My Oves Like the Dramaz. (CD12)

I knew I should have been worried that things were running too smoothly.

PDLAMBLATI for the day. Hot DAMN I love these socks from Emily. 
Also? I swear I don't have cankles even though it looks like it.

I forgive them for not being super lucky today.

Rewind to yesterday. Had my am appt with wandy and the blood draw. Things looked fine on the ultrasound. Righty was continuing to dominate the party, and lefty a few mm behind. Not bad though. On the right, we had around 25 large follies, the largest being 18.6, 18.5, 18.0, and 18.0. Lefty had around 20 large ones, with sizes around 18.2, 17.3, 16.7, and 16.4. Based on that, Dr S gave me a 90% chance of triggering last night, but wanted to hold off the final decision to take a look at the bloodwork. He *wanted* to wait another day, to give lefty a chance to catch up, but didn't think righty would wait. My bloodwork came back with an e2 of 4228, and a progesterone of 0.5. Based on that, we decided to wait one more day. We took no pm stim shot, and were to hold off on the morning follistim until Dr S could take a look at the oves.


Fast forward to today. We go in for the u/s this morning, and it would appear that righty has totally stopped growing- in fact, the largest seemed like they even lost a little ground. Sizes were 19.3, 19.2, 18.7, and 17.3. Lefty follicles did grow a bit, sized 20.0, 19.6, 18.9, and 18.3. We got the green light to go for the lupron trigger tonight and set a retrieval time of 7:30am Monday morning. We decided that everything was big enough, so no am dose of stims. 


Then my bloodwork came back. My e2, in 24 hours, had plummeted to 1866, and my progesterone dropped to 0.5. Not. Good. At. All. No, no, no. The nurse called around 3pm and told me to take a 150 unit dose of Follistim ASAP-RIGHT-NOW-PLEASE. Basically, what we think happened is that the follies on righty got tired of being the over-achieving growers, and pooped out. We probably lost some of them by going so low on stims over the last 36 hours, instead of coasting like was the goal. Lefty's continued to grow, but weren't contributing as much e2 to the party. The rescue dose of follistim this afternoon was taken to try and prevent us from losing any more follies between now and Monday morning. 

Click to enlarge. The madness that has been my stimming.

Fuckity fuck.


Dr S said he's fully confident that we'll still have plenty to retrieve, but we're probably looking at more like 10-20 instead of the 20-30+ that we were looking at before. Though there's still a fair-to-good chance that we'll continue to have follies bail the party. Effers. I liken this to a party running out of beer- some people leave, some people wait for the host to run to the gas station to pick up a few more cases. I'm hoping enough people stuck around for the reinforcements. This won't affect egg quality at all, just the amount retrieved.


There's also a chance, he said, that everyone could bail before retrieval. Eff balls. We're going to do a quick u/s Monday morning before I get set up for surgery to double check that all my follies haven't deflated. If there aren't many left, we may cancel the retrieval and start over next month. It terrified me to even type that. Dr S said that there are lots of clinics who wouldn't even bother with a retrieval if this were to happen- though he still absolutely will. Because I had so damn many mature follies yesterday, he thinks a retrieval will still be more than worth it even with losing a bunch. Still though. Fuck.


So we're triggered. And  please, please, think patient thoughts for my follies- give them the patience to hold out until more beer arrives. Please. Because I don't want to plan another party. Not any time soon. Nope. I don't.

Goodbye, NaBloPoMo (CD9)

Today is my final *required* daily post for NaBloPoMo. Am I glad I did it? I think so. This has been one absolutely crazy month, and I know I wouldn't have been able to remember nearly as much as I would have wanted to without Big Brother making sure I did. 

Will I continue to post every day? Ah hells no. More than I did before, for sure, but definitely not every day. I mean, there were a few days in there that I posted absolute crap just to post, and that's not fair to all of you. I'm not in the time-wasting business, just remembering. And talking about myself. And getting ya'lls advice. A lot.

--------------------------

PDLAMBLATI*... Thanks, W&W!

Enough about that. You're probably wondering how my u/s went this morning, huh?

Good! First off, LOVE the nurse that drew my blood this morning. I have awfully difficult veins, and she got me on the first stick, completely blind. Love it. 

