Yesterday was the “suppression check” appointment for our IVF cycle. Again what this means is the doctor draws blood to measure Kristina’s estrogen level to be sure her ovaries have “gone to sleep” so that her body’s natural process doesn’t follow the normal pattern. The reason being, we want to control the timing of ovulation and stimulate as many follicles as possible.
This means over the next two weeks she will be injecting herself with the same subcutaneous shot of Lupron, but will be adding two new shots. The first is to stimulate follicle growth. The follicle, of course, is what releases a mature egg at ovulation. The second new shot alters her LH and FSH hormone levels, which help in egg production and tells her reproductive system to prime itself for ovulation. All in all, she injects herself in the stomach, three times a day for the next week and a half (maybe longer).
Of course, this is done because the chemicals continue to suppress her system from naturally releasing all those eggs, while telling the ovaries to work overtime, to produce as many eggs, but hold on to them, as it can. Last time, by the time we went to retrieval, both ovaries were a little larger than baseballs. Normally, an ovary is around golf-ball size but squished more like the shape of a football. So, clearly, in the next two weeks, Kristina will become bloated and sore – all while having to “punch” herself in the stomach with these needles.
This brings up the process crisis of last night: needles. Since this is our second time around, we are like “old hat” this time. We know what to expect, when things will happen and have been low-stress about the whole deal. The problem with this level of complacency is sometimes we don’t keep track of things as diligently as we did the first time…and last night we discovered we had no needles for her Lupron injection.
In theory, we probably could have substituted another needle from one of the other drugs, but for whatever reason, each one is a slightly different gauge and we didn’t know for sure if that mattered. Come to find out it doesn’t, but still I decided to run to Walgreens to talk to the pharmacist and to purchase replacements.
So, come to find out: needles have now been legislated as a controlled substance and require a prescription. Thank you, illegal drug-users and over-protective legislators. Like much of any regulated system, this makes it only difficult on those who need to purchase the product legitimately – especially at 8 o’clock at night and when none are left. Yes, we should have taken better care of tracking our inventory, but the time-table is so sensitive, one missed dose could ruin the entire cycle and destroy our hope for this round.
Long story short, we solved that issue. Evidence of the drug prescription and some professional judgment allowed the rules to be one-time circumvented, although I’m not sure it was completely a legal bypass. (Thank you, anonymous pharmacist). Let me avoid the political rhetoric and say we got what we needed, although Kristina said the new needles hurt more.
All that said, it is only a short time before we will be trying to make another baby in a petri dish. Last time they extracted fifteen eggs from her. We are hoping for a similar amount this time. Because with all those numbers, after the ICSI and incubation, we only got one “qualified” embryo. We implanted that one and the second-best candidate, neither of which implanted, obviously.
The process is the same this time, but the variables will be different. We don’t know yet how many eggs will be harvested, although we are expecting around ten or more. Of those, we don’t know how many can be artificially inseminated, and of those how many will grow properly. Then, there is the whole implantation dice-throw.
On the different note, it is possible we could get “too many” embryos and have them be snowflakes if this round is not successful. That means we could try yet again. So, I say all of this to indicate we have just entered choppy waters. Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
No comments:
Post a Comment