Monday, November 7, 2011

Round 2 begins!

Well the day has finally come!! After about a 7 week hiatus we are finally back on the IVF road.  I waited patiently for my cycle to come on its own this time around and was told it MUST start on or before Nov 5th in order to be in the Nov cycle.  Well I guess you could say my body decided to wait till the last second, 4pm on Nov 5th, but hey whatever, it was in time so that's all that matters right!
This morning (Monday)  I went in for my first appointment with the doctor to have an ultrasound and blood drawn to make sure everything looks good to start the drugs.  The ultrasound showed 4-5 follicles, but with it being only day 3 of my cycle more follicles can emerge in the next several days.  So my mantra for the next 2 days is "grow more follicles, grow bigger, grow more follicles, grow bigger."

The doctor again was in his 'think out loud mode' and again started with the rambling about, "ok severe endo, blah blah blah.". After the ultrasound the doctor again told me the AMH level test results from the previous month, which he had already told me.  He tried to start discussing it again and I immediately stopped him because I could see he was starting to go down a negative path again.  I reminded him that I had a follicle count of 9 on my own last month with no drugs and that he had said in our previous appt that he was going to ignore the AMH results and focus on the follicles.  I was not going to start this 2nd cycle with negative shit! I have had enough of people telling me what is wrong with me, so at this point just tell me what is good about what is going on.  The doctor liked my thinking and rational.  So I guess every appt I am going to have to remind him to say positive things to me. 

After the ultrasound the nurse coordinator gave me my first injection of Follistim.  Oh yea I forgot to mention the doctor decided to do the same drugs again this cycle, because the results from the pharmaceutical company who were testing my first meds have NOT come back yet.  I will do 2 injections a day of the max dose (225iu) of Follistim for the next 3.5 days.  I guess I should say Justin will give me 2 injections a day, because we all know I am not looking at it!! Then I will go back Thursday morning for monitoring to see how things are progressing.
The last part of the appt was getting to have more blood drawn to see where my FSH and LH levels are. Yay!! More needles!!  I want my FSH to be under 12 and LH at 30 or over.  I got 2 more vials to add to the total, awesome!  I will get the results of those on Thursday at my appt.

Before I left the nurse coordinator gave me a big bag of drugs and needles.  That was a really funny last sentence to write! Ha!  She gave me a cartridge of Follistim to replace the one that is being tested, along with 4 others and 6 vials of the second drug I will start taking Thursday evening.  All the drugs she gave me were samples (free), so that was really nice, because we won't have to spend any monies for the first 5 days of Follistim and the first 3 days of the second drug.  Basically all the drugs we paid for the first IVF were comp'd this time around.  So if we can get past the place we got to in IVF #1 we will then start paying for the drugs again. Whew, complicated! But grateful for the samples!

How am I feeling? Anxious, nervous, excited, positive!  How is my needle anxiety? Funny, but it actually seems to be getting better.  Since I have been through all of this portion of the IVF process once already the needles seem a little less scary.  And the anxiety build-up that would happen about 10-15 minutes before I would get an injection seems to be less.  BUT oddly enough the anxiety before I get blood drawn is still really high! I get light-headed and nauseous.  I think this might be because the lady that draws the blood in the office SUCKS at her job about 80% of the time.  She usually doesn't hit the vein right the first time, so to know in advance that it is really going to hurt and more than once, might be where the anxiety is stemming from. Ha! Ya think!

So here we go!! Positive thoughts and positive energy, grow more follicles, grow bigger!

Jenny
Blood draws 8 Vials 27
Injections 18

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