The House of Doolittle

The House of Doolittle

Saturday, 10 March 2012

TTC - The Final Frontier

At Mt. Sinai on the day of reckoning, March 9, 2012  © Shutterbug

It was never my intention for this blog to get bogged down with our infertility troubles, but it's taken over our lives. It IS our lives. 

The struggle to maintain some sort of perspective on the whole process continues. There are times when all you can do is laugh, and times there is nothing to do but cry. Sometimes my wife and I do both.


Our last IUI (converted IVF cycle) was another dismal failure, followed by having to hastily decide what to do next. Obsessive Googling produced conflicting opinions on whether injectable fertility drugs have cumulative benefits, or whether it was better to give your body a rest between cycles. We decided to go with our guts and our fear of my now-gonging biological clock, and just go for it again.


Another early morning trek to the clinic for another Day 3 scan, with the unhappy news that I had not one but FOUR significant ovarian cysts, which meant that cycle was out of the question. Interestingly, my feelings of frustration and angst over the wasted cycle were alternating with a feeling of relief at not having to think about it for a month. We slept more, exercised more, and lost a few pounds.


We were told to meet with Dr. Liu for a review, and she said there was little point in raising my already very high dose of medications. She increased the Menopur from 75iu to 150iu, but said anything beyond that was "just a waste of money". We asked if this time we could choose to proceed with the IVF procedure regardless of the number of eggs there were, and she said yes. We knew there were clinics out there with women who prayed to produce just a single egg, and had success. We still didn't know where we would draw the line, but at least we would be in control of whether to move forward.


This time around I was expecting the uncertainty, and didn't look for too many answers early on. My Day 3 scan showed six follicles and no cysts. My wife and I trudged down the hall to the billing office, and plunked down a few thousand dollars more for the vials of medication. 


So began the mixing and poking and bruising and bloating and headaches and depression. We still counted the days to scans, but I wasn't losing sleep over it as I had before. By Day 7 we knew I had two strong follicles on the right and 1 on the left, which was the most we'd ever had to work with.


Scans and blood work followed on a daily basis, and I added injections of Cetrotide to the other medications. Each day they told us to wait until they called with the blood test results, which contradicts the prescription information that the injections be taken at precisely the same time each day. There is no returning the meds once they are purchased, which at $750 per day is no small investment. So we bite our nails waiting for the call, then rush around trying to fill the prescription, then inject me as quickly as possible. But be sure to cut down on your stress, ladies! On Day 14 we found out a fourth little follicle had suddenly decided to join the party, and might be big enough by retrieval day. Wow.


Thank God we both have a good sense of humour and can laugh in the waiting rooms. We observe lots of really odd behaviour, we laugh at frustrations like long, loud cell phone conversations, and we watch newbies find their way around. We are greeted by name by all the staff, who often stop to chat with us. Our fertility clinic has become like our Starbucks, or local pub. Sad, really, because we never intended to be there this long, and yet there is a level of comfort in knowing all of these people are truly pulling for you.


I took a Cetrotide injection the night of Day 14, so it was shocking to get a call from the clinic after the next morning's blood work to say my LH levels were still rising. We had to drop everything, leave work, and rush across the city to pick up an emergency second dose. Ovulating through this medication and missing the egg retrieval would cost us $14,000, and there are no funds to try again. This is it.


Day 16 was show time, and I barely slept. I passed the hours between 2 and 6 a.m. watching reruns of The Golden Girls and home improvement shows. Thank God for extended cable packages. We were at the clinic by 8 a.m. and had an hour to prep before the procedure. The nurse, Theresa, carefully evaluated all of my veins, including using a tourniquet in various locations, before deciding to use my hand. I am resigned to being a "difficult case" now after having been labelled this by so many sources. Difficult veins, difficult cervix, difficult ovary...I can only imagine what my birth experience would be, should I get there.



Difficult veins  © Shutterbug
Jody in the waiting room with booties  © Shutterbug

We'd been told that our favourite nurse Maddie and Dr. Liu would be doing the egg retrieval, but this was not so. It would be Theresa and Dr. Arthur...the dreaded woman who had done my pregnancy ultrasound before my miscarriage, about whom I'd sent in a written complaint. This woman would now be in charge of the most important procedure of my life? Theresa saw the look of horror on my face and went to find an alternative, so it turned out that Dr. Kim Garbedian would be doing the retrieval with Dr. Arthur there to supervise.

To be fair, Dr. Arthur was friendly and professional and showed no sign of remembering us. However, the first thing she said to me as I lay on the table was, "I expect this to be a difficult retrieval, because your left ovary is high." Of course it would be.


The drugs that were supposed to put me in a "twilight state" certainly made me feel calm and slightly swoony, but did nothing for the pain. Nothing. I remember every moment of the procedure, and as the stabbing pain of them puncturing my ovary hit me I begged for more meds, which they apparently provided. Once again there was a lot of blood, enough that it splashed on the floor and on the doctor's gown. This is not supposed to happen.


They managed to get four eggs out. It was the best possible outcome we could hope for, and I was really proud of my wife and I for not giving in to the doctors' pessimism about doing IVF. It only takes one, and we had four. In my obsessive online research there are many clinics with women praying for just one or two eggs, and we had double that.


I was sent home a couple of hours later, and spent the remainder of the day in bed. I was surprised to find this much like other surgical recovery, in terms of abdominal pain, bloating, etc. It was another sleepless night, and a fairly unpleasant day today too while I recovered and waited for the phone to ring.


And ring it finally has, with the news that two eggs have definitely fertilized, and a third is still a possibility. The fourth one is lost, for whatever reason. My body did the best it could. It's hard to wrap my head around what's going on in a lab downtown right this very minute. It's hard to restrain myself from running down there to press my face against the glass of the lab, and watch and will a petri dish to grow our children. We imagine every scenario, every outcome, and have already begun the anxious waiting for tomorrow's call.


I hear the excitement and job in my wife's voice, and it is oh so contagious. Even my normally reserved mother told me to cherish this milestone, and be happy for what we've achieved thus far.


Come on, give me another shot at this.



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