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And…. canceled

March 23, 2009 by chezperky

  • Trigger shot tonight.
  • Bloodwork in a week to check my P4 (you know, to make sure I actually DID ovulate. Because with 10,000 units of hCG in my system, you know, I might not. Because this is ME!).
  • Start Lupron April 1 (April Fool’s, anyone?)
  • Expect period… oh, around April 6th or 7th.
  • Probably return for Lupron Evaluation around April 8th.

Er, at least we think.

What doesn’t jive is that SuperDoc had said something about there being three weeks involved somewhere. But my nurse doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about. So for the moment, she’s going with the theory that I’m starting Lupron April 1 (this part we’re clear on) and then waiting for my period and doing a new LE and getting this show on the road.

Um, except Passover starts the night of April 8th. So… starting stims April 8th? Not the best timing…

Frick.

And now I need a new label… do I call this upcoming cycle IVF#2 again since well, IVF#2 never actually came to fruition? Do I call it IVF#2.5 since it’s not quite exactly the first time I started out trying that cycle? Do I call it IVF#3 which seems disingenuous since I never made it to the IVF part of IVF#2? Help!

Posted in canceled, IVF#2, my stupid body | 23 Comments »

Closer to Cancelled

March 23, 2009 by chezperky

Not to be confused with “Closer to Fine”.

My lining, she is not wafer thin – she is 10.1mm and I have a lovely 18.6 follicle. Or maybe it’s a cyst. But it’s probably a beautiful follicle. We’ll see what my estrogen is, but either way, it probably means triggering tonight and starting Lupron again in 9 days.

Dr. C. was covering monitoring today. I told him that the last time I saw him was when he was standing there, mouth agape while M (sonographer extraordinaire) was telling me there were three in there. “Oh my, was I the one who gave you that news?” Yep. Well, no. It was actually M. But yeah. He was the doc that day. And actually, I’ve seen him since, but I think only in passing. We had a lovely little chat and I showed off pictures of my kids.

And, of course, I delivered sour cream chocolate chip poundcake. Because I rock.

Posted in and this is where it started to go downhill, IVF#2, my stupid body | 6 Comments »

Not *quite* Cancelled… Yet.

March 20, 2009 by chezperky

Well, my E2 level didn’t go up as expected, which probably means those two gorgeous follicles aren’t as gorgeous as they look. Typical for me. Whatever.

My E2 level was 98.3 (down 0.7 from Tuesday, but essentially that means it’s stabilized, not that it’s gone anywhere). My P4 level was 0.75. So I’m not gearing to ovulate any second as SuperDoc had feared, and I get to stay on the Lupron through the weekend and return on Monday (Lucky Me!!). The likelihood is still that I will ultimately end up cancelling this cycle, but I guess we have to give it the old college try, right?

Of course, right.

Anonymous asked if I could try the old fashioned way since I’ve got those two follicles hanging out – there are a couple answers to that question:

1. The first is, the two follicles are both on the left side, which was the tube that was blocked in my last HSG. Assuming that wasn’t a fluke – that would preclude them being useful.
2. Assuming the blocked tube WAS a fluke, I’m not doing anything at this point that involves two follicles on purpose. If you think I’m being extreme, that’s fine, but I’m dead serious. I am petrified of ending up with twins – my perinatologist scared the crap out of me in December when I saw him and he made it clear that a twin pregnancy is not an option for me.

Tagging along with that question, Anonymous asked if, in light of this development, whether it would make sense for me to try on my own for the next cycle and see if I ovulate all on my lonesome. A few thoughts:

1. If anovulation alone were my sole problem, sure, maybe. But it’s not.
2. If I were uninsured and needed time to pull together money for a cycle, sure. But this cycle is already paid for. My portion of this cycle has already been paid for, it’s just being deferred until whenever we DO get started, so the money has already been set aside.
3. I ovulated every single month from the time my HOMs were 6 weeks old until they were about a year old. Then I started spreading out to about every 6 weeks. I used no birth control. I even did my best to, um, make the best of our… timing. I did not get pregnant in that entire time.
4. If there were something inherently healthier about getting pregnant spontaneously vs. via IVF, then sure, maybe there would be some advantage to waiting another month just to see. But aside from slightly lower birth weights in IVF babies (even singletons), there doesn’t appear to be any inherent health differences in IVF babies vs. spontaneously conceived babies. So why wait?
5. If I *am* ovulating on my own, I can just as easily TTC spontaneously later, after I don’t have insurance covering my cycles, as I can right now. So what’s the difference?
6. What SuperDoc implied to me was that it is, oddly enough, the Lupron itself responsible for my response so far. His words were that sometimes in women you get the opposite reaction to the Lupron than what you’re hoping to achieve. Note, I’m not so sure about this one, because, honestly? I sort of started tuning him out right around the time that he started making fun of me for always being opposite girl.

