The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Where to begin after several weeks of not blogging?

The Good

I needed time away to get my head on straight and to figure out where to go from our canceled cycle. I’m happy to report that my mood is definitely improved from my last couple of posts. I feel almost normal again.

Well, almost normal as we all know how much infertility changes a person.

Life has been getting back on track. I’ve been going out with my Husband and friends. I’m still at home much of the time, but I’m not sitting around pouting. Or at least not nearly as much. I have actually accomplished some good cleaning around our home and with my Husband’s help, have finally cleared out our guest room which had turned into a catch-all room.

I think my better mood has also helped my Husband. He is going through a lot professionally right now. I can’t begin to imagine the pressure he feels with our infertility on top of his work. He is in the process of making decisions that will affect the rest of our lives. I’m proud of him for what he has accomplished and hope that everything works out the way we’re hoping, and soon. It would be nice to have his work squared away prior to starting our second round.

We also have a most wonderful weekend away planned in the near future. It will take place over my Husband’s Birthday and will also be a few weeks before starting IVF #2. Yea for being able to toss back a few cocktails that weekend!!!

The Bad

During the couple of weeks immediately following the canceled cycle I became obsessed about trying to figure out what went wrong and where to go from here. I spent days of my life researching. It drove my Husband crazy.

I did a phone consult with SIRM. As I suspected, they heavily pushed their agonist/antagonist conversion protocol with estrogen priming. It sounded somewhat convincing, but it is a very expensive and heavy protocol with really high doses of stimming meds. I tried searching many different message boards in the hopes of finding people that have used their protocol. I didn’t find much and the few I found, did not have good results with the protocol. I think with IVF there are just so many variables and so many differences from one infertile to the next that I don’t believe they will ever come up with a cure all protocol.

An interesting tidbit I learned from the Dr. I spoke with from there believes my endo and elevated FSH give me about a 2% chance of getting pregnant on my own each month.

Yeah……….

A week after my phone consult Dr. RE was finally back and we had our WTF appointment. He believes the Lupron really suppressed me and wants to use Ganirelix for round 2. He still believes I have a good chance of responding well and he expects the change in protocol to produce much better results. The positive side is fewer injections, even less than I did for my canceled cycle. That’s one bit of good news in all this.

I really wanted to get into it with Dr. RE about why I wasn’t informed of my elevated FSH and what it meant, but instead I spent the whole appointment fighting back tears. My Husband is non-confrontational so he wasn’t much help in getting my point across. Dr. RE feels my good response to low doses of oral meds means I should have a good response to injection meds as well. He really didn’t put much emphasis on my FSH being an end to my chances.

We also discussed completing the cycle even if I only have a few eggs. He said it’s up to us to decide whether to cancel a cycle or move forward. Ummmm…we didn’t get the choice last time?!

My Husband feels better about this cycle and is optimistic for our chances. Me? Not so much. I’m still hurting from the canceled cycle and I am too afraid to get my hopes up. I worry about possibly going through that kind of pain again. I am very much a realist and my Husband is more of an optimist. We butt heads when talking about the possibilities of our next cycle. He wants me to be more positive, but I’m just not there. Yet.

The Ugly

The next part is for all those endo girls out there.

Getting your period after a failed IVF cycle:

IT. SUCKS. BIG. TIME.

I would most definitely put this period in the top three worst periods of my life. The amount of pain was ridiculous. I ended up taking FOUR different prescription painkillers and they didn’t even work that great. I was beyond miserable. I tried everything to ease the pain. Hot baths, living with a heating pad clutched to my abdomen, pain pills, massage, etc. None of it really helped aside from taking the sharpest edge off. And lucky me, I was working a six day stretch during the worst of it. I pretty much spent all of my time outside of work moaning and whimpering in my bed.

The kicker was my period being almost a week late giving me a glimmer of hope that maybe; just maybe, I ovulated those two follicles and was actually pregnant.

Thank you, endo, for bitch slapping me back to reality.

The Plan

I started BCP for IVF #2. I start stims the end of April and will hopefully make it to an early May retrieval and transfer.

Hoping and praying IVF #2 is THE ONE!

