I am a lousy patient.

I don’t try to be!  I swear, its just the ADD in me.  So I have been on my Lupron, which really hasn’t been as bad as I thought it was going to be, and they added my stims last Friday.  I am woman hear me roar, so I don’t make Jesse go to every appointment with me.  I mean, come on…I am trying to make a human here, I can TOTALLY handle getting instructions and managing all of these meds and changing doses, and communicating things to Jesse so he can do my shots correctly. BAHAHAHAH…yeah right!  TOTAL FAIL!

So I was started on 20 of Lupron in the morning, and when they added the FSH Amy and Jaclyn told me to go down to 10.  20 to 10…GOT IT!  Then 225 of FSH at night.  Packed all my precious drugs into my little cooler bag (got it FREE with being in the IVY study) and bee bopped out of the office.  I came home, put my meds schedule on the fridge and then…well…apparently that was it. Fast forward to Monday, after my morning shot, I panicked and asked Jesse if I told him I was supposed to go down to 10….cliff-hanger…I didn’t.  The craziness ensues and I text, I call and I email nurses and I start freaking out.  I had doubled my dose for three days and I was sure I had ruined my IVF cycle.

In true Georgia Reproductive Specialists form, everyone got back to me super quick and told me that I was fine.  Of course, I was over here apologizing to the nurses and to Dr. P…I am in a trial…and well, I now have a black mark on my record.

Here I was all excited about being patient MG-14-22520926 (or whatever it really is), and the FDA now will know that I can’t follow directions. Oh well…you live and learn and you start over again.  I went in for my second baseline and I had a lot of follicles.  Everyone seemed happy with that, I of course start thinking that I am going to get OHSS and am already thinking about what that is going to feel like.  Nothing like positive thinking, right?  I am a mess.

All in all, I actually feel pretty good now.  I had a rough couple days where my head felt like it was going to explode, and well the doxy they make you take to help prevent infection is less than easy on my stomach.  Jesse gives really good shots, so my abdomen doesn’t make me look like I am a drug addict, so that is good.

Other than this whole experience, I know a lot of people have been wondering about my personal time announcement the other day.  My CEO and I agreed that with everything that I had going on in my life, it was probably best for me to take a month off from work.  I am pretty lucky to have the flexibility to do this and it has definitely made things easier to deal with.  There are a lot of doctor appointments with IVF and some of the side effects would not be fun to deal with at work, so for right now…it’s me, Judge Judy and the dogs hanging out.

With the way things are progressing, I think we are on schedule for things to go down next week. Amazingly I am not nervous.  I think I have just realized that everything will happen regardless of my nerves, so why get myself all worked up. I’ll update the world on Friday after my next ultrasound…until then….let’s hope I don’t mess anything else up!!

Clinical Trial is a GO and life outside of a baby!!!

So we have officially started on the trial and it saved us quite a bit of money.  It’s kind of surreal to actually be doing the whole IVF process.  Since we did two medicated IUIs, I was prepared for shots and well it seems as if IVF is just IUI on “steroids” (no pun intended).  Just more shots and more monitoring.  I have been on Lupron for a few days and haven’t really felt much.  It’s kind of surprising, considering I have been getting side effects from so many of the drugs…just not this one.  The shots are the same as the ones before, just longer and more of them.  I go back in to the office in 5 days for a baseline check to see how my ovaries are responding.  Basically Lupron forces me into menopause. It prevents the ovaries from working and suppresses their activity.  Again, the medication controls everything in my body.  As I said in my last post, I have always had an issue with control, but this whole process has taught me so much about myself and taught me that control is something that nobody has.  

I have a lot that is going to be changing in the next few weeks.  Stuff that I can’t post on here just yet….but it is going to be pretty life changing.  Life is ever evolving and I have been stuck for awhile.  I have learned that it is ok to question the norm.  I have learned it is ok to question everything that I am comfortable with.  Questioning is ok.

In other world news, life goes on around trying to have a baby and Jesse just fond out he is going to be taking his Fit to Fight/Krav Maga black belt test in August.  I am so proud of him and how he has bounced back from the shell he was two years ago.  We just got back from his 6-month doctor appointment and he has gained 110 lbs in two years.  To most people that would be terrifying.  To Jesse that means he has has gained exactly what he weighed two years ago and is finally healthy.  

We have also added another member, well two, to our family in Atlanta.  Don’t panic…no more dogs!!  We needed someone to help around the house, spend some time with the dogs and just help overall.  I wanted to find someone who would stay on as a nanny once we got pregnant and had the baby(ies), and I found that person in E and her daughter D.  E is a godsend. It is so awesome to have someone who I relate to, trust, and enjoy having in my life.  Her daughter is a total sassy-pants and I can’t wait to have her around when we have kids.  For some reason, knowing that I have someone who did this before makes me more at ease with the whole situation.