Anywhozit, it’s just more fun for me. A girl’s gotta get her Lupron fix somehow, right?

Posted in IVF#2, Lupron, my stupid body | 3 Comments »

Stupid Body

March 20, 2009 by chezperky

Yeah, um, hello? Stupid body. Per SuperDoc, “Sometimes on Lupron you get the opposite effect that you’re hoping for… What I was afraid of last time was that you’re ovulating on your own despite the Lupron.” Meanwhile, M (Sonographer Extraordinaire) was frowning. “She’s thickening…” (referring to my endometrium, damn that endometrium!)

Seriously, how does this happen? I can’t manage to ovulate on my own without the ovary-suppressing Lupron. Now I’m using Lupron to beat my perky ovaries into submission and what happens?? Goodness!

So instead of my endometrium staying wafer thin, it has thickened by .4mm. That may not seem like a lot to you, but it’s enough to make my doctor frown and the student that was with him shrugged her shoulders in exasperation also. Oh, and my beaten-into-submission-non-perky-ovaries?

Riiiiiiiiggghhhhhtttt!!!

Two, count ’em, Two perfectly formed, gorgeous follicles. 12.4 and 14.7 mm follicles.

No numbers back on the estrogen level yet, but odds are good that it’s gone up, not down. So the answer is to trigger with the hCG shot and then re-start Lupron 9 days later and then I’ll come back for a re-check 2 weeks later. So we’re looking at about a 3 week delay. Whee!

On the other hand, did I really want another summer pregnancy anyway?

Posted in and this is where it started to go downhill, IVF#2, my stupid body | 8 Comments »

Mission Accomplished

March 20, 2009 by chezperky

I finally figured out how to get around my inability to import my old blogger blog.  Blogger's export function isn't compatible with Typepad (bah), but it IS compatible with WordPress.  Well, duh, I have a wordpress blog (it's merely a placeholder for this blog, but it DOES exist).  So I imported my blogger blog over there and THEN imported my wordpress blog over here.  I'll have to go through later and get rid of duplicate entries from back when I was crossposting, but meanwhile, I'm glad to have my old archives, and I've made "My Perky Ovaries" a private blog. 

Whahoo.

Scratch another thing off the to-do list. 

Surely I had other things to do on the to-do list, but none of them were quite as mindless and the only reason I was awake was that I was waiting for the corned beef to finish cooking for tonight's dinner so that I could go to bed.  Then I went to sleep.  So mindless activity was a good thing.

Posted in blogarama | 1 Comment »

More Thumb Twiddling

March 20, 2009 by chezperky

I have another go at my Lupron Evaluation in the morning. I have a weird feeling that nothing will have changed, though I’m not really sure why I feel that way. Le Sigh. Stupid body. Stupid Lupron. Stay tuned…

Posted in IVF#2, The Waiting Game | Leave a Comment »

Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary…

March 18, 2009 by chezperky

…How does your garden grow?

Sometimes I wonder if people really know what I'm up against in my house.  I mean, really? The J-man is a fun-loving, special little boy.  He's growing into an extraordinary individual.  He has wonderful opinions and a fantastic outlook on life.  I adore him.  Really. 

But.

(There's always a "but" right?  You knew there was one coming, didn't you?)

He is Mr. Contrary these days.  Allow me to illustrate:

Exhibit One:

Every Sunday I make pancakes for breakfast, because I am the world's best Mommy.  (Okay, some Sundays I make waffles, but we all have our flaws, right?)  Further evidence of my World's Best Mommy status is that I specifically make the J-man a smiley-face or Mickey Mouse pancake using chocolate chips.  I mean, really? I am awesome.   

These days, J has words that he's supposed to practice every weekend – "sight words" they're called, or "wow words" as he calls them.  They're words that he's supposed to learn to know on sight, rather than having to sound them out.  Words like: "the", "I", "you", "go", "my", "and", "or", and so on.   The first week we had the words to practice on the weekend, I thought it would be neat to do something special.  So I made three little silver dollar pancakes and spelled out "t-h-e" on the pancakes with chocolate chips. 

