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 💗
No comments:
Post a Comment