friends, and a shame I will not have time to see them all.

Emotions back on a more even keel, I am happy to report, though the ovaries are now beginning to feel the pinch, so there is always something to complain about.  Keeps me occupied.

Had a great time staying with my twin-friends who live 5 min walk from the clinic (handy!) We watched a few episodes of Nathan Barley, and True Blood, stayed in for pizza, went out for yummy mezze and perfect coffee and laughed a lot.  I dabbled with watercolours and made a piece I really like.  I played quite a few hands of bridge on my computer, and snuck in a 2 hr afternoon nap.  Finished a trashy novel.

But now I have moved, for the remainder, to a place further away, with the coffee machine and wireless internet (DH is now up, for a week’s worth of up-skill in anaesthetics, so we need a place that can fit both of us).  Can’t lose really, with such great options (and friends!) to choose from.

Tomorrow is curry lunch for 20+ (our hosts are having a birthday celebration for their 19 year old).  I think I’ll chip in on the cooking front.  Maybe do some dabbling with the oil paints in the late afternoon.  And then it remains to be seen what the new week will bring.

Well the gonal F is rampaging through my system now and I’m about ready for meltdown.  I hate this time of the cycle.  Will likely have first ultrasound Friday or Saturday.  We are hoping for egg retrieval on Tuesday, but time will tell.  (Very happy not to be waiting around after that for transfer, I can tell you). Had a cracking headache on Monday – painkillers did nothing so I resorted to sleeping the afternoon away, but the headache was still there when I woke up.  Highly unpleasant.  I thought it was going to turn into a migraine, so thankful for small mercies that it didn’t.  And that I haven’t had one EVERY day.

Been trying to do too much as usual.  After guests left last week I came down with a cold- Tuesday I left drawing class in the middle of proceedings, and stayed in bed all Wednesday.  Finally got the house cleaned (post party beer spillage etc- horrid) on Thursday.  Went to Busselton on Friday (DH haircut, me acupuncture et al) then on to my folk’s farm to stay the night and help prepare for my Dad’s 60th the following day.  I stupidly left my T3 at home, so had to drive a 2hr round trip to get it. (Remembered everything else: presents for Dad and brother, booze, sleeping equipment, clothes, IVF drugs, needles, sharps container, chinese herbs, toiletries, ugg boots, extra shoes, the kitchen sink.  But not the pills).

Stayed up til 1ish, crashed, then got up and helped clean up the next morning (Sunday) and hung around til after lunch.  DH needed to be home for 2pm cycling (forest mountain biking) and I did washing, tidying etc.  Monday got that gonal F headache after yoga, put myself to bed.  Tuesday drawing class, then chores in town then bridge lesson then catch up with BFF (whom I haven’t seen for 2 weeks).  Wednesday (TODAY) DH drew my blood before breakfast, painting class at 9am, chores in town including paying two lots of car registration and posting my blood off to the clinic express; home for rapid lunch and quick consult with DH about positioning of trees that needed to be planted; back into town to clean friend’s house, then straight over to other friend who I haven’t seen since my party and whose birthday was the 9th.  I wanted to give her her present before I headed off to Perth (tomorrow) for another week +.

I got home this evening and had a meltdown, of course.  DH, the treasure he is, took it in stride.  He’d done the dishes and a load of washing and was cooking me a lovely scotch fillet tender steak dinner with mushrooms and roast potatoes.  Bless his heart.

Tonight I cancelled my felting workshop (june 3rd-7th) because the thought of driving home from Perth on Monday 31st, cramming two lots of art, bridge, cleaning friend’s AND my place, into Tuesday and Wednesday again, then turning around to drive back to Perth Thursday 3rd almost made me slit my wrists.  It was a sensible decision but I’m sorry that yet again, IVF has put the kybosh on something I really wanted to do.

