The State of Affairs.

I had my second ultrasound today.  It went much easier than the last time.  The key to this ease: I decided that it would be less tiresome to wake up earlier than to drag the four-year old in to the city with me.  I was out of the house by seven, at UPenn by eight, and home by nine-thirty.  BF had to go into work an hour late, but LM didn't have to suffer through getting drug out of bed early only to have to sit and wait and be quiet.

It was an insane drive downtown and I'm really glad LM wasn't in the car.  It was spitting when I got into the car, but as soon as I pulled out of our driveway it started pouring.  As I got on I-76 the sky went from cloudy to slate gray and by the time I was close to the city I could see bolts of lightning crackling through the Philadelphia skyline.  As I got off and pulled onto Market Street, what I thought was bad became drastically worse.  The light said eight at night rather than eight in the morning and the deluge was nearly too much for my wipers to take.  I silently thanked whatever higher power there may be that the doctor's office has a connected parking garage as I watched people's umbrellas flip inside out while they struggled down the street, completely drenched.  

Once inside, things went as smoothly as I could have possibly hoped for.  I checked in at the office, went down to the lab where I sat for all of half a second before being called back for my blood draw.  As soon as I got back upstairs, my fabulous nurse was waiting and took me right back for my ultrasound.  My follicle counts aren't very high, five around twelve millimeters on my left ovary, four around the same size on the right side.  The nurse said that that's what they expected since they were trying to play it safe so as to not induce OHSS.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed by the count.  It really limits my options after retrieval.  I had hoped that we'd get enough to be able to freeze a few unfertilized eggs in addition to the embryos, but the doc said to assume that we'll only get half as many eggs as follicles and half as many embryos as eggs.  I know that it only takes one to have a baby, but I don't get a second go at this.   I'm going to try not to worry about it though.  I know it won't help anything and that it's out of my hands anyway.  We can't afford to repeat the IVF if it doesn't work and we won't even know if it fails until I'm sterile.  I also don't want to sound all gloom and doom because I'm not.  All other signs show that there shouldn't be anything wrong with the number or quality of my eggs and BF is equally fertile, so maybe we'll get more eggs than expected, maybe more will fertilize, maybe the embryos will all be fabulous.  Also, if that doesn't go my way, maybe they'll be able to successfully develop eggs from the ovarian tissue that we're freezing and then there's always that very, very slight chance that I won't be sterile after the stem cell transplant and I could get pregnant naturally.  

And on that note... I've decided to forego tubal ligation.  Surprisingly, it was my dad's concern that made me start thinking about finding another option.  While we were standing in line to ride a roller coaster at Hershey Park, he asked whether or not I had to do it or if it was a choice I was making.  I've always been really close with my dad and I always weight his opinions and concerns heavily.  This time, it was really the tone of his voice and the look he gave me that made me think that I might want to give this one some more thought.  So I thought a bit and when Dr. G. asked me during my Day One ultrasound whether or not I still wanted to do it I said I wanted to reexamine my options.  She said that she was relieved that I said that because she didn't think sterilization was the best option for me.  I had decided on tubal ligation because I thought that there weren't any other roads open for me.  Every gynecologist that I went to was reluctant to give me any of the hormonal forms or an IUD because they weren't comfortable enough with my illnesses or medications and I don't feel comfortable enough using barrier methods by themselves.  Dr. G. said that she has no problems with giving me the Mirena IUC and that she'll be glad to do that instead of the ligation.  Now my only problem is that my HMO doesn't currently cover Mirena.  I don't think that is going to be a big problem though because they'll pay for the Copper-T IUD and there are definite medical reasons that I can't get that one and that Mirena is the better choice for me, so I'll just have to apply for pre-approval and then appeal it if they deny me coverage.

Alrighty then, not much else going on, not much else to say.  Just taking things day by day, doing what needs to be done.  I haven't noticed any serious side-effects from the hormones yet, so we'll see how things go.  At this point we're looking at egg retrieval on Friday or Saturday.  Exciting!