35 Follicles? Pish Tosh

I had an ultrasound and bloodwork this morning. E2 is at 1890 and I have A.LOT.OF.FOLLICLES. I have 12 measurable on my right ovary with the largest being 15 mm and 10 more less than 10 mm. I have 15 measurable on my left ovary (largest also 15 mm) and 5 more less than 10 mm. For a grand total of 42 follicles, 27 of which are possible candidates. Wow-za.

I drop my Follistim dose to 100 units (Lupron still at 10) and go tomorrow for another ultrasound and more bloodwork. So, things are moving right along!

An update on Katie's art class injury. Apparently the culprit was not a "linoleum knife" but a "linoleum cutter", such as this:

Not quite as scary (thank goodness - I was seriously questioning the wisdom of her art teacher).

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was fabulous! Ours was good, despite a bit of drama over a Grandfather Clock we got my parents for their 50th Anniversary/Christmas. It's a long and not that interesting story (if you're not a Carter).

Stay tuned for more reports from Follicle Central!

E2 = 891!

So, as the title of this post suggests, my estradiol level this morning was 891! That seems like quite a jump in two days, so I am really excited. I drop my Follistim dose to 125 units tonight and tomorrow then I get a follicle scan and more bloodwork Friday morning. In other news, Katie had a run-in with a "linoleum knife" in art class at school yesterday and had to get 3 stitches in her thumb! I didn't know what one looked like, so I googled it and this is what I found: Holy crap! So she missed a performance of her dance team last night because she couldn't grip her pom pon with no opposable thumb! Poor baby!!! Well, that's it for me, I think. We get out of work at 2 pm today for the Holiday, so I better get a wee bit of work done before I go. Ciao!

E2 = 362

So, in an effort to keep everyone posted... ....after three days of stimulation at 225 units, my estradiol level is 362! That sounds fabulous to me (what do I know?). So I will be dropping down to 150 units tonight and Tuesday night and I get more bloodwork on Wednesday. Depending on Wedensday's estradiol level they will adjust my dosage and/or schedule an ultrasound to take a look at the follicles. I'm starting to get excited! In other news, one of my message board buddies, Jenn, welcomed a bundle of joy to the world yesterday! Welcome Aubrey Jane!!!!! Hugs and Kisses from your Cyber-Aunt Amy!

I'm Stimming!

So...last night I started the Follistim injections! I'm doing 225 units through Sunday and then I get blood drawn Monday morning to see what my dosage should be from there. The baseline ultrasound and blood draw on Tuesday went well, but, it turns out that I really do have PCOS. I always thought it was dumb that they diagnosed me with that when I didn't have PC's on my O's, but the u/s tech showed me on Tuesday that, actually, I do. I had 15 follicles under 10 mm on my left ovary and 20 on my right! So, at least I have lots of eggs - that's the good news. Let's just see how many we can get to grow over the next few days! I promise to keep you all posted, I know I haven't been doing too well at that (must be because I'm a GIANT SLACKER!).

Why do I slack?

So...I am crazy swamped at work. Like, super freaky waaaaay behind/don't know how to get caught up/more and more and more work piled on each day. I came into work today (Saturday). I got here at around noon. It is now 5 pm. I have been here for 5 hours and I have done NOTHING. Literally nothing. Well, I've read a lot of blogs and boards, but NO work. Why do I do this? What is up with my self-desctructive choices? Why did I put 100 miles on my car today and spend hours away from my husband and laundry and bills to come in here and get nothing done? Am I afraid of success? Do I secretly thrive on drama, misery, and stress? If my husband reads this, he will go through the roof! I need someone to kick my a$$ and tell me to GET TO WORK! Anyone want to send some tough love my way?

Finally!!!

