Long Time No See

Yes, it's been a long time and I've been neglectful. My humblest apologies, but you see, there hasn't been much to write about. Since Doc and I are on a break and not doing any type of ART until probably the beginning of 2011, we've been on a slow boat to nowhere.

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean I haven't had any doctors appointments. On the contrary, I've actually been inundated with therapy appointments, acupuncture appointments, and blood tests. And IF has still been weighing heavily on our minds.

We have our 1-day workup with CCRM on Tuesday, Sept 7th, so we'll be flying out to Denver over the Labor Day weekend and checking out the town. At that time, I'll meet with Dr. S, do my bloodwork and get a hysteroscopy. Wow! Come to think of it, that's less than 2 weeks away! Where does the time go.

So, that's the latest...not much to see and not much to write about. I'll keep y'all posted on what comes out to the one-day!

Fear

Do you ever get that feeling where you're so scared that you don't even want to take the next step? You'd rather just stay in your current state of "unknown" than move on to what may be success, but also may be failure. That's about where I am right now.

This IF sh** has got me in such a state of anxiety that I'm not even sure if I want to move on to CCRM and IVF #3. I know we will end up doing the IVF #3, but a small part of me doesn't want to. That small part wants to live in a state of ignorant bliss.

Crazy talk, right? Just about as crazy as paying some random man $15K to snatch my eggs, sperminate them, and then shove them right back in, while I pray to every god from Jehovah to Vishnu that I'm knocked up. Sucks.

CCRM

We talked to the big guns yesterday and had our first consultation with CCRM. Dr. Surrey was great! He was the first doctor that we've talked to that actually offered some concrete recommendations to our last two protocols. All the rest of the docs have had some "wishy-washy" recs that they said were worth a try, but really weren't anything different from what we had done during our last two IVF cycles. Dr. S had a sense of humor and was very friendly. He was upfront and honest with us, but at the same time provided a glimmer of hope.

So, to get down to the nitty-gritty of what he recommended:

- Antagonist cycle with estrogen priming
- Longer stim, an additional day or two past the typical 18mm lead follicle
- HCG trigger + lupron (so I guess some women do not respond well to HCG as a means of maturing the egg. Dr. S. has had some success in these situations by giving a dose of lupron in addition to the HCG)
- Possible addition of human growth hormone (I'm thinking this is saizen)

I'll be flying out to Colorado in the next month or two to do a one-day work up and also meet with Dr. Surrey. After that, we'll probably schedule IVF #3 for sometime in the beginning of 2011.

And more good news! I did another round of bloodwork this cycle and just got my results back...My FSH is 7.9, down from 23 last month and my estradiol is at 34. I really think that last month was a random fluke and/or a bad test or maybe my FSH was still high from the IVF meds. Whatever it was, I now know to wait one month after an IVF to test my hormone levels.