Monitoring

Last Thursday was my IVIg and intralipid infusion. I arrived at 9:00 am and was 'hooked up' by 9:30. We started with the intralipids, which looked like milk and only lasted about 45 minutes. After that, the nurse switched me to a sssllloooowwww drip of the IVIg. The first bottle took about 2.5 hours to administer. During that time, two other women (one in the same cycle as I am) came and went, only having intralipids done. My sister brought me lunch- Bread Co. French Onion Soup in a bread bowl. She had texted me earlier, asking what I was in the mood for and at the time I was cold, so I told her I wanted something warm. Both of my arms were hooked up to something- the left one was on a BP monitor and the right one had a big needle jammed into it. Needless to say, my soup wasn't so easy to eat.

In order to avoid a massive headache and other side effects, I was told to drink lots of water/Gatorade and keep hydrated. So I did. I think I went through 5 bottles of water in about 3 hours. Holding the IVIg bottle above my head while I maneuvered my jeans down one-handed was a bit tricky, but by the 12th visit to the ladies room, I had my routine down. I think I spent just as much time in the ladies room as I did on the over-stuffed leather couch.
Because I didn't have any reaction to the first bottle of IVIg, the nurse was able to speed up the second one. I got through it in a little over an hour and was out the door by 2:15. Overall, I would say that the day was mostly boring. I felt a little 'puffy' from all of the fluids and my head felt a little woozy, but otherwise, I felt just fine.

Yesterday, I had both blood work and my first monitoring u/s. Dr A was happy with the results- right side had 12 and the left had 6. All were measuring between 11- 16mm. He said he thinks we'll get about 12-15 total at retrieval. I left the office with additional instructions- 3 vials of Bra.velle and continuing Lu.pron shots, more blood work orders and another u/s on Wednesday afternoon. It looks like retrieval will be on Friday or Saturday. I should know for sure on Wednesday when it will be scheduled. Superman and I have both taken Friday off, so we'll either have a play day or it'll be retrieval day.

They're Here....

Superman was kind enough to snap a picture of the meds and sent it my way. I'm itching to get home and make sure ALL of them were delivered. I don't think it looks very big, but he's assured me it's "a pretty big box".

The meds were delivered to his office because I didn't want them sitting on my porch all day. His office is small enough that the meds wouldn't be lost in the mailroom, like they would at my office. Superman told one of the Admins that he was expecting a shipment of CHOCOLATE! Hey, whatever works, right!?

Everyone in his company is getting new cell phones and the shipment of phones arrived at the same time the meds did- and one of his poor co-workers accidentally opened our box. What a shock he probably had- expecting a box of Blackberrys and finding this-

Superman said that the guy brought him the box, apologized and pretty much ran away. Oh well.

IVF with New Doc.

Superman and I met with Doc #3 this morning. We were still considering staying with Dr. J but after a nice long meeting with Dr. A, we've decided he's our man. He does his own u/s and is present for pretty much every appointment I'll have. We also got the impression that he is very aggressive in his treatments- something I felt was lacking with Dr. J. We have a "Financial Consult" appointment on April 29th and have a list of pre-cycle tests that need to be done before we start our first IVF. Ideally, we'll start our first cycle the last week of May.. Holy Bajolies, we might be preggo by the end of the summer. That is totally cool with me because last Fall I bought a few shirts that would be GREAT maternity shirts for college football games. They're super cute and just happen to be the appropriate school colors :)

Navigating IVF

Cycle #4 was a bust. No surprise there, but I was still bummed to see AF all the same. Luckily, our consult with Dr. P was moved to Monday. Superman and I talked with him for about 45 minutes, tried to make sense of all of his analogies and keep up with his fast paced talk.. Whew. I was soo happy Superman was able to be there with me because there is no way I could have repeated everythink that Dr. P said!

We went home that night and poured over all of the information we received from Dr. P, Dr. J and Dr. A (granted, Dr. A's info is a copy of someone else's info in my fabulous Resolve group, we're meeting with him next week). Now, I'm totally confused! If we want to do a single cycle, Dr. J is the way to go. If we want to do 3 cycles, Dr. A is our man. Two cycles? Yep, you guessed it, Dr. P. One of the comments left on a previous post said 'not to put all of our eggs in one basket', and I think that will be my mantra as we go through the rest of the journey. Although, last night Superman was trying to cheer me up and asked if he could get me anything. I asked for a Magic 8 Ball (sidenote- I googled Magic 8 Ball to get an image to post into the blog and found several sites that have electronic versions where you type in your questions and hit "ask" to get the Magic 8 Ball's response. I asked if one IVF cycle would be enough to get pregant. The response? "Maybe".. sigh...)

I've made 2 more appointments with other area doctors, mainly to gather pricing and package information. We have noticed that a lot of packages have 'hidden costs'- anesthesia, ICSI, Assisted Hatching, Meds, etc. I'm curious to hear if anyone can provide information on other hidden costs we should be aware of..