And I’m getting to the point where IVF just isn’t something I really want to do any more.  If I can drag myself along to IVF#5 (donor egg), I think I will need to stop there.  Either for a good long break or forever.  This stage of my life is now giving me the utter shits (yes, I know the drugs ARE talking here, but even so) and I want to move on.  I am ready to move on.  I hope I have the strength left to battle the surrogacy process, but who knows.  I am just so worn out.  If I wasn’t meditating in the mornings I would have broken something by now.

I am also ready to quit my cleaning job/swap.  It will mean forking out $40/wk for the yoga/shiatsu/compost turning that I currently swap for, but it will mean 2hrs a week extra to myself, and I think that’s more important than the money right now.  It will be a bummer for my friend, and with her being my donor, I do feel that bit guiltier leaving her in the lurch, but still, I have to look after myself.  I can’t do everything and that is all I can drop right now.

Come on winter.  Art classes finish in June.  The Mad May rush of birthdays (I have about 20 to present or card for)  will be over.  Preserves will be finished.  For better or worse, donor egg cycle will be done by the end of July.  I can focus on hibernating, and watching lots of TV series on DVD.  And playing bridge with my old ladies, who meet once a month to play all day by the fire, eating their way through the menu at the Truffle farm restaurant in Manjimup. God that sounds like heaven right now.

I can’t face packing.  I think I’ll leave it til the morning.  Chill out in bed playing bridge on my computer. With my ear plugs in, though, because DH is jamming in the studio under my bedroom.  Sigh.

Do I really need kids?  This life seems hard enough.

I’m still forty and I still have awesome diamond earrings.  I also had a fairly reasonable hangover on Sunday morning (must have been that goblet of champagne I kept refilling, or the fact I only got 3hrs sleep…) and as a consequence now have a lucrin injection bruise to spoil my record.  Bugger.  Getting my husband to give it would not have been any wiser though, so I guess it was inevitable.

The party was fabulous.  We had about 65 adults and 20 kids come through from 12.30 Saturday until late Sunday arvo, (with maybe 30-ish camped over for breakfast) and we still have FIL here, along with DH’s 2 BFF’s (one with a wife and three kids). I think they’ll all leave today and we can get on with the start of DH’s month long holiday.  Woot!  We’re not going anywhere (except to Perth for egg collection week) and it will be lovely to potter around the house and get some trees planted etc.

So, all is well.

I can’t say when I’ll get photos posted, but it will happen eventually. Next weekend is my brother’s birthday and also my Dad’s 60th party, so probably not before then.

And now I am off to pump class to burn off some of those champagne calories.  The lucrin bloat is in full swing and if I let my abdominals relax for a second I look like I am about 16 weeks pregnant.  Which would only encourage awkward comments.  So I have to suck it up/in and do lots of crunches!

Oh, I also managed to survive Mother’s day.  I hope you all did too.

So, today I woke up and I was forty.

I kind of imagined (like, years ago, when I was, say, thirty) I’d have had a couple of kids by the morning I woke up and was forty, and that they would be clambering all over my bed wanting to help me unwrap presents and so forth.

However.  Life is full of little surprises, isn’t it?

I probably never, though, in my wildest dreams imagined that I’d have such a beautiful home, live in a fantastic community and environment, be getting to live out any creative idea that popped into my head, be surrounded and supported by such an enormous amount of special people all over the world and be married to the most sweet, loving, kind and thoughtful man in the Universe.  Who this morning presented me with a pair of diamond earrings.

O.M.G.

So if it’s a choice between childless and forty WITH diamond earrings, or childless and forty WITHOUT diamond earrings, I’ll take the earrings thankyouverymuch.

Yep, no flies on me.  Period never came, had blood test, decided I was just about to ovulate, waited a couple of days and then began a long down-reg on May 3rd.  Lucrin until the cows come home.  Well, three weeks or so, anyway.  I am so good at these injections now, I only had one small bruise for the entire cycle last time.  None to report so far on this one.  Hoping the headaches stay away until after my party.  Hoping I remember to inject every day as I am a bit disconnected to this whole thing at the moment.  Signed the paperwork this morning and will post today.  Still undecided as to whether to do PGS or not.  Given they are (probably) going into surrogate, it makes sense to weed out the duds early and save her the miscarriages, but given we might not have many, should we risk damaging potentially normal ones by removing that extra cell?  Or risk chucking out a good embryo due to a false positive?  You know the risk of that is small, but remember, I do small risk EXTREMELY well.

