My Egg Freeze Adventure

The end of an adventure

Well I have to a lot to fill in about the day of my aspiration and post-aspiration……

My mom got into town on Tuesday night to take care of me after my procedure; I had been wanting to do something for all my coworkers for helping with everything from start to finish so I asked my mom if while i was at work on Wednesday she wouldn’t mind making some cookies :-) Gotta love having moms around. Little did I know that was just the beginning of my mother’s baking-filled trip to LA. When I got home I helped make two pies as well, one raspberry and one apple :D It was cruel punishment as I wouldn’t be able to eat them, not even a bite for breakfast before I went into the clinic…no food or water after midnight, for those who know me, 12 hours without food or drink is like an ETERNITY, I eat pretty much every 2 hours or so, speedy metabolism, what can I say. Before I left work my doctor wanted me to get a prescription filled for Cabergoline, it can be used to help prevent OHSS (Ovarian Hyper-Stimulation Syndrome) which can make you very sick. Because my E2 had gotten over 4000 she wanted to be sure we did what we could to prevent me from getting sick, good idea! 

So we headed to my work for a very different reason than I usually go. As we waited to be taken back into the surgery center I had to sit and watch my coworkers eat cookies and pie; which on one hand made me soo happy to see their smiles, but was also making my tummy get angry with jealousy. “Can I go back now?” I had to beg. Thankfully it was time. Was so interesting to be taken to the back by one of the nurses I work with as a patient, getting into the gown and cozy socks and awesome “chef” hat, haha. The heated blanket was fabulous. It was so nice to have all my coworkers come back and wish me well, send their love, and meet my mom. Think it made my mom happy to see what wonderful people I work with, made me happy too :) I even knew my anesthesiologist; that always makes you feel more comfortable, having someone you really trust putting you under….they set me up on the OR bed and the last thing I remember is telling the anesthesiologist she was sneaky giving me drugs without me seeing and boom I was out, haha. I woke up about an hour later and the nurse told me I needed to sit up and eat and drink something since I had slept for so long. Apparently I kept waking up and chatting with people who came to talk to me and then falling back asleep, don’t remember :-/ But at least I didn’t say anything silly.

Was able to direct my mom back to my apartment, with a pit stop at the market, “I think we need pies for us too” my mom said. Excellent idea! So we came home and I lay on the couch and watched movies I don’t remember watching while my mom baked away again, once again one apple on raspberry. Ate a lot of soup and drank gatorade like a good patient. I wasn’t feeling too bad on Thursday, just a little bloated and tired, the heating pad helped a lot. And I received flowers from my besties, lovely surprise! Before bed I took my antibiotics and first Cabergoline.

Friday my brother came into town :) Another family member to visit me, so nice! Felt kind of bad as I wasn’t up for doing anything, but it was nice to have family around me. After we had eaten another pie, my mom decided it would be sad if my sister didn’t get any when she arrived the next day, so baking away she went. To know how impressive to be doing all this baking is you should see my kitchen!

Saturday I tried to get up to go to work, made it to the shower and once there got gnarly tunnel vision and thought I was going to pass out, not a good thing to be happening in a lab carrying valuable dishes…so I called my doctor and after a few calls back and forth and making me stand and walk around for five minutes with a report back as to how I felt afterward my doctor concluded that it most likely was not something had gone wrong with the procedure, but that I was suffering from the side effects of the cabergoline. Phew, that’s easy to fix, no more cabergoline! So I still was really out of it and dizzy on Saturday and didn’t get to enjoy homemade, from scratch, even the pasta, lasagne that my mom and sister made :( Thank goodness for leftovers.

But Sunday morning I wasn’t feeling nearly as dizzy as I had the day before, had some mild cramping that my heating pad quickly made better. What a relief that I was feeling better, I was starting to worry that I had made a horrible decision in going through all of this…you know you start to go a little crazy, thinking I’d ruined my uterus and ovaries, yada yada. Alas I just took some pills my body was not liking. Got out of the house today and walked to get pedicures with my sister and lunch with my moms and sees, feeling like a person again. I’m still a little bloated and have to keep a happy balance of food in my tum tum to not feel icky, but oh so much better.

