Guess Who’s Back? Back Again.

Miss me?

You may be asking, “Why have you abandoned your blog just as the action was heating up, Not-So-Fertile Girl?” Or, you may not have noticed my lengthy absence. Hopefully, the former.

There’s no exciting or detailed answer. I haven’t gone anywhere. I’ve been right here. Checking your posts sporadically on my phone, logging on to WordPress, hovering over the “new post” button, only to move the mouse to log out.

There is no actual reason I haven’t been writing. When I try to discover the cause, the only word that comes to mind is “exhaustion.” Do you ever just get so tired from this process that you find yourself trying to block it out?

I haven’t been able to block it out, by any means, but for some reason, I just didn’t feel like writing about it lately. I thought about writing a lot, but never seemed to translate that into action. We have entered a whole new level of emotional, physical, and financial investment of this process, and to be honest, it’s wearing me out.

I’ve also been really overwhelmed at work. My “To Do” list just grows exponentially. For those of you who understand the words “Common Core,” you probably know how I feel. I really love the new curriculum. I think it could really fix some problems we’ve had in the education system. But holy shit is it a  lot of work! This is my 9th year teaching, and I had just gotten to a slightly more comfortable phase in my career where I had developed and tweaked lessons until they were great. Not much new lesson planning that needed to be done. Enter Common Core. I feel like a first-year teacher this year because I am working my but off to create lessons that teach in such a different way. It’ll be great though…next year.

So, with that explanation said, I am going to attempt a feat of superhero nature, when it comes to my writing today: I am going to try and give a succinct, concise, t0-the-point summary of the last 3 weeks of my life. (Did you get the irony of that last sentence?) You know I like my words, so wish me luck!

When Last We Spoke

My Lupron and needles arrived. It scared me. I “You-Tubed” the hell out of Lupron injections to see what I could expect.

Beginning Lupron Injections

I began Lupron injections (10 units) on October 2nd. If you are going to experience this soon, and are worried, don’t be. There is the tiniest of pinches, then you can barely feel it. Turned out to really be not-so-scary, afterall! 🙂  God bless Hubby, for playing nurse and shooting me up every night. I’m not sure I could get around the mental protest of sticking myself. Also, it’s nice (for me) for him to have to do something active in this process. I think he also likes feeling like he’s doing something. As frustrating as it’s been for me during the “wait times” of birth control, post-miscarriage, etc., at least I am still taking the medicine. I’m doing something. There’s never anything for Hubby to actively do to move us along, other than surviving my emotional roller-coasters, and making his..ahem…deposits. Though, I don’t think that counts as work for him.

Lupron Side Effects

holy mother fucking constant migraine headache, nausea

Lupron Hiccoughs

So, while the injections on the left side of my abdomen felt like almost nothing, the ones on the right hurt like a bitch! The only reason we can even come up with is that I seem to have a lot more muscle on my right (dominant) side, and more fat on the left. Needles and muscles don’t appear to be friends. When I emailed the unbelievably sweet and helpful Nurse A about this, she didn’t know why, but told me I was free to stick to just the left side, as long as we move the actual injection spot around. Yay! She also told me that I could inject Lupron at my thighs or back of my arms, though we opted to stick with the abdomen.

Running out of syringes: They only sent me a 14-day supply, even though I’m going on much longer than this. When I asked Nurse A what I should do, she went way above and beyond. She made me a bag of free ones, and offered to leave them hidden for me to pick up or meet me after work one day, since she’s knows it’s difficult for me to leave school because of needing coverage. In the end, I asked her to leave them for me. She put them in a purple, paper lunch bag with my initials and a smiley face hidden, but outside the back door to the practice to pick up after closing time. I love this place. (Though I do question the wisdom of leaving a bag of needles outside in a area of just doctors’ offices. Sure am glad a druggie didn’t find them. I do not question the wisdom enough to not take advantage of making this process even a little bit easier on me!)

I’m not doing too well with the conciseness, huh?

New Cycle Starts…Finally

I anxiously awaited my period, knowing that it meant we could get this show on the road. It didn’t come. And it didn’t come. I was a crazy, crying, angry, hurting-boobed psychopath for a good week & half, but had nothing to show for it. I began to panic that the impossible had happened. That despite being on BC and only having sex 2x in the whole month, we had somehow made a baby. And then fed it BC, Spiro, and Lupron. On CD31, I caved in to these crazy fears and took an HPT just incase. Mostly to say it was negative when I called Dr. C. to say, “Hey, what’s the deal with my uterus not cleaning house?” It was, obviously, negative, and 3 hours later, my period arrived just in time to waste the $7 on that HPT. When I discovered it in the bathroom, I actually shouted “Yes!” and did this:

…in the public, staff bathroom of my school.

