Yet it does. Getting some sort of weird sciatic pain after bending over to scrub the shower is surely a sign of things to come. But I won't digress into that potentially distressing topic.
So, finally the PGD co-ordinator at the new clinic has rung me for a chat, while I was out and about, of course. I hope the girls in the Myer shoe dept enjoyed my recital of my loss history amongst the Diana Ferraris. Hey, you gotta laugh. I'm not quite sure what the whole chain of command is there, it seems that she consults with a geneticist to see if we're likely candidates, then calls me back in a few weeks. Apparently I'm still not old in IVF terms, which is exhausting to constantly hear. Possibly it won't lead to closure as there's always the potential of finding out that most of the embies are normal and still not conceiving. I wouldn't at all be surprised if this were to be my fate. At this stage, I think I'd rather know that the majority are bung......I need answers!!!
There's still the required ring around to find a FS and the referral etc.....kind of putting these things off for a bit. I think I mentally need to not do IVF for a few months, not to mention physically. My wacko New Year's fad diet seems to be working for now, so I'd like to be in optimal shape before pumping myself full of those horror hormones again.
Hopefully Dr Suave has the results of the placental testing on last week's loss but who knows with this FC...
I'm moving soon and won't have net access for ages, so I foresee a reasonably long break from blogging. Buh-bye for now!
Wednesday 21 January 2009
Thursday 15 January 2009
Stuck in the Middle with no Clue......
It's at the hour before dawn that I stare at the rays peeping cheekily out from the curtain's periphery and ponder my deepest thoughts. Just for a change, they revolve around fertility, AKA, what the fuck do I do now? I say this fully cognizant of the inherent irony, but sometimes I feel that I'm still too young and 'fertile' to give up now.
If I were one of those 39 year olds who couldn't even respond to 600iu of stims, had one lousy follie which yielded one cruddy egg (if I was lucky), which then became a sickly looking fragmented embie which was dying on day 2, sure, perhaps it would be time to let go. In fact, I've met 3 of these women in the past year, and they're all moving onto donor eggs now. With each failed cycle, I'm starting to get the donor eggs questions and I really can't answer honestly without offending those who are moving in this direction; suffice it to say that I won't be gestating another woman's child with my husband inside this body, and that's about as much as I want to say on this topic. For me, the need to breed stops with my DNA.
It's really difficult. Never have I been clucky. I'll put it out there, even through these past five horror years of trying, I actually don't get clucky. I never really thought of children, except in a theoretical, oh, maybe when I'm 35 type way. When I started thinking about it, I decided I wanted one and no more. In fact, I recall at the start of this whole shebang, advising DH that I'd go through pregnancy once (hold me back, dear irony!) and that's it, that one child is perfect and enables you to continue being an individual and having, dare I say it, a LIFE. He demurred and requested 2, on the "only children are weirdos" theory, and this was to be our big negotiation.
ONE. I only wanted ONE, FFS. No greed here. No pumping out 4 in 4 years like Kate Lang.broek and other celebrity late-breeders et al. JUST ONE.
So, it's a delicate balance. Kind of, how much more treatment can I bear vs can I stand to stop when I literally probably have a year of 'fertility' left.
If I were one of those 39 year olds who couldn't even respond to 600iu of stims, had one lousy follie which yielded one cruddy egg (if I was lucky), which then became a sickly looking fragmented embie which was dying on day 2, sure, perhaps it would be time to let go. In fact, I've met 3 of these women in the past year, and they're all moving onto donor eggs now. With each failed cycle, I'm starting to get the donor eggs questions and I really can't answer honestly without offending those who are moving in this direction; suffice it to say that I won't be gestating another woman's child with my husband inside this body, and that's about as much as I want to say on this topic. For me, the need to breed stops with my DNA.
It's really difficult. Never have I been clucky. I'll put it out there, even through these past five horror years of trying, I actually don't get clucky. I never really thought of children, except in a theoretical, oh, maybe when I'm 35 type way. When I started thinking about it, I decided I wanted one and no more. In fact, I recall at the start of this whole shebang, advising DH that I'd go through pregnancy once (hold me back, dear irony!) and that's it, that one child is perfect and enables you to continue being an individual and having, dare I say it, a LIFE. He demurred and requested 2, on the "only children are weirdos" theory, and this was to be our big negotiation.
ONE. I only wanted ONE, FFS. No greed here. No pumping out 4 in 4 years like Kate Lang.broek and other celebrity late-breeders et al. JUST ONE.
So, it's a delicate balance. Kind of, how much more treatment can I bear vs can I stand to stop when I literally probably have a year of 'fertility' left.
Friday 9 January 2009
Dusk is Dawn is Day.
Today: dilation and curette no: 3. Buh-bye. I must admit that as I lie in recovery, groggy and bleeding time after time, I swear that this journey isn't worth continuing. I guess I just forget.