We called J up to the table to tell him his breakfast was ready and showed him his pancakes. 

"What's that?"
"That's one of your Wow Words!"
"Which one is it?"
"It says, 'the'"
"Oh."
"Oh?"
"Well, why didn't you do 'go' or 'my' or 'you' or …?"

And my dear, sweet angel of a child spent the next 20 minutes critiquing my choice of wow words.  Twenty. Minutes.  No joke.

Exhibit Two:

For Purim, the kids wear costumes.   J is old enough to have some input into what his costume should be now, so I asked him what he'd like to be.  After a couple of ideas, he decided he'd like to be Batman.  I spent some time searching around for the perfect costume, and finally found it:

IMG_3510

He put on the costume, and said, "How come you didn't get me Iron Man?"  What?  Are you Kidding Me?  This kid asked for Batman.  I thought I was being the cool mom for getting him Batman.  Finally I convinced him that he had asked to be Batman and this was a good thing.  Seth got ready to go to synagogue and explained to him that since he was wearing all black, he needed to be sure to hold Abba's hand the entire way there because cars wouldn't be able to see him in the dark.  I sent J with a flashlight also to make him more conspicuous.

And so, on the way to synagogue, J turned to Seth and said (are you ready for this?): "Abba, if I were Iron Man, I'd be Red and Gold and then the cars could see me so they wouldn't hit me!"

Argh!

Exhibit Three:

This morning, after breakfast, J asked if I would let him watch some Berenstain Bears on TV before it was time to go to school.  Actually, he came downstairs and said, "Berenstain Bears! Patch!" and what he meant to say was "Mommy can I please watch some Berenstain Bears on TV and will you please get me my patch?"  Once we cleared that up, I put on some Berenstain Bears.  I had just pressed play on the remote, and it hadn't even started playing yet, when J turned to me and said:

"Why didn't you put on Transformers??"

Posted in J-Man | 7 Comments »

Exhaustion

March 18, 2009 by chezperky

Wait, does Lupron make you beyond exhausted?

really?

Posted in Lupron, medication side effects | 6 Comments »

About that Assisted Hatching

March 18, 2009 by chezperky

By the way, it turns out the reason I had assisted hatching was because I had a Day Six transfer. Apparently, they do Assisted Hatching on all day six transfers. Standard Operating Procedure.

So… no dramarama. Nothing particularly wrong with George, other than he was a slow grower who, well, wasn’t particularly userful in the end. But that’s okay – his siblings weren’t particularly useful either, were they? Sorry, George. Not trying to diss you or anything, but you really didn’t hold up your end of the bargain, did you?

Posted in and this is where it started to go downhill, assisted hatching, IVF#1 | 1 Comment »

Thumb Twiddling

March 18, 2009 by chezperky

Not much to report on the fertility front. My head is pounding AND I have a toothache. This is not making me very happy. I am not thrilled about this development. But the toothache, I’m sure, has nothing to do with my fertility (or lack thereof). Though it might have to do with the fact that I’m constantly clenching my teeth from the throbbing in my head. Sigh.

Still hate Lupron. Shocker.

Received a good response from RESOLVE after I wrote to them asking if they knew anything about the Maryland Personhood Amendment:

—
RESOLVE has a policy statement on Personhood bills and amendments, and can be found here:http://www.resolve.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ta_pap_personhood

There are actually about 13 states that have some level of Personhood legislation in the works. To be honest, we have heard from a number of sources in Maryland that this bill will not go anywhere, however, we really should update our website and let folks know what is going on. We have a very small staff and with so many states taking action on a variety of issues we have had to pick and choose how we spend our time. We have been working on 2 other bills in Maryland that improve the current insurance mandate, as well as other bills in GA and MO that are directly affecting infertility treatment. If we get information that a bill is not going to go anywhere, we know we can put it aside and the outcome will still be favorable. I realize that is not going to please everyone, but all of our advocacy work is done by me and a handful of volunteers scattered around the country (about 3-4 people). I don’t have any designated staff person on advocacy, and I try and do the best I can while running the organization as well. The legislative session can be a very busy time for us – especially this year with so much outrage regarding the Octuplets and now the personhood issue popping up in more states.

Thanks again for contacting RESOLVE. If I find out any further information about this bill I will let you know.
—–

Other than that, not much going on here in boring Perky-land.

Posted in IVF#2, Lupron, The Waiting Game | 2 Comments »

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