So. After further checks it would appear that none of our four frosties are viable for transfer. None. Game over.
I didn't think it would affect me this much. I realise that's an incredibly naive thing to say, really I do, but there you go. It's been over a week now and I'm still crying at the drop of a hat, drinking too much vodka and only really wanting to eat pizza. Which is not a good thing - I put on half a stone in five days on the IVF meds and I struggle to lose weight at the best of times. But hey ho.
"Why don't we just do another round?" I hear you cry. A lot of other people have asked the same question. It's an easy answer to be honest - cost. We borrowed £10,000 from the bank to fund this round, we spent £9,500 of that getting this far. We simply can't afford to do it again. Even though now I know I could go through it, I was worried I wouldn't be able to but it would appear that I can. The irony is not lost on me.
I keep questioning everything. Did they just get a bad batch of eggs out of me that particular month? If we'd done it the month before or the month after would we have got a different outcome? Did I react badly to the drugs and did that affect egg quality? Was it my eggs or his sperm? Or both?! Are we just not compatible? Hubby has a lot of inheritable serious illness in his family, whilst the clinic tested for motility and shape there is no way of knowing if they carry any abnormalities which have made things unviable. I guess the most likely reason though is my age - I am 41 this year. Egg quality goes down with age, all the science says so. So maybe I am taking this so badly because I am blaming myself. Or, more likely, I realise that we have now waved goodbye to any chance of me ever getting pregnant. Adoption is still on the cards so there is still a chance we'll be parents, but there is now a very very real chance I will never be pregnant. We'd even talked about using our frosties with a gestational surrogate if the first couple didn't stick in me. All of this stuff we'd talked about that will never need to be said again. When will the questions end? When will the nightmare end?
Very sweetly, both sets of parents also gave us some money to go towards treatment (this would have paid for the meds and other associated costs of our first transfer, subsequent transfers we were going to fund ourselves) and they do not want that money back - we did offer as we felt bad. So we're using that for five nights in New York next month. We both love the city but haven't been for a few years. I'm not even looking forward to it at the moment, although I'm sure I will. At least I hope I will. Right now I just can't look past this. This failure. This, what seems like at least, finality of our journey.
Friday 28 February 2020
Friday 21 February 2020
The Little Egg That Could (and friends!)
So, egg retrieval went well. I didn't respond well to the sedative initially so they had to give me a higher than usual dose, apparently it's because I have a high tolerance to alcohol. Not sure whether to be appalled or proud..... They managed to get 20 (twenty!) eggs out of me so no wonder I was in so much discomfort. We were discharged around midday and when we got home I slept pretty much all afternoon. Woke up about 6pm and we ordered pizza (I was under strict instructions not to cook so what else were we going to do?!) and went back to bed early. I'm was back at work the day (a Wednesday) after but still in a fair amount of pain, it didn't go away for a while (early the following week).
The clinic then phoned me the following morning with an update - of the 20 (I still can't quite believe that number....) eggs that they collected 16 of them were mature enough to be fertilised (they would expect 80% so that fits), then 9 actually fertilised (an additional two were 'over fertilised' so can't be used). They said they'd keep me posted with their progress daily but that they only expected 90% (i.e. 8) of them to continue to develop, whichever ones do continue to grow would be checked before freezing. There was of course still no guarantee how many would make it to freezing, nor how many will pass all the relevant checks. There's also, of course, no guarantee any of them will 'stick' once transferred but holy hell these were good numbers to be starting with!
This following morning's update was not so good - only seven continued to develop, two didn't produce any cells. Of those seven, four weren't doing very well and so the clinic weren't sure if they'd make it to freezing. They were hopeful that the other three would, and some of those four might still it's just that the chances are lower that they will. We'd get a better prediction in the following day's update call of how many would make it to freezing.
And the next day's update was a blow, it took the wind right out of both of us. Only one was doing what it should be doing but they didn't know if it would continue to do so. Three more made it to eight cells, but the cells were misshapen and fragmented so were unlikely to develop further. The others were still developing but doing it so slowly that they were also unlikely to make it. The next update was two days away and there was now a very real chance we'd end up with nothing
The wait was excruciating. But when the phone call finally came they said that our little fighter had made it!!! One was being checked that day and three of the others had also caught up and might be ok for checking the next day. There was still 24hrs to go on those three so of course things might change but at that moment it did look like they should make it! There were still many more hurdles to jump - they need to pass the checks and be ok for freezing for a start. And there is of course still no guarantee any will implant successfully after transfer but after the earlier phone call we got we were fully prepared for different news so, for at that moment at least, we were very happy bunnies.