So.....tonight we finally get this IVF cycle underway! I start with the Lupron today and take that through the 19th. That's when I get the baseline ultrasound to check my lining & make sure there are no cysts or anything. Then we will start the stims. I picked it all up from the pharmacy today and it's just not photogenic enough to show you. It was just a plain white bag. Maybe I'll take a picture of Forest injecting me. There! Neat, huh? Today I also met with a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist to talk about some concerns my RE has:

1. In April of 2004 and in March of 2006 I had brief, TIA-like episodes (aphasia/speech confusion). The first one was accompanied by a visual field disturbance and the second by a weird numbness on top of my head. They diagnosed "atypical migraine" (atypical because there's no headache).
2. During my infertility work-up at George's office they did genetic testing and found that I am a homozygous: (Science-y bit ahead) this means that I cannot make functional copies of the enzyme MethyleneTetraHydroFolate Reductase (although I prefer to think that MTHFR is an abbreviation for Mother F*cker) - this enzyme is needed to convert the unhelpful compound homocysteine into the amino acid methionine. Elevated homocysteine levels are associated with thrombosis (blood clots) and cardiovascular disease and also with restricted placental blood flow during pregnancy and repeated miscarriage (not good!). The treatment for elevated homocysteine levels is pretty simple: extra folic acid and B vitamins - which George's office already put me on. They also recommended daily Lovenox (heparin) injections from the point I ovulate until delivery.
3. I have a family history of early stroke - my mom's sister had her first stroke at age 26 while she was pregnant with my cousin (yikes!) - and my dad has had a couple of TIA's himself.

So, I had the consult with the MFM specialist (who, incidentally, is pretty cute - I mean, he's no George, but check him out: not bad, huh?) to talk about how I should be followed once I'm pregnant. It was an awesome visit and he agreed with me about everything (namely that my homocysteine levels should be checked before treating the MTHFR mutation, since there is another enzyme that can perform the same conversion as MTHFR, and that Lovenox is overkill). He wants to follow me as high risk once I get knocked up, so I will be having early and frequent ultrasounds to monitor fetal development, which I am very, very happy about. So now all I have to do is get pregnant (preaching to the choir, I know). Other than the procreation fun, life has been relatively boring: swamped (read: miserable) at work, trying to make better food choices (eating fewer carbs and fried stuff), fulfilling my civic duty (voting), driving my teenager and all her friends all over the city (daily). Not much to report.

Next step: baseline ultrasound on 11/19!

I Got A Schedule!!!

Okay, so, this is not going to be the awesome schedule extravaganza I promised, but I just got a call from the RE's office with my IVF schedule!!!

• 11/4: Start Lupron to supress my "normal" FSH/LH secretion (quotation marks are because I'm not sure how normal it really is...)
• 11/19: Baseline ultrasound to check lining; bloodwork to make sure I'm sufficiently supressed
• 11/21: Start stims (Follistim)
• 12/2: (estimated) egg retreival!!!
• 12/4: (estimated) embryo transfer
• 12/15: (estimated) BFP!
• 8/25/2009: (estimated) delivery of twin girls, Zoe and Anya

So, you know, YAY!

Best Day Ever

Yesterday I had the best day of my (non-romantic) life. When I told Forest it was the best day of my life he said, "Better than the day we met?" and I teased him and said "yes". But I've decided that I am making a distinction between my romantic life (in which Forest-related things are at the top of every 'Best Of' list) and the rest of my life so that I can have yesterday as The Best Day Ever.


What's all this about, you ask? What happened? I'll try to convey the awesomeness: When I was growing up I had a nemesis. My 'hatred' of him started in the 5th grade. My "best friend" at the time had suddenly decided she couldn't stand me (as snooty little 10 year old girls are prone to do, I guess). My teacher (one of only three teachers I ever had during my K-12 education who didn't love me best of all students) had organized our desks into 4 columns, two desks in each of 4 rows (does that make sense?). My ex-BFF and Brad (nemesis) sat in the row in front of me. The desk next to me was empty. We had to do a State Report - a big huge project that took up like a whole quarter or something. My state was California (the best choice for a State Report, don't you think?). I SLACKED like nobody's business on this report. We were supposed to write away to the Chambers of Commerce of our states to get cool brochures and information about all the awesome stuff to do there. I was late in my request for awesome stuff and it didn't arrive before my report was due. So, my whole report was based on the information in my family's copy of the World Book Encyclopedia. It had to be, like, 10-pages long or something so I pretty much had to include everything from the encyclopedia entry. Including my 10-year old rendering of this:
The 'Average Precipitation Map' of California. When Ms. Lawson (evil teacher) called for our reports I passed mine forward, to Brad (evil nemesis) and Jamie (evil ex-BFF). Brad started flipping through my report and laughing about its contents to Jamie. Of particular amusement to them was my precipitation map. They laughed gleefully at its lameness. I sat there all alone and hated them. I hated them with every fiber of my 5th grade being (which was a lot, actually). From that moment, IT WAS ON. 