When I called the office to set up the clearing ultrasound appt., I made a comment about it arriving so late. Nurse A said, “Yeah, the Lupron can delay it sometimes, and you’re wondering if it’ll ever come.” Um, I love you, A, but that sure would have been good to know a week ago. That night, my  Lupron dose was dropped from 10 to 5.

CD3 Clearing Ultrasound and Follistim Lesson

Note to self: Dr. C. is way less personable on a Friday afternoon at 4:30, after being in surgery all day, and you are the next-to-last patient. He didn’t really explain the ultrasound as well as he usually does. I was a little confused to see the same ‘ole ring of eggs around the edges of both my ovaries. They look so much better than they used to when my PCOS was first diagnosed. I’ve never had an ultrasound this early in my cycle, so I was sort-of expecting them to not really have any eggs hanging out. Most were small (about 5-ish), but I had one that measured 10. He didn’t seem concerned though. He said there were no cysts, and that he didn’t see any reasons why we couldn’t start the Follistim. Yay! 🙂  I have been plagued for the last couple of days though, worried that the Lupron won’t have supressed my Lh. I was looking forward to and simultaneously dreading bloodwork on CD6 to tell me what the Lh looked like.

I went for my instructional lesson with Nurse A on the Follistim pen. I’ve got it down-pat know, but yikes for learning that process on Friday 5:15pm brain. So, on CD3, we began Follistim, (dosage = 42). Good news, people. Follistim Pen injection really feels no different than the Lupron injection. Though, the free needles we got are unpleasantly thicker than the ones we paid for. I’ll take a little extra discomfort, though, if it’s free!

CD6 Monitoring Appointment (Today)

I was so nervous today. Nothing so far has managed to suppress my rampaging Lh. Dr. C. said that Lupron definitely will suppress it. I don’t like those words. I am a seeing-is-believing, pessimistic Infertile. I’m terrified that it won’t work, even though it’s supposed to work for everyone else. Afterall, the first round of BC was supposed to get me 1-3 months of suppression, and I didn’t even get one.

Turns out it was pointless for me to be nervous about the bloodwork results today, because they didn’t take any! Grr! When I asked him, he said it wasn’t necessary yet, and that I would be getting a lot of bloodwork done later in the cycle. When I asked him how we know the Lurpon is suppressing the Lh, he laughed and said it just will. I said, and I quote, “Are you sure there’s no chance my body has a superhuman-won’t-react-to-Lupron Lh?” He said, yes I’m sure. I still would rather have had the bloodwork, so I could have one less thing worry about, but you can’t have everything you want, apparently.

Ultrasound Results: Drumroll Please.

The Follistim is working. 😀

Working. I almost don’t know how to process that word anymore.

Dr. C. is suffering through a case of Laryngitis, so it was hard to judge his reaction at first. I have a dominant follicle (the one that was 10 on Friday) that was 14 today. I guess Follistim is a lot stronger. 14 on only CD6 seems pretty big to me.

He made a couple of comments about having to be really careful b/c I have a bunch of eggs, that would, apparently, not be a concern if we were IVF’ing, but are b/c we’re still trying to do this “naturally.”  Ha.  Naturally can only mean “inside my vagina” in this case.

 He’s super cautious about multiples. I say, bring on the lottery jackpot. 

I didn’t really have too much going on on the other ovary. I wouldn’t even call it a dominant, but the biggest one was 10.

We couldn’t really tell from his reaction, but when we asked him if this meant the Follistim was working he said yes. 🙂

He upped our dosage to 58 (I think that was #. It was definitely “1 click” above 50.) He wants to see me back again on Thursday, which will be CD9. Fingers crossed for some big, bubble-butt follicles. When I was checking out, I saw “ultrasound and labs” written on the order for Thursday. So, fingers crossed for bloodwork and results that tell me we’ve kicked my Lh’s ass into submission.

So, before I leave you for today, a summary. I am CD6 on the 2nd cycle of a 2-cycle treatment. I have been on Lupron for 3 weeks, and Follistim for 3 days. I have an egg that’s growing. I have been feeling overwhelmed and tired by the process. I have had major emotional ups and downs over the last few weeks, which I will write about later. But today, I am feeling dangerously hopeful.

Whew. Ok, so I’m never going to be concise, but I kept it under 2,000 words, and that was my secret goal. Score.

Before I go, I have to take a mega happy moment for the lovely ladies at The Fetility Circus and Scrambled Eggs. I hope more than you could know that things continue down this happy road.