Two Days Ago: scan shows sac and yolk measuring 5 weeks, 1.5 weeks behind. Dr Suave has no answers for me and admits that he can't help me. He knows that something is wrong but just doesn't know what. I grill him about PGD but he does everything to convince me that it's pointless. That unless you know what you're actually testing for, they can only check for 6 chromosomes which only comprise 60% of fetal abnormalities. Knowing how I like to google stuff for proof, he even shows me the latest clinical study which concludes that PGD is not efficacious in unexplained cases. I have no idea why he's so negative. I know I'm fucking up their stats, but so what? My money's as good as anyone's right? Luckily I'm moving as I no longer have confidence in this huge, impersonal, supermarket of a clinic. DH wants to try the pre-eminent PGD clinic in the world, the one which supplies 10% of the world's PGD babies. Fortuitously, it's in our home town.
Two Months Ago: review appointment after failed stim 4 cycle where I told Dr. Suave I was pulling the pin on IVF. He doesn't argue with me, just reminds me of his graph, the one where your chance of conceiving climbs with each cycle up to stim 4, then slams viciously down to earth. I ask what he would recommend if I were one of those delusionoids who was prepared to do cycle after cycle, he says the next step would probably be PGD. I walk away thinking, yeah right, my blasts are perfect! Ha.
Two Days Ago: scan shows sac and yolk measuring 5 weeks, 1.5 weeks behind. Dr Suave has no answers for me and admits that he can't help me. He knows that something is wrong but just doesn't know what. I grill him about PGD but he does everything to convince me that it's pointless. That unless you know what you're actually testing for, they can only check for 6 chromosomes which only comprise 60% of fetal abnormalities. Knowing how I like to google stuff for proof, he even shows me the latest clinical study which concludes that PGD is not efficacious in unexplained cases. I have no idea why he's so negative. I know I'm fucking up their stats, but so what? My money's as good as anyone's right? Luckily I'm moving as I no longer have confidence in this huge, impersonal, supermarket of a clinic. DH wants to try the pre-eminent PGD clinic in the world, the one which supplies 10% of the world's PGD babies. Fortuitously, it's in our home town.
Two Months Ago: review appointment after failed stim 4 cycle where I told Dr. Suave I was pulling the pin on IVF. He doesn't argue with me, just reminds me of his graph, the one where your chance of conceiving climbs with each cycle up to stim 4, then slams viciously down to earth. I ask what he would recommend if I were one of those delusionoids who was prepared to do cycle after cycle, he says the next step would probably be PGD. I walk away thinking, yeah right, my blasts are perfect! Ha.
Monday 5 January 2009
The Twelve Surgeries of Mez.
In the spirit of the festive season, let's sing a song of joy, shall we?
On the last day of my cycle, my FS gave to me,
12 blasties transferred
11 days till BT
10 eggs per stim
9 Surgeriesssss
8 eggs fertilised
7 IVF cycles
6 brandy sours
5 pregnanciessss
4 miscarriages
3 D+Cs
2 gene mutations
and an ectopic salpingectomeeeeee
Or maybe I'll just try to disappear like Joni Mitchell.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=bVwo9IQMWM0&feature=related
On the last day of my cycle, my FS gave to me,
12 blasties transferred
11 days till BT
10 eggs per stim
9 Surgeriesssss
8 eggs fertilised
7 IVF cycles
6 brandy sours
5 pregnanciessss
4 miscarriages
3 D+Cs
2 gene mutations
and an ectopic salpingectomeeeeee
Or maybe I'll just try to disappear like Joni Mitchell.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=bVwo9IQMWM0&feature=related
Thursday 1 January 2009
Numb and Number.
I haven't blogged for ages. In fact, I closed this blog during Stim 4 as a means of waving goodbye to my years of Infertility and returning to normality. Also the psycho stalker angle, yet I assure these peeps that they will receive unpleasant legal letters if they continue to libel me on their blogs.
I'm stopping AC and going back to work full-time. The carnival's over and this clown can cry no more.
Only.....as always, a scintilla of hope enters the battered, sludge-covered heart once again. Is it possible to have 5 pregnancy losses? I didn't think so....so I guess that means I'm good at something, right? Ha ha.
Well, a few weeks ago I did a sneaky natural FET to use up my frosties before I move states again. One didn't make the thaw, but the last 2 did, so in they went. Absolutely no expectations as IVF doesn't work for me. So, at 11dpo, shockingly, unexpectedly, I get a feint pos on a stick, which gets darker till my BT at 14dpo. HCG was 84, a bit low, p4 was a crazy 162. I dared to hope....a bit of brown spotting that night which I took to be implantation bleeding, as I'm on man-strength clexane AND aspirin, for the first time. (my M/C guy's recommendations, also no prednisolone as he doesn't think I need it)
2 days later, HCG only 111, p4 174. I tried to convince myself there was a very early vanishing twin, making one blast a CP and explaining the spotting, high p4 plus non-doubling beta.
Then we go OS for Xmas. I am ridiculously bloated, tender boobs and spewed twice. No booze in Honkers!