I took every opportunity to make fun of Brad, the smartest, cutest, most-popular boy in school. I never stopped. He would express an opinion, I would challenge it. He would say something clever, I would roll my eyes and spat something mean back. Not to say this was one-sided. He was just as mean to me (after all, let's not forget who STARTED this whole thing by LAUGHING at whose carefully sketched precipitation map!!!). 


We fought about everything. In Junior High our loathing of one another was infamous. We were each always on our toes when the other was around (which was all the time - as we had pretty much every class together) lest we be called out by the other and made a fool. On the first day of High School my French teacher had us fill in a worksheet that was sort of a meme. You completed sentences like, "My favorite thing is...", "In my free time I like to...", etc. For "I hate..." I entered "Brad B~". When I got my paper back she had written, "Hmmm...he's in my 2nd hour class. I will have to keep an eye on him." I felt a bit badly then, like "hate" was perhaps too strong a word and maybe he didn't quite deserve the ire of a new teacher on my account.


Eventually, I think, we pretty much dropped it. We were never friends, but by the time we graduated the nastiness had fallen out of our interactions for the most part (I mean, unless he said something reeeeaaally ridiculous). I had told Forest all about my nemesis and the interactions we had. In retrospect, I know that I was so mean to him (and other cute, smart, popular boys like him) as a defense mechanism. If I was bitchy and insufferable and they didn't like me, it was on my terms. But if I had been sweet/giggled at their jokes/batted my eyelashes at them and they didn't like me, well then it was on their terms. Let's just say I had more than a little insecurity/low self-esteem back in the day. I knew I could count on my quick-wit and acid-tongue to deflect any negative attention that might come to my lack of party invitations.


So...that brings us to yesterday. Forest was invited by a co-worker to go on a winery bus tour. It turned out that none of the other people in his department were planning to go along, so it was going to be us and a ton of the co-worker's friends. We arrived at 9 am and it was FREEZING. We got on the bus while the rest of the people were still arriving. I was looking out at the group of new arrivals and I gasped. Forest said, "What?" I said, "It's my nemesis!" I tried to tell myself it wasn't him. I thought, maybe there's someone else who looks exactly like how I would expect my nemesis to look at 32 (after all, I haven't seen him in 14 years). Forest asked me what I was going to say. I told him I wouldn't be bitchy - I was totally over it. I said he probably wouldn't recognize me (might not remember me?). 


As the day wore on and more wine was consumed, Forest wanted to go say something to him - ask him if he thought I looked familiar or something. I forbade him. I said, "No!!! He has to come to me." Forest teased, "Totally over it, huh?" but he promised to behave. A couple of times I noticed Brad looking at me out of the corner of his eye, but we were always talking to different people in the group. At the second winery he made a point to come over to the group I was talking to and just stand there. Forest turned to him and stuck out his hand and said, "Hi! I'm Forest." He said, "I'm Brad" and turned to me and offered his hand. I said, "Hi Brad." and he acted like he was just realizing who I was (this was about 5 hours into the trip, mind you). 


He told Forest that he and I used to fight about everything, but that he was a better person for it because it taught him that if he was going to say something, he better be able to back it up. He told Forest I was the smartest girl in school and that I was constantly 'calling bullshit' on him and that he respected me more than any other person he ever went to school with (and hey - that's saying something, since he has a master's degree from MIT). We talked and laughed and reminisced for the rest of the day. It.Was.Totally.Awesome.

 So, how about you guys? Ever had a nemesis? Ever found out your nemesis had actually respected you all that time? Ever shared a lot of wine and had a cute picture snapped with your, now former, nemesis?