My gut feeling is leave them alone.  My head says test them. The geneticist said (years ago) she’d recommend carrying on with PGS.  I know the head embryologist will say it’s ultimately our decision, and of course it is.

Can I have a show of hands anyway from my faithful readers?  What would YOU do??

Dashing off to painting class now, and party prep consuming the rest of my time, so I’ll be back with an update and maybe a pic of me blowing out my forty candles, later next week.  And maybe a photo of me surviving mother’s day on Sunday with a house full of camped-overnight mothers and their small children.

Lord, give me strength.

I will be thinking, on Mother’s Day, of all those of you whose children have not yet been made flesh, or were born and left too early.  And sending any surplus strength your way.

Not really much to report except to say that I am ok.  I haven’t collapsed in a heap, I’m feeling fine, and I’m getting on with things.  Mainly with tidying up and organising stuff for my upcoming party.  And gardening.  And planning for the next steps in the TTC saga.

I’ve started back at weight training (with very much reduced weights) and have found that my wrists can only just cope, but they are coping.  They haven’t enjoyed a couple of days of digging, shovelling and pruning, but I think they’ll survive.  I’m not sure how long it is going to take for the effects of lucrin to clear my system, but I think it won’t be any time soon.  Being as how I am leaning towards doing a fresh egg collection cycle for my own eggs come May.

This is my thinking: My surro angel has told me she will be ready to cycle come November. [Three cheers for THAT news!]  This is seventh months away.  I am currently of the belief that surro laws in WA state that embryos (that don’t contain the surrogate’s DNA) have to be frozen for a minimum of six months before being transferred to a surrogate.  This (along with all the other hoopla) I will have to check with the RTC in due course (sometime this week).  But say it is so, for the purposes of this argument.  Then it goes like this:

Donor cycle July.  I don’t get pregnant, and we try a FET a few months later?  Or I get pregnant, but miscarry six weeks later.  Time to try a different and more reliable uterus.  But it is now October at the earliest.  I’d  have to wait a couple of months to recover from either a miscarriage or the back to back IVF/FET, then start another fresh cycle to collect my own eggs in order to first try a bio embie in the surrogate.  We are now looking at January or February 2011 before transfer, and my eggs are almost 41.

However, if I sneak a cycle in before July, and freeze my embryos, [and I fail to carry the DE embie] these bio embies can be ready to go when our surro angel is done breastfeeding in November, and I can be done with the IVF treatments by the end of July.  (Then if my embies don’t work in the surrogate’s uterus, we can try the DE ones).  If I DO get pregnant [and carry to term] with a DE embie, (here comes total pie-in-the-sky thinking) then if I am ever crazy enough to try this all again in the future for a sibling, I could potentially give a bio embie a try (with 40 y/old eggs instead of 43 y/old eggs).

So, with nothing to lose but time, money, joint health, a few art and bridge lessons, two weeks in the garden and maybe my good nature (ha!), I will do my best to orchestrate a successful egg collection in late May.  If possible, I will let my inner organiser have free reign and make sure I know that the clinic knows what it is doing at all times.

Meanwhile, what I am waiting for now is my post cancelled-IVF cycle period, so I can (hooboy!) go back on the pill.  Yep.  It is indeed the year for fucking my body over with artificial hormones.  Better get this birthday party done while I still have some friends left…

And what are the chances of overstimming to such dangerous levels as to potentially cause OHSS, hospitalisation and death?  Um, about 1%.  Sigh. I should know by now that I do 1% (if the possibility of something is shit) extremely well, so I guess I’m not too surprised that anything connected with my attempts to have a child went down that all-too-common path.