Second off, my e2 has started to level off, which is fantastic. It rose to 3673 today, up from 2864 two days ago. Dr S wanted it to stay at or below 4K today, so good times! I'm all up for decreasing my chances for OHSS, and have been really good the last two days about getting my required 100g protein. I even drank 100 ounces of water today. Holy hell. Must be making a difference. Maybe.

My lining was still at 8.1mm. Boo. Not bad, just not better.

As far as follies go, 'ol righty continues to be the breadwinner in the family, though lefty is still making a significant contribution. Righty has 16 large follicles, the largest of which are 14.1mm, 14.1mm, 14mm, and 13.9mm. Lefty has a respectable 12 large ones, 14.0mm, 13.1mm, 13.1mm, and 12.9mm. Basically, everything has grown between 2-4mm since Monday, about 1-2mm per day. 

Follicles? These are my readers.
Readers? These are my follicles.
Make nice.

We've done some creating dosing decisions for the next couple of days. I held at 75 units follistim this am and 1 vial menopur in the pm. Thursday, we're lowering to 50 units follistim, and skipping the pm menopur (yayzies!). Friday, I'm bringing the am follistim to the appt and Dr S will decide where to go. Looks like we'll either be triggering Friday or Saturday, for a Sunday or Monday retrieval. Crazy, considering the Monday retrieval is what they quoted in my calendar. Who would have guessed that it would actually have gone according to plan???

I'm off to go get some sleep... and maybe another glass of water :) Night!

*PDLAMBLATI- Please don't look at my business look at these instead.

Caviar Taste. (CD8)

This has absolutely nothing to do with my post.
Though I think she's saying "I'm glad you don't eat Le Beef"

So a couple of weeks ago, Emily commented on one of my pre-IVF posts "Have you told your ov's your plan yet? They are going to be SO PISSED when they find out what you are gunna make them do!"

Holy hell that girl was right. The cramping started Sunday night. The bloat started in earnest yesterday. I'm up 3.8 pounds. I can feel some swelling in my hands and face, kindof like when you eat a meal that has way too much salt or MSG in it. To combat all of that I'm supposed to try and eat around 100 grams of protein per day, and drown myself in water and electrolytes.

My oves have realized that I'm finally making them get up off their lazy asses and WORK DAMNIT. Their response? "Fine. You want follies? We'll GIVE you follies." I got my results from the e2 bloodwork yesterday.

2864. Wowzers. Help me, Rhonda. Come on, Eileen.

My oves have caviar taste, what can I say. When all we were spending was random $5 copays for IUIs, they laughed. "Really? That's like giving a girl a garage sale purse instead of heading to Coach. We're not putting out for that." Now that we've written the big check for IVF? They're giving up the goods. They wanted to make sure we BOUGHT the damn cow instead of getting the milk for free.

More news tomorrow when we have our u/s. I'm to hold my dose tonight at 1 unit menopur, take my ganirelix in the morning before the appt, but bring the follistim so they can decide how much to give me.

Dare I say it... I actually have hope.

Where I learn I can grow follicles (CD7)

Today's PDLAMBLATI (thanks, Waiting and Wishing!)

 And lots of them, at that.

There aren't many times a PCOS-er is thankful for the hundreds of piece of ess cysts she's got on her oves. During the stim phase of IVF? That's one of them.

Turns out I've got about 14 "good sized" follicles growing on 'ol righty. My RE categorizes "good sized" as 8 or above. The biggest four were 12.3mm, 11.6mm, 11.4mm, and 10.9mm. Lefty is slacking, but only to the tune of 10 "good sized" follies, the biggest of which were 11.6mm, 11.1mm, 10.8mm, and ~9mm. I'm happy. Very, very happy.

Recap: around 7 follies over 10mm on the morning of stim day 6. At least 15 more above 8mm. Score!!! Waiting to hear back about what godawful heights my e2 has climbed to. The plan is to hold our doses at 75 follistim and 1 vial menopur, and start adding in the Ganirelix as soon as I get home this afternoon (moving it to the am tomorrow).

Estimated trigger? Friday or Saturday, which means estimated retrieval? Sunday or Monday.

HFS.

