Ganirelix Update

I Love Walgreen's Specialty Pharmacy.

Walgreen's was the first place I called when I figured out my clinic and pharmacy were going to be less than helpful. It took less than a minute to speak with an actual person and the first thing I asked was if they have Ganirelix in stock. And of course they do! They then proceeded to ask who my Doctor was and if I wanted them to contact the clinic for the prescription. Yes, please! The prescription is filled, insurance is filed and it will be shipping later today. My drug will arrive early next week.

I love it when things work out!

 

 

I'm So Not Excited

The end of next week will be the start of stims for IVF #2.

I should be hopeful and excited.

I’m not.

I have a feeling of impending doom. I think having my first cycle canceled scarred me deeply. I don’t have faith this next cycle will work. I’m fearful of even going in for my baseline appointment.

Thankfully our upcoming move has provided a really nice distraction the past couple of weeks. I have even had days at a time without really thinking about infertility. Unfortunately, I was abruptly returned to realty when my Husband picked up the medications for the next round. Seeing the large pile of meds has really bothered me.

I haven’t cried since my cycle was canceled, but last night, the tears came. I spent a good five minutes sobbing on my Husband’s shoulder. He has finally learned to not say much and just hold me. He tries to be positive, but sometimes when I’m feeling really down, hearing someone spout a bunch of positives just makes me want to punch that person. I really believe it’s therapeutic to allow yourself to feel the emotions that build up when going through infertility. Until last night, I hadn’t even realized how much the upcoming cycle was getting to me.

It certainly doesn’t help matters that I would normally be having my period this week. I feel dumb I didn’t pick up on it until I was being a complete brat towards my Husband last night. I’ve been moody, my endo is flaring up, I’m exhausted and my boobs hurt. Well, duh. My body wants to have a period right now, but of course the birth control is preventing it. Although I must say, the side effects from the BCP are so much less this time around. I’m also still fighting the cold my Husband gave me and after working 12 hour shifts all weekend I pretty much spent all of yesterday sleeping.

Today I’ve been trying to track down one of the meds my pharmacy is out of. Apparently there is a national shortage of Ganirelix. For my insurance to cover my meds at the optimum rate, I need to use the pharmacy located at the hospital. But when my Husband went to pick up the meds, they said they were out of the Ganirelix and the manufacturer did not give them a date when they would have more.

Ummm I kind of need that drug in a couple of weeks.

I emailed the clinic to tell them the pharmacy was out and they just emailed me back a few other places to try. Brilliant idea people, but please tell me how I am going to get the prescription filled when you never actually gave me the prescription??!! The clinic has always called in my meds to the pharmacy. Am I so out of line to think the clinic should be checking around to see what other pharmacies may have this drug in stock?!

The hospital pharmacy said they were going to check with the clinic to see what they wanted to do, but I don’t think that ever happened. My Husband is going to stop there again today and see what the status is. I’m sure something will work out; it’s just frustrating to have one more annoyance to deal with.

For now I just try to keep myself busy and my mind off the upcoming cycle. At least my Husband should be around for all of the injections this time. I prefer letting him mix up the meds, I seem to leak some every time I try it. I really do hope this next cycle works and I hope once things get started, I will become more optimistic.

And one last thing, my Grandpa made it home last week. I appreciate the concern and well wishes. He is doing as well as can be expected. He’s back home with Grandma and is getting around pretty well. I hope to visit him soon.


  

 

Moving Decisions

Once again, I see it’s been a good week or more since my last post. We’ve just had way too much going on for me to have time for much else.

Here’s my current cycle information, the rest of this post is about family, moving, etc so those not interested can just skip it.

I still have about two weeks left of my five weeks of BCP. Side effects have been thankfully very minimal this time. I start stims the very end of April. No Lupron this time which means a lot fewer injections, yay! I still haven’t picked up my meds from the pharmacy. I can imagine the bill is going to be much worse this time since I’ll be on higher doses. I’ll update more about this cyle over the next week, hopefully, if I have time.