I, on the other hand, had E2 levels of less than one hundred and fifty. (!WTF?) So they couldn’t even just keep me going on to a fresh egg collection.  I am not sure why my new doctor tried me with Puregon this cycle, when Gonal F worked well for me on my other two cycles.  But he did, and this is what happened, and such is life.  Of course, he’ll put me back on Gonal next time…

Thankfully my donor is willing to give it another go, in the next school holidays, which will be from July 2nd-19th.  Meanwhile, back on the pill.  Oh what fun.

So now we wait for the bills to roll in, and we can pay for the hormonal nightmare and general inconvenience with nothing to show for it.  Not even a chance at something.

Not a winner this time.  Thanks for playing.

The good news is: I can be rest assured I won’t be having a miscarriage for my 40th birthday party.
…………………………………….

ETA: Also?  Facebook friends? “Keep your chin up, it’ll happen” is probably the most annoying thing I could hear right now.  Thanks for thinking of me though.

Sigh.  Starting this cycle from deep in the countryside, we were not as heavily monitored as city folk would be.  Throw in Easter and all those days that doctors offices are shut and post offices don’t run services (therefore tricky to get your hormone levels checked by the clinic), and you have potential for issues.  Which is what we have now.

The clinic never called me back on Wednesday afternoon because they didn’t get the blood yet.  I came up to Perth Thursday and dropped into the offices at 10.30 am and requested a new blood (out of normal hours) which they did and processed that afternoon.

Those Thursday bloods showed my estrogen levels at lower than 150, so I have upped my puregon from 50 to 150.  Re-test tomorrow (Saturday) and no mention of ultrasound for me.

Donor’s Thursday (and also first) bloods showed her overstimming, so they have stopped her gonal F and she was supposed to go in for an ultrasound today but she got the time wrong (!) and they had finished the ultrasound sessions by the time she got there, so she’ll have to try for tomorrow instead.  I’m not quite sure how she could misread the hours – it’s the only appointment she had for the whole day, but there you are – things do not always go smoothly, and as I have been trying not to micro-manage the process, I just have to let that one go through to the keeper.

I am hoping to catch up with her tomorrow at the clinic.  She does not have a mobile phone, and has been staying somewhere out in the hills at a house where the owner doesn’t answer the landline.  (Now she is camping at a music festival for the weekend and is totally unreachable). When she has called me on my mobile for updates, I have been driving and had to keep the calls short.  So I have patchy info at best.  Plus I think she doesn’t really understand the jargon/lingo, so when she told me that transfer might go ahead Monday or Tuesday, but potentially not at all because she was overstimmed, it didn’t make sense but I wasn’t in a position to interrogate her (due to being in traffic and not wanting a $500 fine for talking on the phone).

I can understand why, if she was also the recipient of embryos, that they would retrieve eggs and freeze the embryos rather than transfer them, due to OHSS risk.  But would they not retrieve the eggs at all?  That sounds odd.  And that’s not transfer, that’s retrieval.  And how could transfer go ahead on Monday anyway, when they haven’t even retrieved anything yet, because the embryos still need to grow to three (or five) days, anyway.  If she was up with the jargon, she might have asked “Do you realise I am a donor, and does this then still apply?” So it sounds like I need to talk to someone who has a clue.  Which I will try to organise tomorrow morning.

It was my intention to be very hands-off with this cycle, just to prove that I could take a step back from my control issues and let things run.  But I’ll admit, I do feel very out of the loop and right now not full of confidence with my clinic.  On the three occasions I have spoken with them in the last few days, they have said “So, you’re donating?”  No, I am the recipient.  Where are you getting this erroneous idea from?  I hope to God at least my Doctor knows what the fuck is going on.

I think I’d feel a little better if I did too.

If you are counting, you’ll discover a discrepancy of a day between now and the Day One post.  This is because Day One was day one of drugs, not of the cycle itself.  As we move into the cycle, it is less confusing if I go by the actual cycle day, thus today is day 9.  All clear?  Good, let’s move on.