Now I suppose I can reflect on my journey….it’s so strange, my doctor said it will be this really great thing you do and will consume your daily life for a while and then when it’s over you’ll almost forget it ever happened. I can already see how that will happen. Because I’m just storing my eggs for potential later use, hoping I won’t need them, it’s pretty different than most people going through ovarian stimulation, for me it’s over, I’ve reached the end goal. I can already feel a little weight lifted, now I can tell my biological clock to calm down a bit and not make crazy. Though I still plan on having children before I’m 35, now if that doesn’t happen I won’t have to freak out, now I know I have a little security deposit, my little just in case. And that feels really good.

Phew!

Labs are back and I did my shot right! Really right…my hCG was 4 times what we hope for, haha! And my E2 is still going up :) Sigh of relief. So all is well :) This morning I  came in and voiced my woes from the early morning and one of the nurses said, oh yes I expected this from you, haha. She said, yes of course you worry you did it wrong, reading the medication box and second guessing us, our patients usually just listen to instructions and follow them…well whatever, I will be “that” patient. Typical. My Doc asked me, why didn’t you call me when you were worried you weren’t doing it right? Told her I knew it would be ok, just had a little freak out and I didn’t want to wake her up at 12:30am!

And because I am the type of person to try and make light of any situation, take the pressure off and remember all will be well, I started a pool to bet how many eggs my coworkers think I will make. $1 gets you in and we’re betting on how many eggs and how many mature. My doc thinks it might make me more disappointed if I don’t get as many as all of us hoped for, but I think it’s helping me be calm and relaxed about it and remember that it is out of my hands and really all I can do is bet on it, can’t change what will be and that’s ok. I am betting for 13 mature eggs, but in all honesty I will be delighted to have 5 eggs mature and frozen, it’s more than I have now and it’s enough to go through one cycle, possibly two…so that is just fine with me :)

Nervously excited for tomorrow :) I personally set up my dishes and picked which incubator I want them to be in. All of our incubators are named after fertility goddesses, btw. ;) All set and ready and awaiting my little eggies!

Post hCG shot….oh please say I did it right!

So I don’t think I will sleep much tonight. Already stayed up until 1am, 3 hours past my bedtime and I’m not feeling so tired anymore. More a little terrified that I did my shot right…trying to tell if I can “feel” it working yet. So silly, but I’m finally feeling the weight of this whole thing. Up until now I’ve just been going through the motions, doing my shots. La la la. I feel like maybe I’m not supposed to be so affected by it all because I work in the field and it’s all my colleagues that are telling me what to do and everyone’s so calm about it. My doctor has been asking me if i have any questions, concerns, and I felt like no no, I work here I know what goes on. But this is a big deal! And I think I’m feeling affected now! And I’m a little scared. Hope I did everything right, didn’t give my shots wrong, didn’t eat the wrong things, didn’t push myself too hard, I hope I get eggs and they’re pretty and mature. Perfectionist here not really having much control, whoa it’s tough. Ahh! I have to wait like 13 hours until I know if I did my shot right! Yeah it’s gonna be a rough day.

Week of Aspiration

Today is Monday….I have made it to my week of aspiration! Yippee!

This weekend I got to enjoy a mellow San Diego weekend with my sister, brother, and dad for my Dad’s birthday :) It was really nice to be able to see my family during all of this hoopla. My dad wanted to make sure I wasn’t pushing myself too much by driving from LA to SD, but I was so excited to see everybody and I was feeling just fine and didn’t need to come into the office for a scan or blood draw, so it was too perfect. 

Had a scan and blood draw and a shot before I hit the road from work on Saturday and my follicles were growing nice and plump :) And one of the doctors called me once i was in SD to let me know my E2 was going up a little faster than anticipated (looks like the LH shots have been doing the trick) so I was to drop my Follistim down just a touch. All good things, glad things were looking up and I was feeling good and it made me smile even more to be able to hang with most of the fam too. My sister mysteriously “had something to grab in her room” every time I was about to give myself a shot, she’s little squeamish about that stuff. But i made my brother watch me mix and administer my LH shot, since the nurses had been mixing it for me up until then. I told him, hey Bro come watch me do science and mix up this shot…he was a champ, thought it was pretty cool. I’m relieved to be able to give that shot in my leg as it’s 1ml of fluid and it creates a little ball I can feel right after. Glad I don’t have that in my stomach, yuck-o.

Came in today and my follicles are getting real juicy I said, haha. Two are really good sized and I have a bunch of little ones that grew a bunch since Saturday. So I am awaiting my E2 results for today to see how much that has gone up, but all is looking good for hopefully a Thursday retrieval.

I’ve been joking that I want to be the only case on Thursday so I can get the super VIP treatment here…yeah that’s not going to happen, haha. So we shall see….can’t believe it’s already down to the wire :)

Add Shot Number 3…. whhaaa??

