I Still Don't Know What to Say

But this time, for the opposite reasons. I have had a HELL of a rollercoaster of a week. I mean, it's been completely ridiculous. For those of you on the FF boards, first off, hi!! And second off, thank you so much for listening to my moaning and bitching ALL week.

Let me catch you up on what has happened. After the mess that was Monday, we did trigger that night. On Tuesday I called them back and asked if they could do a blood test to see if my E2 was still low or if it had gone back up (really, I wanted to know if they had somehow made a crazy mistake) but they told me once I had done the trigger shot, my E2 would plummet in response to the surge, so it wouldn't be a good indicator. Then I asked if I could have a U/S before retrieval on Weds. to see if the follicles themselves had started to die off. They said I could, but that it wouldn't necessarily show anything. The follicles themselves might look good on U/S, but eggs inside might be much smaller and immature.

But on Weds. when I went in for ER I did have the U/S (how much do you want to bet I get charged for that, even though it was in direct response to their fuckup?) and I had lots of follies and a beautiful lining of 13mm. I was pretty excited walking down to get prepped for ER.

Then retrieval occurred and when I woke up, I was mired in confusion. I'm a pretty type A person, and don't like giving up control, so having to receive info second-hand from L was annoying. They'd gotten 18 eggs, 14 of them were immature, and 4 were almost mature - is the way he put it. None of them looked to be of good quality. According to the embryologist, they were poor quality and atrophied.

Given all that I went through with this cycle, I was really upset. Then L told me that the RE had actually said to him in passing that since he'd only seen this happen before when the patient had messed up taking the stims.

Oh hell no. HELL NO. I was FURIOUS when I heard that, about 4 hours after ER. I was still woozy but I called up IVF Jen and DEMANDED an appt. with the RE for the following Monday. After all he put me through he DARES tell us it's OUR fault? She seemed a bit bewildered, but did what I asked. Then I was left to despair the rest of the day, thinking about the fert. report the following day and expecting the worst. I kept asking L again EXACTLY what did they say about the eggs and kept getting conflicting reports. Always that there were 18 retrieved and 14 immature, but then that 4 were mature or 4 were almost mature. But still, that egg quality was poor. I tried to tell myself I'd at least have 4 eggs at fert. report but then I kept thinking that due to poor quality, they might not make it.

The embryologist had also told L that they were going try to mature (the 4 eggs I thought) in the lab and do regular IVF instead of ICSI on them. Apparently when ICSI is done they strip some proteins that allow the egg to mature faster in order to inject the sperm directly. We don't have male factor, so we were completely ok with that.

Anyway, I couldn't sleep Weds. night because I was so worried about a fert. report of 0 on Thursday. I gave L my cell phone for him to answer because I was seriously afraid of what I might say with a bad fert. report. When they called around 7:40am (40 min. later than last cycle) I was beside myself worrying that it was so bad they were trying to figure out a way to tell me nicely. When the phone actually rang, I instantly plugged my ears.

I have really good hearing though, dammit. I could still hear L talking through my fingers, so I began rocking them back and forth so I wouldn't hear anything. Finally I got tired though and stopped, and with the fingers still in my ears, heard him say, "And how is the quality?" and I instantly relaxed. They might be shitty quality, but at least I had *ONE* egg.

When he got off the phone I released my ears and stared up at him, "Well?" I asked, almost not wanting to know. "Did any make it?"

He looked at me, nodded, and said, "Yea, 12."

12? 12?!?!?! I seriously thought the most I could get was 4, and that was if everything went perfectly. Last cycle we had 12 eggs retrieved, 7 were mature and 5 fertilized. Now we had 12? I don't know what magic they did, but they were able to rescue 8 more of those eggs.

Of course, we had been told at ER (or really L was told, as I was out of it) that egg quality was poor, so immediately I started worrying that none would make it to Day 3, which we were automatically scheduled for at ER. L had asked about quality but they said it was too early to make a judgment (how did they at ER, then?) but I was on Cloud 9.

40 minutes later, I got another call from the RE's office. OMG, I nearly had a heart attack. Negative me immediately thought, "What if they confused me with someone else and made a mistake and all of them were gone?" But it turned out to be some nurse who had heard at least part of the conversation with L and the RE (where he blamed us messing up the medication) and wanted to tell me that my husband had misunderstood the RE. I listened to her for about 2 minutes and then asked, "Well, on Monday the RE had told us he'd never seen anything like this before." She replied, "Well, I've seen it twice in the time I've worked here. It's always been because the patient messed up the medication."

Oh, so we DIDN'T misunderstand. You're still blaming us. She went onto say that she's seen it when the stim protocol was very complicated, but I checked out of the conversation. First off, we had ONE drug to take each night (in addition to the lupron, which we were told to STOP taking before this whole thing took a nosedive). Kind of hard to screw that up when we'd been doing it correctly the previous 12 DAYS of stims. Secondly, even if my husband had by accident (and I don't for one second believe it, but let's just talk hypotheticals here) given me 3 vials of Bravelle instead of the 4.5 vials I was supposed to take, that STILL doesn't explain why my E2 dropped from 1255 to 349 in TWO days. If my E2 had gone up only a little, then maybe I'd believe it. If my E2 had gone down a little, maybe even then I might have believed it? But to drop to 1/4 of what it was? No way, sister.

I still believe it was him taking us off the Lupron that did it, but I'm not sure how. According to the RE my progesterone was still low, and they don't check LH so I don't know but I don't think I had premature luteinization, but what do I know? Clearly just as much as the RE though.

And even despite all that - did she really think that by calling me I was going to take the RE's side over my husband? My husband who is so so careful every night in washing his hands, cleaning off the injection site with an alcohol swab, measuring the medicine, and getting out all of the air bubbles? There is no way I would ever take HER opinion over my husband's.

My doctor's office doesn't do Day 2 calls, so I prepared myself for a 3 day transfer this morning. If they don't call you early on Day 3, you're just expected to show up for transfer. I kept the phone by my side all night, praying once again that they weren't of such poor quality that they all arrested or something. But when no call came at 6:30am I was really bummed. At 7am we got in the car to go to transfer at 7:30am, and at 7:15, the phone call came. "You have several good quality embryos, so if you would like to push your transfer to day 5, that would be ok."

What? Us, go to day 5? Us who only went to day 3 last time? We were on our way already so we asked to come in to discuss.

We still had 12 embryos. 3 of them were of perfect quality (we didn't have that last month), 3 of very good, 3 of fair, 2 of poor, and 1 terrible (probably would arrest today).

That is so much better than last month. How did this happen??? I thought they were poor quality eggs and atrophied? Now some are "perfect?" All I can think of is that the embryologists at my RE are AWESOME, even if my RE himself is not.

Of course, now my worry turns to Monday. They told us that 2/3 of the embryos should make it, and I hope that stays true. Come on embies, you can do it!!!

After this week, I need a drink. Phew....