Come home and have BT yesterday, I should be 5.5 weeks and around 3000-5000 HCG. It's only 575 and p4 has halved to 82. I'm so exhausted that I've had 5 losses and I don't even know why. I'm too tired to cry even. This time, I don't think it was implantation. My blood is so thin, I'm covered in massive bruises and the clexane should have stopped that. I'm waiting for the scan next week and praying there's no sac as I really want to avoid another D+C after last time's scar tissue problem on my cervix.
I'm starting to think that my perfect blasts have maternal-age-related chromosomal problems and something like 80% of my blasts are abnormal. It's just a theory, because I know that the fetus in January's loss was normal through testing. But I suspect that my first loss in 2005 may have been abnormal. I had massive, normal PG symptoms up until 8 weeks, the likes of which I've never since experienced, which then stopped suddenly. This was in my clueless days when I didn't do BTs or even dating/hb scans. I just found out at the 12 week NF scan that the sac was empty and had stopped growing at 8 weeks, which suggests to me that there may have been a heartbeart, then it stopped developing, which is what happens to abnormal fetuses.
My second loss could have been an implantation issue....again, no BTs but I hemorrhaged and passed it in the toilet at work one day at 5.5 weeks. I'm pretty sure my HCG didn't get very high for that one at all as it was down to 30ish around the time of it passing.
The ectopic doesn't count, I guess. Murphy (or Mez's law) suggests that it was probably normal.
Well, this is a long-winded way of saying I'm really confused. Am I right to suspect that there is something wrong with a large proportion of my eggs? DH and I came up normal on karotyping and chromosomal testing, but I'm thinking these are random, age-related abnormalities that just happen. I'm back to tossing and turning and insomnia, trying to make sense of it, come to conclusions.
In which case, we have started talking about PGD, despite me not wanting to cycle again.
We kind of want closure, like not going to my grave wondering why I couldn't keep a pregnancy. 
I'm stopping AC and going back to work full-time. The carnival's over and this clown can cry no more.
Only.....as always, a scintilla of hope enters the battered, sludge-covered heart once again. Is it possible to have 5 pregnancy losses? I didn't think so....so I guess that means I'm good at something, right? Ha ha.
Well, a few weeks ago I did a sneaky natural FET to use up my frosties before I move states again. One didn't make the thaw, but the last 2 did, so in they went. Absolutely no expectations as IVF doesn't work for me. So, at 11dpo, shockingly, unexpectedly, I get a feint pos on a stick, which gets darker till my BT at 14dpo. HCG was 84, a bit low, p4 was a crazy 162. I dared to hope....a bit of brown spotting that night which I took to be implantation bleeding, as I'm on man-strength clexane AND aspirin, for the first time. (my M/C guy's recommendations, also no prednisolone as he doesn't think I need it)
2 days later, HCG only 111, p4 174. I tried to convince myself there was a very early vanishing twin, making one blast a CP and explaining the spotting, high p4 plus non-doubling beta.
Then we go OS for Xmas. I am ridiculously bloated, tender boobs and spewed twice. No booze in Honkers!
Come home and have BT yesterday, I should be 5.5 weeks and around 3000-5000 HCG. It's only 575 and p4 has halved to 82. I'm so exhausted that I've had 5 losses and I don't even know why. I'm too tired to cry even. This time, I don't think it was implantation. My blood is so thin, I'm covered in massive bruises and the clexane should have stopped that. I'm waiting for the scan next week and praying there's no sac as I really want to avoid another D+C after last time's scar tissue problem on my cervix.
I'm starting to think that my perfect blasts have maternal-age-related chromosomal problems and something like 80% of my blasts are abnormal. It's just a theory, because I know that the fetus in January's loss was normal through testing. But I suspect that my first loss in 2005 may have been abnormal. I had massive, normal PG symptoms up until 8 weeks, the likes of which I've never since experienced, which then stopped suddenly. This was in my clueless days when I didn't do BTs or even dating/hb scans. I just found out at the 12 week NF scan that the sac was empty and had stopped growing at 8 weeks, which suggests to me that there may have been a heartbeart, then it stopped developing, which is what happens to abnormal fetuses.
My second loss could have been an implantation issue....again, no BTs but I hemorrhaged and passed it in the toilet at work one day at 5.5 weeks. I'm pretty sure my HCG didn't get very high for that one at all as it was down to 30ish around the time of it passing.
The ectopic doesn't count, I guess. Murphy (or Mez's law) suggests that it was probably normal.
Well, this is a long-winded way of saying I'm really confused. Am I right to suspect that there is something wrong with a large proportion of my eggs? DH and I came up normal on karotyping and chromosomal testing, but I'm thinking these are random, age-related abnormalities that just happen. I'm back to tossing and turning and insomnia, trying to make sense of it, come to conclusions.
In which case, we have started talking about PGD, despite me not wanting to cycle again.
We kind of want closure, like not going to my grave wondering why I couldn't keep a pregnancy.
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