The final clinic update came through and we ended up with four that had been frozen and checked, the results of the checks won't come through for a few weeks so nothing else to do in the meantime. The only thing of slight concern was that the embryologist wasn't convinced of their quality, but (as far as I'm aware....) if a fertilised egg makes it as far as being a blastocyst it's just different levels of 'good'. If it's not a viable embryo it wouldn't have made it to be a blastocyst. So, as always, there are still no guarantees but it was another hurdle cleared!
And so the wait begins.
The clinic then phoned me the following morning with an update - of the 20 (I still can't quite believe that number....) eggs that they collected 16 of them were mature enough to be fertilised (they would expect 80% so that fits), then 9 actually fertilised (an additional two were 'over fertilised' so can't be used). They said they'd keep me posted with their progress daily but that they only expected 90% (i.e. 8) of them to continue to develop, whichever ones do continue to grow would be checked before freezing. There was of course still no guarantee how many would make it to freezing, nor how many will pass all the relevant checks. There's also, of course, no guarantee any of them will 'stick' once transferred but holy hell these were good numbers to be starting with!
This following morning's update was not so good - only seven continued to develop, two didn't produce any cells. Of those seven, four weren't doing very well and so the clinic weren't sure if they'd make it to freezing. They were hopeful that the other three would, and some of those four might still it's just that the chances are lower that they will. We'd get a better prediction in the following day's update call of how many would make it to freezing.
And the next day's update was a blow, it took the wind right out of both of us. Only one was doing what it should be doing but they didn't know if it would continue to do so. Three more made it to eight cells, but the cells were misshapen and fragmented so were unlikely to develop further. The others were still developing but doing it so slowly that they were also unlikely to make it. The next update was two days away and there was now a very real chance we'd end up with nothing
The wait was excruciating. But when the phone call finally came they said that our little fighter had made it!!! One was being checked that day and three of the others had also caught up and might be ok for checking the next day. There was still 24hrs to go on those three so of course things might change but at that moment it did look like they should make it! There were still many more hurdles to jump - they need to pass the checks and be ok for freezing for a start. And there is of course still no guarantee any will implant successfully after transfer but after the earlier phone call we got we were fully prepared for different news so, for at that moment at least, we were very happy bunnies.
The final clinic update came through and we ended up with four that had been frozen and checked, the results of the checks won't come through for a few weeks so nothing else to do in the meantime. The only thing of slight concern was that the embryologist wasn't convinced of their quality, but (as far as I'm aware....) if a fertilised egg makes it as far as being a blastocyst it's just different levels of 'good'. If it's not a viable embryo it wouldn't have made it to be a blastocyst. So, as always, there are still no guarantees but it was another hurdle cleared!
And so the wait begins.
Monday 3 February 2020
Christmas and the Good Follicles
Christmas, as we knew it would be, was horrendous. Christmas Eve we had lunch with my parents, dad gearing up for a stem cell transplant in the New Year (more about that another time, I don't have the energy to write about that too at the moment), and Christmas Day we spent volunteering. Which actually went really well and we both very much enjoyed it, but then we had to leave before the end so I could drop hubby home and drive down to my brothers by late afternoon. Yes that's right, I had to leave hubby home alone on the afternoon and evening of Christmas Day as he is still not allowed anywhere near my brother's children. We then spent Boxing Day with hubby's family which was lovely - and we were done. That was it.
The weekend between Christmas and New Year I came down with a horrible cold so spent the weekend with the duvet on the sofa. Which, to be honest, had pretty much been the plan for the weekend anyway!! But then AF turned up four days early and put our New Year plans in jeopardy, turning everything on its head. I now needed to be scanned before we went away rather than when we got back. After the initial anger had subsided, we managed to rebook the scans for the morning before we went away as opposed to the afternoon we got back. And actually, in hindsight, that was a really good thing. I'd reacted so badly to the HSG I'd had on the NHS (read about that fun here) that I was unbelievably nervous and shaky about this scan, the anticipation beforehand was horrendous. How would I have felt about having it hanging over me throughout our entire New Year trip?! So, actually, getting it out of the way before we went away ended up being a good thing. So I guess AF does know what she's doing sometimes after all.
And our New Year trip was just AMAZING! We were in this wonderful old hotel, a building that used to be owned by Jane Austin, in the west country and had a brilliant time. Got all dressed up for NYE itself, had wonderful food and drink, ended the night in style, went for a really long walk the next day interspersed with tea and cake and the views were just stunning. For the first time in a long time I actually felt as if I'd had a break over Christmas. It was straight back into things when we got back though, we headed to the bank to discuss a loan. It was all sorted very quickly and easily. Part of me was actually worried how easy it was to borrow the money! We got incredibly good terms though and were pleased with the deal we had. So, onwards.
