Trigger Day

Its here. Its trigger day...

I went into the clinic to get my last of the daily blood draws and ultrasounds. If you recall, I'm participating in a phase IV clinical trial for a new IVF med. Because the study is sponsored by a drug company, I am a lucky recipient of a FREE, all expenses paid IVF cycle. And with this, I become their lab rat.

Since last Sunday, I've been into the clinic every day to get an ultrasound of my ovaries which counts the number and size of the follicles that hopefully each will contain a mature egg at retrieval. I've also become a human pin cushion as they take blood daily to measure how my hormone levels are changing and to find the optimal time to pull the trigger.

Aside: For those of you who don't know, the trigger is a shot that tells all the follicles growing to mature and get ready to ovulate. This is needed because you are taking 2 other shots in the prior days. 1 shot to grow more eggs than the usual one and another shot to stop your body from ovulating until all of the eggs get to a similar size. Then about 36 hours after the trigger shot, just before all of those eggs would ovulate on their own (yikes, THAT would hurt!), the egg retrieval process happens. So, there's some crucial timing involved in these next few days.  

And today's the optimal day. I have about 10 big follicles growing on my ovaries with a few smaller ones behind. And all of my hormone levels look to be in the right ranges. So tonight, I take one last shot in my already slightly bruised belly and throw my hands up to the fates.

My egg retrieval will be Monday and then we wait for the somewhat nerve-wrecking updates... number of mature eggs retrieved, number that fertilized, number of embryos still growing on 1 day later, 2 days later.... and then on 3 days later, we'll transfer 2 of the best looking embryos back into me and hope at least one chooses to stick around for 38 more weeks. And then after that, hopefully we have a few good embryos still left growing in the lab 5 days later and they can freeze them for a subsequent cycle.

This is a very strange time in an IVF cycle for me. I feel odd. I feel like a freak. I feel like I'm walking around the world with the knowledge that my body is going through a strange, harvesting process, like I'm an alien experiment and everyone is watching. But no one would know if they looked at me. Anyone understand this feeling? Its almost like the feeling in that dream where you are at school or work w/o a shirt, or pants, or some crucial article of clothing on and everyone is staring at you, but you still have to go through you day. You know the one, right?

But there's no waking up of this dream into a world where I have all the right clothes on... into a world where I have a baby in the usual, have sex, miss your period and celebrate kind of way. And so I have to stay asleep in this awkward dream, and hope that when I do wake up, I still get that bundle of join in the end....

So send me some good egg maturing thoughts and I'll see ya on the flip side of the retrieval.

ps... My sister drove me to the clinic this morning and we joked in the car about maturing eggs... picture this... all of those eggs in my ovaries, partying it up, moving around, because they think they are 'so mature'... 'woo hoo!!! we're old enough to party now!" ... maybe that's why it gets so friggin uncomfortable in there over the next few days

Consultation Update

I traveled to Chicago last friday for an appointment with the clinic that is performing an efficacy study on a particular IVF drug. The study is in phase III of the clinical trial and if you know what that means, you'll know that they've already shown this drug to be effective as the one it is being compared to (daily injections of Follistim) and they now just need to validate previous results in an older population. And yeah for me, being "old" is actually a good thing for this.  What's more exciting is that if I get in I will have an all expense paid IVF cycle. (I'd rather that sentence read "an all expense paid trip to Hawaii"... or something like that. But alas, one has to accept where one is at in their life, right?)

And everything seemed to go well. I'm basically in! I fit all the criteria and pending a few more blood tests, semen analysis and a sonohystogram (sometimes called a fluid ultrasound), which I expect should go well, I'm IN!!! This means I could be poking myself with needles in early October! WHEEEEE! (Never thought I'd write that sentence either... lol!)

I'm feeling pretty calm about it all right now, but am sure as time grows nearer, my anxiety level and emotions get a little out of wack. We'll see.

So, keep your fingers crossed and pray that the rest of our blood tests turn out well and we'll be back in the cycling game shortly! I'll keep you posted.