Our egg retrieval is scheduled for the end of July (7/30-8/1) and our transfer will be 3 days later. All I can do is keep my eye on the prize and enjoy our journey.At the end of the day, I am so lucky to be surrounded by friends and family who know who I am and what I want out of life. I look forward to the next few weeks.  

You’ve been poked everywhere else…now I am going to poke around in your head.

 

When that is the first line you hear from your counselor, you know you are in the right place.  Georgia Reproductive makes counseling for IVF mandatory, so we made an appointment to “get it over with”.  J is not a huge fan of therapy, and well I think it has its place in treatment.  Whether you are a fan or not, the consultation is a “must-do” so we went.

Let’s cut to the chase….he was awesome, and the hour flew by and was, well,  awesome.  We talked about everything. Why we were ok with where we were.  The potential for becoming depressed through the process. The potential for not understanding the unknown. And at the end of it, I am pretty sure we all wanted to become BFFs.  As we were walking out, even J said, “I feel like making something up, so we have to come back!”

Throughout this entire process, I think we have just had a different perspective.  2 1/2 years ago, we were just hoping J wouldn’t die, so to be looking at a next step in our life is a pretty incredible thing.   I know that we haven’t gone through the lengthy fertility struggles many people have had, and maybe that is why I am not jaded.  However, we have gone through one that is much worse than not being able to conceive a child the “normal” way.  Jesse’s illness, health and well-being was such a focal point for so long and we were grasping for answers and in the end, grasping for his life.  So while I don’t minimize peoples desire for a child, I think our past has made us step back and appreciate that we at least have a future…together.

We are on to a very exciting next step and that is the clinical trial.  I did my final screening today and I will write about that in my next blog post.  Let’s just say that it further solidified why I love where we go!!

BTW– to any readers…please check out the study at Georgia Reproductive, the info is here and there may be some cities close to you that are doing it: http://theivystudy.com/qualify.aspx…they are still looking for participants!

I’m on birth control..to get pregnant

One of the common threads throughout my entire blog has been expect the unexpected.  What you think sounds illogical really isn’t.  Well, today is no different.  Tonight I am headed to CVS to get a prescription for birth control. WHAT?!?  So weird.  Number 1, I haven’t been on BC in over 10 years.  Number 2, when I WAS on BC I was a mess..so LOOK OUT! Number 3, aren’t a I trying TO get pregnant and BC is supposed to prevent it?

Ah, but that is the beauty of infertility.  They use medication to make your body do all kinds of weird stuff, and this is no different.  Since I am almost done with my cycle this month, I am going on BC for 10-14 days and then coming off to trick my body into having another one.  BAHAHA…kind of feels like sweet revenge! Tricking the body that has disappointed me so much these last few months, all to make sure we can have a baby.

Now the AMAZING news…so about 3 or 4 months ago Dr. P mentioned that while he wanted to try two rounds of IUI first, GRS was recently approved to do a study on some new (well, new to the USA) IVF medication. If the IUIs didn’t work, we would possibly be good candidates for the trial.  Let’s do a quick re-cap — IVF = expensive (like $20K expensive in my world), so the thought of a trial was pretty encouraging.  While the whole thing wouldn’t be free, there would be a substantial savings.  Fast forward to today, as of 4:00 pm EST yesterday GRS was given the green light to start screening for trial patients.  Guess who is being included in that screening??  THESE KIDS!!

We always knew that IVF was a possible off-shoot of this journey, so Dr. P was always doing things to make sure the ducks were in order (even though he forgot he did many of them…I blame that on the fact that he has other patients…which is totally not ok..except H). So many of the screening requirements we have already done.  Thankfully I am in relatively good health and all of my numbers look perfectly in line with the requirements.

So the next couple weeks will include a mandatory visit with a counselor to make sure Jesse and I can handle the stresses of IVF.  I am pretty confident we will rock that counselors world when he hears our story from the last 2 years. Birth control for 10-14 days to kickstart another cycle in June. And finally checking off the last boxes on the trial screening.  When Dr. Perloe looked at me today and said, “I am sorry you have to go through this”, my response was “It’s ok.  This is our journey and if being part of a trial makes IVF more accessible to more families, then it is serving an even larger purpose.”

Maybe it is the nerd in me, but the trial possibility is making this more exciting. I am going to be “Patient MG-101752” or something cool like that, and at the end of it, we are going to have a baby….or two.  More on that later.  The blog posts will be amping up folks, so as I said before… welcome to the party this one is going to be a rager!!!