Because AF had been early, it meant we could have a good go of things whilst we were away. But still to no avail, AF turned up in January a day late - just enough to get my hopes up. So we went to our nurses appointment anyway. Because AF in December had been early, our nurses appointment should technically have also been moved a week earlier before January's AF had made her appearance but that hadn't possible with my work so we ended up keeping the appointment the same. This meant we were at the clinic on day 3 of my cycle and given the option to start an IVF cycle there and then. A bit of a shock, but we decided to go for it. Again, just showing things do happen for a reason. If AF had turned up on time we would have been too late and had to wait another month before we could start, but we started treatment Thursday last week (23rd Jan). As I know most of you are all aware (with apologies, I know there are people who read my blog who know nothing about the process. I also find it's good for me to have a record of what on earth has gone on!), it started with just one injection every morning for the first four days (to stimulate the ovaries, in a device similar to an epipen) and then an additional morning injection daily from last Monday (to stop ovaries releasing eggs early, in the form of a more 'normal' syringe). I then had two scans last week to make sure the injections were working. That very first injection was horrendous, I couldn't do it in end. Got myself into a right state and hubby had to do it for me, but I got used to it eventually. I did end up in A&E that weekend though as it took a while for my body to get used to it and I was in an unbearable amount of pain. But it passed and things have been at least bearable since. I will not miss the side effects from the injections though! And my appetite over the past few days, wow. I. WANT. ALL. THE. FOOD. I dread to think how much weight I've put on but we'll worry about that another time.
Eventually I moved to permanent discomfort, massive bloating and only occasional pain. As I said, bearable. I then had my final scan yesterday morning and my consultant said they could see lots of good follicles so I've responded really well to the treatment and they think they'll get TWELVE eggs out of me which is just bonkers. There's obviously no guarantee any of them are any good but having as many as twelve certainly increases our odds of having at least one decent embryo to implant. And again, with apologies to those that know all this already, but not all eggs will be able to be fertilised and not all fertilised eggs will make it to be a viable embryo - but these numbers are at least looking decent enough to give us some hope. Egg collection will be tomorrow morning, trigger injection was last night and freaked the crap out of me - it needed to be done at a very specific time or egg collection would be jeopardised and I had two injections as the clinic didn't have enough in stock got just give me one. First one was a 'pen' like the initial injections had been and that one went in fine, the second one was a syringe as the second injections had been. For the first time I managed to get a blood vessel or similar and there was blood everywhere, including in the syringe itself. Bearing in mind the timing issues I just stuck the needle in again and pushed the plunger, paranoid that after everything I'd ruined our chances of egg collection this cycle. But the clinic have confirmed that we're all good, so first thing tomorrow I'll be sedated whilst they remove the contents of my ovaries with a very large needle. Yay. I've never had any sort of operation or any type of anaesthesia so I am absolutely bricking it.
After tomorrow it's all a numbers game - however many eggs manage to be fertilised (it's unlikely all of them will fertilise) are then grown in a lab for five days and only the ones that develop properly are deemed viable to be implanted and those ones are then frozen. There's no guarantee whatsoever that once implanted an embryo will stick, no matter how 'good' it was deemed in the lab. But the clinic were very impressed with me, these are really good numbers bearing in mind my age. Well, assuming the scan yesterday was correct anyway! We'll obviously have a better idea when they've actually taken the eggs.
It's been a very hard few weeks. Massive kudos to all of you that have done this more than once. I can't imagine having to go through this again. But there you go. Hopefully (!) I won't leave it as long next time to update you all, I hope you can appreciate it's been quite the few weeks and the blog took a bit of back seat. If you are able, I'd be very grateful if you could keep all your fingers and toes crossed for tomorrow and I'll keep you posted as best I can. Thank you 💗
The weekend between Christmas and New Year I came down with a horrible cold so spent the weekend with the duvet on the sofa. Which, to be honest, had pretty much been the plan for the weekend anyway!! But then AF turned up four days early and put our New Year plans in jeopardy, turning everything on its head. I now needed to be scanned before we went away rather than when we got back. After the initial anger had subsided, we managed to rebook the scans for the morning before we went away as opposed to the afternoon we got back. And actually, in hindsight, that was a really good thing. I'd reacted so badly to the HSG I'd had on the NHS (read about that fun here) that I was unbelievably nervous and shaky about this scan, the anticipation beforehand was horrendous. How would I have felt about having it hanging over me throughout our entire New Year trip?! So, actually, getting it out of the way before we went away ended up being a good thing. So I guess AF does know what she's doing sometimes after all.