11 Days

11 days since our IVF cycle was canceled.

The first several days were spent drowning in sorrow. I finally allowed myself to feel all of the hurt and pain that has been building up since we started with infertility treatments. I collapsed into bed sobbing.

The type of sobbing that leaves you physically and emotionally exhausted.

The week after the canceled cycle was spent in bed and/or on the couch. Everything took excruciating effort. I could barely drag myself from the bed to the couch and back again. Housework was out of the question. Bathing was optional. Eating was beyond difficult.  The intensity of my pain was so great I was beginning to worry I would never again feel better.

I honestly felt worse than if someone had died.

It’s the kind of pain that leaves you feeling destroyed. So incredibly painful that every time you even try to wrap your mind around what happened you feel as though you are suffocating. You begin to question how someone can feel so much pain and possibly live through it.

I pleaded with my Husband to make it stop. I begged him to tell me when the pain would go away. He didn’t know what to tell me and instead just wrapped his arms around me even tighter.  

One morning I finally woke up. It was the first time in a whole week I saw the clock before the afternoon. At first it didn’t seem real. I stayed in bed for another hour, in complete disbelief that my body was actually allowing me to be up this early.

It was my first day in moving forward. I was doing laundry and cleaning our home by 9am. My Husband thought he came home to the wrong place. I was up and dressed and had makeup on. I was even, dare I say, in a good mood.

Things have not been perfectly rosy since my turning point, but they have been much better. I still have my moments. The pain is slowly being replaced by sadness. And that’s okay. I can handle sadness.

There have even been moments when I don’t even think about our infertility. I wouldn’t have believed it myself a week ago, but it can and does happen. Try going to the movies and seeing a comedy. It helped me feel normal.

Now it is time for us to move forward. Move on to the next step, no matter what it may be. I still don’t have answers as to what happened. I may never know. And I still don’t know where to go from here. But we’re moving forward. I have a phone consult this week with SIRM and a meeting with Dr. RE next week. Hoping we can gain some insight on what happened and what our options are.

It’s time to let go of the pain from this cycle and move forward. As the quote from the top of my blog says:

Courage is Going from Failure to Failure Without Losing Enthusiasm.

   

.........Just.............Breathe..........

Five days ago my heart shattered into a million pieces.

It’s amazing how quickly you can go from being so hopeful to beyond devastated.

I wish I could say over the past few days I have been feeling the slightest bit better.

I don’t.

I feel worse.

Much, much worse.

Leaving well enough alone is not my strong point.

Remember, I am a Type A planner that has to know.

In my desperation to figure out what went wrong, I started researching.

The first stop was reviewing lab values.

Not a good idea.

Turns out there are a few little red flags.

Red flags Dr. RE should have caught and discussed with me.

Red flags that should have put me on a completely different protocol.

Red flags I should have caught myself if I hadn’t been so naïve then.

My FSH is 11. Diminished. Ovarian. Reserve.

…….just……..breathe…….

Our clinic is rather small. We go there because it's the only one within a reasonable radius and our insurance will cover us there.

Without insurance we wouldn’t even be able to pursue infertility treatments.

Unfortunately, their track record for diminished ovarian reserve is beyond horrible (as in 0 for the five years of statistics I could find). And they’re not much better with endometriosis patients (success rates in the 20% range).

If there is any hope at all of us conceiving a child with both of our genetic material, we need a highly personalized protocol. One I don’t think our current clinic is going to be able to provide.

During my research I have also found it may be a good idea for endometriosis patients with failed IVF cycles to have immune testing done. I’m thinking with everything else I’m working against right now, I should look into this. But again, I’m not sure this is something my clinic would be able to provide.

I am waiting for my next menstrual cycle to kick in and when it does, I’m supposed to go in and have a meeting with Dr. RE. I will bring copies of what I have found and hope and pray he will work with me.

If the next cycle doesn’t work I’m afraid we’re done. Our insurance will be close to maxed out and it would be up to five years before we could afford an IVF cycle at a better clinic.

With my FSH we don’t have time to waste.

It’s now or never.

…….just……..breathe……..