A little sad news to share. Last week my sweet 90 year old grandpa suffered a severe heart attack. He ended up in the cath lab twice for stents and he’s still in the hospital due to low blood pressure. He may be 90, but he acts like he’s 50. If they can get his BP under control, he should be able to go home soon. I would love to visit him right now, but my Husband gave me his cold and I really don’t want to risk giving that to my Grandpa.

We had our weekend getaway this last weekend. Only it ended up being more like a week getaway. My Husband bought tickets for some sporting events. We also spent a little time shopping, but didn’t buy much since we’ll be moving soon.

We’re moving only about six hours away from our current home, but it’s far enough to put us in another state. For the sake of maintaining some level of privacy I will just say we’ll still be in the upper Midwest.

Our long weekend turned to a longer visit as the place we traveled for sporting events was only two hours away from our new home. So, we decided to travel there so my Husband could meet some of his new coworkers, sign his contract, and look for housing.

Looking for housing was not so fun. Turns out we are very spoiled with the housing options we have in our current city. There are new buildings going up all the time and the prices are very reasonable. Our new city is an older, established community with very little new construction going on.

Our housing options are either, pay similar to what we do now and live in something built in the 70s or earlier and has not been recently updated or live in the newer buildings and pay almost 50% more than what we do now. The other option we explored was possibly buying a home, but the ones available in our price range were not something we could see ourselves living in. For now we continue to search online and may need to fit in another trip to find a place to live.

We did get a good feel for the area, and aside from the housing issue, we can really see ourselves living there. They have many of the same restaurants and retail stores we’re used to and there is so much to do in the community. And the weather is a little bit warmer on average than where we live now.

Thanks again for all the sweet comments. I wish I had more time to comment on others, but I don’t seem to have much time for anything lately. I did spend several hours on google reader yesterday trying to get up to speed on everyone. It’s amazing how quickly the posts stack up when you’ve been gone for a week!

 

Changes Coming Soon

Ooops. I didn’t realize it had been quite so long since my last post.

We’ve had some big changes happening in our lives the last week.

I’ve been busy working and my Husband received news that we will be moving this summer.

It happened so quickly. He found out about the position on Monday, phone interview on Wednesday, and accepted it on Thursday.

We move in three months……Yikes!

We’re excited as it’s an excellent opportunity for him. But with all moves to a new state there is so much to think about and plan for. I’ve spent what little free time I’ve had lately looking up information on our new city. We have to find housing, I have to find a job, and I had to check out what kind of shopping they have!

And of course being the Type A girl I am, I’m ready to start packing!

Yea….Hubby put the kibosh on that…..for now!

I’m happy that we have Hubby’s job sorted out. Now I feel I can proceed with this IVF cycle with a clear head.

The cycle is going well so far. Not much to report. I started BCP a week or so ago. I haven’t had nearly the side effects as I did from the first time I was on these pills. My endo is still pretty ticked off from the IVF meds and I hope it gets over that soon. I mostly just get frequent little reminders of shooting pain, but it is very tolerable and I haven‘t even bothered with pain meds in well over a week. Now if only I could get rid of this horrible acne that just doesn’t seem to want to go away.....

Three and half weeks from now I’ll be starting stims again. I haven’t received my meds yet. Not too worried as last time I got them two weeks before. I’m just a little concerned about the Ganirelix as Dr. RE said our local pharmacy has been out lately due to a national shortage……..ummmm….so let’s maybe start looking around to order it from elsewhere?! Oh well, I’m not going to stress over it. It’ll be their fault, not mine.

I’m feeling pretty calm going into this second cycle. I think it may have to do with the fact that I exhausted researching the first few weeks after my failed cycle and now I’m just done with looking things up. I can’t change anything and nothing more I find is going to change anything about this next cycle. I’ve resigned myself to just go with the flow. Of course I’m terrified this cycle won’t work either, but I really try to keep those thoughts pushed to the back of my mind. I also think it helps to have our upcoming move as a distraction.

Honestly…..I’m tired of stressing about IVF. As far as I’m concerned for the next few weeks, I’m just a normal girl on BCP.

 

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……..