Why I Thought I Was Fertile

**Note: this post probably won't contain the super cool timeline I promised. I mean, you can scroll down and look for it, but really, it's probably not there** So, this infertility stuff came as somewhat of a shock to me. I mean, check out, for example, Exhibit A: I mean, this is incontrovertible proof that I am like, the fertilest person ever, n'est pas? This picture was taken exactly 8 months and 5 weeks after the first and only time (until last year) I had ever had unprotected sex. Who knew this gorgeous creature was a total, complete FLUKE never to be repeated again? Granted, some explanation for why this procreation business has proved to be a one-time thing for me might be found in the fact that my little miracle currently looks like this: So it turns out that fertile at 17 doesn't necessarily mean fertile at 32. Huh. Who knew? Except that I always assumed this shouldn't matter due to Exhibit B: These are my parents (and me, of course). It's supposed to be obvious from this picture that they're like, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay older than me. They were 39 when I was born. Here's how that happened: it was the Fall of 1975. My mom had 3 kids aged 15, 12 and 6. The six year old, my brother, had been an unwelcome surprise 6 years earlier. She acted like a total ass when she got pregnant with him. She still tells the story to this day - as if my brother wants to hear about how his existence drove her to tears for weeks on end until the Fuller Brush lady knocked on the door and asked her what was wrong (she could hear the weeping from outside the door). She told the Fuller Brush lady she was pregnant and didn't want to be. The Fuller Brush lady shamed her by telling her she had 6 sons and that the eldest was missing in Vietnam and she prayed every day for his safe return. Humiliated, my mother decided to quit her bitching. Wouldn't you love to hear that story over and over all your life? It's probably part of the reason why he's been home a total of about 10 times in the 21 years since he left for college. Anyway, back to 1975: my mom wanted to have a hysterectomy because she was having horrible, lengthy, heavy, crampy, yucky periods. She had gone back to college to finish her degree and so she wanted to wait until the Spring '76 semester was over to have the surgery. For the meantime, her OB/GYN gave her an experimental birth control injection. A few months later she complained of a flu that just wouldn't go away. Ha! It was no flu - it was ME! Imagine how she acted when she found out she was having yet another "blessing"! So anyway, feelings about my mother aside, she had babies way older than I am now! And with NO trouble! She had babies she didn't even WANT, for Pete's sake!

Alas, none of it matters because it turns out I'm no longer fertile. Maybe it's the 60 pounds I've gained, but I no longer ovulate. You might say, "Hey, Amy - what do you say you try losing those 60 pounds and see if that does the trick?" But I probably wouldn't listen (I certainly haven't been listening to myself!).

So, there was really no point to this post (aside from showing off my daughter who looks so cute in her Pom costume!) except to whine about my secondary infertility. I hope I do not come off as insensitive to my fellow infertiles who didn't happen to choose the path of getting knocked up after school one day in the second week of the twelfth grade by an abusive, goony, loser in a double wide trailer. I know that the pain of my new-found infertility is tempered by the blessing that is my daughter. I appreciate the miracle of her life even more now that it's not so easy (or free) for me to have another child. I just want us all to have the babies we so desperately want. Sigh. That's my dream.

A Happy Period

Duuuuuuuudes - I started my period!!! This is like, late-breaking information. I just found out myself about 45 seconds ago. 


Why am I so excited? Well, if I updated my blog more you'd probably all remember that my IVF cycle starts when I START MY PERIOD! Which, I'll say it again, I just did! I'm so happy! Also, we had IVF orientation today, so that's one more thing out of the way. I didn't learn much (due to my wicked hot internet researching skills) but Forest got some tips about giving injections which should make us both a lot happier at PIO (progesterone in oil) time. 


So, I'll be updating more regularly now, since I hopefully have something to talk about. I'm going to try to create a fancy timeline to keep my vast readership on track with the happenings (yes, I'm being sarcastic about the vast part, but I love all of you who actually are reading). Keep in mind, I often make promises about creating really fancy, cool stuff and then never do. It's a habit I have...