IVF Update #6

Just wanted to do a quick update for everyone. We’ve done 2 doctor visits, but we still need more injections and time.

On Saturday morning we went to the doctor. We had blood work and an ultrasound done. During this ultrasound (all of my ultrasounds are trans-vaginal, aka the ultrasound wand goes inside of me) the doctor is looking to see how big my follicles are. Follicles hold the eggs and when they mature they will burst and release the egg (ovulation). With IVF they want the follicles to mature, but not burst, because they want to harvest the eggs manually. They can control this by one of the injections I’m taking.

Since I have PCOS (poly cystic ovarian syndrome) I have lots and lots of follicles all the time. So on Saturday when the doctor checked I had about 30 follicles on each ovary (a “normal” female will have about 5 on each), but the follicles weren’t maturing very fast. This is no big surprise to us because this was the case every single time we did injections last year. We usually take the medicine twice as long as others going through IVF. My biggest follicle measured at a 7mm. To do egg retrieval the doctor wants the follicles at 19mm.

After the doctor appointment on Saturday the doctor gave me one more injection to take every night. This shot is brutal. It stings like crazy going in, then for the next two hours it is a big lump in my stomach, red all over, and itchy/stingy. Then when I wake up in the morning it is tender and bruised. Not so fun. When I took it Sunday night I injected it even slower and I applied an ice pack to the injection sight. This helped it not bruise, so that is good.

Went to the doctor again this morning; they like to monitor closely so that we don’t miss our window of opportunity. Not much has changed. The follicles are slowly getting bigger. Had one or two measuring at 11mm and a few more were in the 7-8mm range. So I’ll take my 3 injections every night and go back to the doctor on Thursday to see how things are moving along.

I know that we have been thanking everyone for your donation, but we want you to see exactly why it is such a HUGE help to us. This picture is of the injections that I take every night – the cost of just one day’s dosage is $325 (that is including a 50% discount that we qualified for. Normally it would be $650 per day! We didn’t know about the discount last year, so we were paying full price for six months). Thank you all again for helping us in this round of IVF!