And our New Year trip was just AMAZING! We were in this wonderful old hotel, a building that used to be owned by Jane Austin, in the west country and had a brilliant time. Got all dressed up for NYE itself, had wonderful food and drink, ended the night in style, went for a really long walk the next day interspersed with tea and cake and the views were just stunning. For the first time in a long time I actually felt as if I'd had a break over Christmas. It was straight back into things when we got back though, we headed to the bank to discuss a loan. It was all sorted very quickly and easily. Part of me was actually worried how easy it was to borrow the money! We got incredibly good terms though and were pleased with the deal we had. So, onwards.
Because AF had been early, it meant we could have a good go of things whilst we were away. But still to no avail, AF turned up in January a day late - just enough to get my hopes up. So we went to our nurses appointment anyway. Because AF in December had been early, our nurses appointment should technically have also been moved a week earlier before January's AF had made her appearance but that hadn't possible with my work so we ended up keeping the appointment the same. This meant we were at the clinic on day 3 of my cycle and given the option to start an IVF cycle there and then. A bit of a shock, but we decided to go for it. Again, just showing things do happen for a reason. If AF had turned up on time we would have been too late and had to wait another month before we could start, but we started treatment Thursday last week (23rd Jan). As I know most of you are all aware (with apologies, I know there are people who read my blog who know nothing about the process. I also find it's good for me to have a record of what on earth has gone on!), it started with just one injection every morning for the first four days (to stimulate the ovaries, in a device similar to an epipen) and then an additional morning injection daily from last Monday (to stop ovaries releasing eggs early, in the form of a more 'normal' syringe). I then had two scans last week to make sure the injections were working. That very first injection was horrendous, I couldn't do it in end. Got myself into a right state and hubby had to do it for me, but I got used to it eventually. I did end up in A&E that weekend though as it took a while for my body to get used to it and I was in an unbearable amount of pain. But it passed and things have been at least bearable since. I will not miss the side effects from the injections though! And my appetite over the past few days, wow. I. WANT. ALL. THE. FOOD. I dread to think how much weight I've put on but we'll worry about that another time.
Eventually I moved to permanent discomfort, massive bloating and only occasional pain. As I said, bearable. I then had my final scan yesterday morning and my consultant said they could see lots of good follicles so I've responded really well to the treatment and they think they'll get TWELVE eggs out of me which is just bonkers. There's obviously no guarantee any of them are any good but having as many as twelve certainly increases our odds of having at least one decent embryo to implant. And again, with apologies to those that know all this already, but not all eggs will be able to be fertilised and not all fertilised eggs will make it to be a viable embryo - but these numbers are at least looking decent enough to give us some hope. Egg collection will be tomorrow morning, trigger injection was last night and freaked the crap out of me - it needed to be done at a very specific time or egg collection would be jeopardised and I had two injections as the clinic didn't have enough in stock got just give me one. First one was a 'pen' like the initial injections had been and that one went in fine, the second one was a syringe as the second injections had been. For the first time I managed to get a blood vessel or similar and there was blood everywhere, including in the syringe itself. Bearing in mind the timing issues I just stuck the needle in again and pushed the plunger, paranoid that after everything I'd ruined our chances of egg collection this cycle. But the clinic have confirmed that we're all good, so first thing tomorrow I'll be sedated whilst they remove the contents of my ovaries with a very large needle. Yay. I've never had any sort of operation or any type of anaesthesia so I am absolutely bricking it.
After tomorrow it's all a numbers game - however many eggs manage to be fertilised (it's unlikely all of them will fertilise) are then grown in a lab for five days and only the ones that develop properly are deemed viable to be implanted and those ones are then frozen. There's no guarantee whatsoever that once implanted an embryo will stick, no matter how 'good' it was deemed in the lab. But the clinic were very impressed with me, these are really good numbers bearing in mind my age. Well, assuming the scan yesterday was correct anyway! We'll obviously have a better idea when they've actually taken the eggs.
It's been a very hard few weeks. Massive kudos to all of you that have done this more than once. I can't imagine having to go through this again. But there you go. Hopefully (!) I won't leave it as long next time to update you all, I hope you can appreciate it's been quite the few weeks and the blog took a bit of back seat. If you are able, I'd be very grateful if you could keep all your fingers and toes crossed for tomorrow and I'll keep you posted as best I can. Thank you 💗
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