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!