Right: 19.6, 12.1
Left: 14.8, 13.1, 13.9, 13.4, 9.9, 9.8
Basically, my doctor is hoping that 19.6 just floats away and that MAYBE we’ll get the others to grow enough by tomorrow to trigger. That would mean retrieval on Thursday, my 33rd birthday. And maybe get four eggs.
Four.
Originally, we were really worried about hyperstimming me. Don’t get me wrong – I’m extremely happy that didn’t happen. But… Four? Now, if I were forty, I’d take four joyfully. If I had premature ovarian failure, or even unexplained infertility, I’d take four. But I have frickin’ PCOS, for crying out loud. Four?
What if we go through all this, retrieve four, at best, and then only 3 actually fertilize, and only one makes it to blast? Or what if none make it? Gah. There are too many “what ifs” involved here. I don’t know what to do.
My doctor is inclined to go ahead with just four. But his original prediction of a 40-45% chance of pregnancy with an elective single embryo transfer (their normal rate of pregnancy with elective single embryo transfers is 67%) is now down to 30%. Me? I’m inclined to cancel. It just seems like an awful lot of work, time, money wasted for … four.
I have three IVF cycles covered per live birth. If we cancel before retrieval, this doesn’t count against my three. I get that I’m “only” on my first, but if that fails, I’m down to two. That’s 30% down.
Oh, there was another option. We could have triggered today and converted to an IUI. Over my dead body. I would have been risking quadruplets if I’d agreed to that.
SuperDoc had students with him today, and while they were poking around at my ovaries I was being as lighthearted and joking away as I could. As he reviewed my previous cycle with them to see what they would think retrospectively, I mocked him a little “Oh no, this cycle will never work. We’ll trigger you early, blow this cycle off – we know you’re moving on next cycle anyway. No possibility you’ll even get pregnant let alone with HOMs!” He said if I weren’t back for more he might pay attention to me. A fair point. I apologized later to one of the students for being such a pain in the ass, but she said it was great comic relief.
SuperDoc was jovial and calming as always, but once I sat up, I got more serious and so did he. I wasn’t happy. He was calm and seems comfortable with proceeding, but I feel like I’m being followed by a shadow. He did note that if we cancel and start over, we’ll start my Follistim at 220 IUs and we’ll be much more likely to see the 15 follicles we expected. Still, like I said, he’s comfortable proceeding as is. Me? I’m not so sure.
I waffle. The Lupron sucks so badly I’d hate to think I took it for two weeks just to cancel.
Sigh.
Update: Thanks, Bean, for noting that I should double check my insurance – I did just that on my way out of the clinic this morning… I checked in with the financial counselor to find out what the financial implications of canceling would be and whether it would count against the three, and the long and the short of it is that each of the monitoring appointments would get billed separately to my insurance and I’d have my copayment for those and coinsurance for all the labwork. I had her double check to make sure that the cancelation would not count against the three cycles and it will not.
Another Update: the 19.6 is not the one. By Thursday, it’ll be gone. Definitely good points for moving forward, but it’s a lot of money I stand to lose.
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ChezPerky 