Also, I made a completely anal-retentive spreadsheet to keep things straight. Enjoy!

It could have been worse- I refrained from color-coding.

Holy Estradiol, Batman! (CD5)

Soooo.... I got my e2 results back. To recap:

11/22 Tuesday: e2 of 55, suppressed ovaries with 25+ follicles on each
11/23 Wednesday: 150 units Follistim am, 2 vials Menopur pm
11/24 Thursday: 150 units Follistim am, 2 vials Menopur pm
11/25 Friday: 150 units Follistim am, 2 vials Menopur pm
11/26 Saturday:  150 units Follistim am

The e2 today? 892. Holy effing ess. Holy. Effing. Ess.

It's funny, as soon as they called, I was all "Wow... I sure feel a lot of pressure near the oves." I'm terrified that I'm stimming too fast and I'm going to get all immature eggs. Terrified. Or, I'm going to end up hyperstimmed.

Needless to say, Dr S decided to cut my doses in half. We started tonight, and cut the pm Menopur down to 1 vial. Tomorrow morning with be 75 units of Follistim. I go in Monday morning for another blood draw and my first U/S.

Also, I went on what I think will be my last run until I feel safe while pregnant tonight. My dad, brother, and Dr Boy all went through the greenbelt in town, and it felt awesome. I'm really glad I got that in before things get going *too* much, and I'm glad my family got to enjoy that part of the town we live in too.

But the rest of it?

HFS.

Short and Sweet (CD4)

I've been hanging out with family since Wednesday which has been AWESOME. I am starting to get spread a bit thin though. My parents, grandma, brother, uncle, uncle's gf and her two kids, and my parents two dogs all came up to visit, some at our house, and some at the hotel. I am so thankful they're all here, but the reason they came up here? I have work. 6am to 2pm. Every. Day. So I'm kindof flippin' tired now. Really. Really. Tired.

Oh? Also? Today was our fourth day of shots. We were out at dinner at 6:30, when it was time, we headed back to the bathroom and did the deed there. How's THAT for a quickie! The menopur burns more than it used to, though we were given 27 gauge needles this time instead of the 31 gauge needles we used during our IUIs. They are DEFINITELY worse, and I highly recommend requesting the 31's. For serious. Also, the follistim is leaving little bruises. Very, very annoying.

Last, we went to see Hugo tonight, in 3-D. The first act was a bit slow, but once it got going, the movie was truly beautiful. Highly recommend, but not for kids. Too slow. But beautiful. That's not the point of mentioning that though. They had previews for some other movies coming out... one of which was the re-released Titanic in 3-D. It brought me right back to senior year of high school, when I saw the movie in the theaters THREE TIMES. And bawled my flippin' eyes out. THREE TIMES. Glutton for punishment, this one is :)  So back to the preview. Just watching it? Bawled my eyes out. Damn stims. I was quite the source of entertainment for my family today!

Take THAT, ute! (CD2)

The taunting worked :) I arrived home yesterday after work and errands... and voila! Just barely, too, as the props used in the taunting were unscathed. One point JM, Zero points Ute.

See kids? Scare tactics work. And school yard bullying.


We did our first injection this morning, and our second this evening. The schedule for now is for 150 units Follistim in the mornings, and 2 vials of Menopur in the evenings. Dr Boy has been awesome and woke up at 5:30am today so he could inject me before I left for work. He rocks the IVF-spouse job. The follistim bruised. Not a fan. It didn't burn or hurt, just left a surprising bruise. The menopur hurt like a mother effer this time! Which shocked me, because I didn't find it that bad last time. I think we shot it too close to the follistim bruise. We'll fix that one tomorrow, for sure.

The plan is to do bloodwork on Saturday and evaluate things. (Did I mention my e2 from Tuesday came back at 55? Nice and suppressed. Though not as low as it could have been. Oh well.) I'll have my next ultrasound on Monday, which will be the 6th day of stims. Good times!

Also, I ended the sugar fast today, since I started stims. My breaker of choice? A pumpkin spice cookie with cinnamon frosting. It. Was. Amazing. I made it a very proud 25 days.... woohoo! It'll definitely make me think twice about the sugar I put into my body from here on out. At least for, say, the next five minutes or so.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!