Day 6 of stimulation today…had a blood draw and a scan again today. Follicles look great all growing wonderfully; however my E2 (estrodial) did not go up as expected, went from 237 yesterday to just 254 today :-/ Doctor thinks this is possibly because I took an extra boost of Follistim mid day on Tuesday, but after conversing with another doctor just in case she wants me to start adding LH. (all the doctors in my clinic collaborate, it’s a very close “family” type setting and even though all the docs have a little different style, everyone works together…it’s like 3 docs in one!)

What I gathered from her explanation is that because all the drugs are upping my bodies natural supply of these hormones unexpectedly sometimes the body doesn’t fully translate their desired intentions so even though I am getting all this FSH to stimulate my ovaries to produce follicles which in turn produce estrogen there might be a gap in the feedback system and estrogen isn’t being properly produced. SOO to help my body figure out our intentions my doctor is having me add LH to the picture to sort of complete the system. I think I need a diagram, I like pictures.

So I will be adding a mid-day shot. Making it THREE shots a day for me until my aspiration………In the immortal words of Snooki - “waaaah!”

Side note, my nurse is visiting her son and soon to be daughter in-law in NYC so HI!!! to her! Because of that I get to have all the nurses in my office be my nurse not that they weren’t all involved anyway, but it’s kinda fun to have everyone involved in my cycle :) I feel special, hehe.

So one of the my nurses ;) mixed my LH shot (1 ml total - yikes!) with a GIANT needle, my eyes got huge and before I could say, “is that the needle I have to use?” She looked at me and said “I’m just mixing it with this needle, don’t worry.” PHEW! She told me I could give my tummy a little break and give it in my ummm side butt, hip joint area I guess you’d call it. Initially I wanted her to give it to me, but I figured, I’m in this, haven’t had anyone do a shot for me yet, so I can do this too. And thankfully it didn’t hurt and went in easy :)

The needle aversion is just going to get stronger and stronger I can feel it….3 shots a day and blood draws basically everyday until my aspiration, plus hcg shot two nights before my aspiration; oy!

But I’m still feeling good and very positive. I think the fact that my follicles are good sized and growing strong is most important, I think my E2 will catch up……I hope :)

Day 5 of Stimulation

So I had another scan and blood draw. Looks like the follicles I have are growing very well. :)

My doctor got very excited because I have a little bit of a fluid build up in my uterus, which sometimes happens, and she said “Oh cool! you’re getting a free hydrosono right now!” Which is when they fill the uterus with fluid to see the shape of the uterus and see if it is normal….well my uterus is totally normal looking ;) sweet.

I have officially made it through the lupron lull. Thursday was definitely the worst day, felt so crappy and flat and really really anxious about every shot. Now I am feeling my normal peppy self and totally cool with all the shots. I even had to do an extra booster shot yesterday and was very calm about it. Back to feeling like, pssht this is no big deal, I can do this.

Feels so good to feel normal again. Well I guess not totally normal, still having some hot flashes. And last night I finished watching my normal allotted time of TV after I got back from the barn and showered and I was not tired at all….very strange. I looked at the clock and it was 10:30! I am usually passing out on the couch by that time. So camomile tea to the rescue…helped me calm down and get to bed. But once I was in bed, slept like a baby :)

So will wait and see what my estrodial level is, but all looks good and Doctor is thinking same dose tonight and probably a Thursday aspiration next week if things continue like this.

Feeling really good today :)

Day 3 of stimulation

Went in to the office today on my day off :-/ to get a scan and blood draw. All went fine, not growing as many follicles as I was hoping for, 15 at the moment. That’s a fine number, but I guess I was really hoping for more so I would have a better chance of 15-20 mature eggs. It’s early in the stimulation so more may pop up. About to do my injection for the evening, sticking with the same amount of drugs. Last night was a bit easier with the pen than the first night, so that’s good. Had to hold it closer to the plunger and plunge with my thumb instead of index finger. I’m really not looking forward to each shot now…I get some intense anxiety before each one now. As soon as I wake up I’m like, ugh I have to do it again today. Nothing’s gone wrong with my shots, i hold right and steady while i inject and they still don’t hurt when I do it, but before and after each shot I’m slightly freaking out. My tummy is starting to be a little sore from all the poking. And I will be getting my blood drawn more and more so I have that to look forward to as well now. I’m all rainbows and sunshine aren’t I?