October 24, 2006

Still Here

I'll be quick about this, because I rose very early this morning to 1) finish contact papering the pantry shelves, 2) register for a make-it-and-take-it dinner place I'm supposed to be going to with a friend in a couple of days (but won't be if I don't sign up before the cut off today) and 3) get to work early. Hahahaha. I got the last four pieces of contact paper cut (turns out I made them about 3/8" too short) and then the lure of the computer sucked me in - I've spent the last hour catching up with as many of you as possible.

We've moved, although we still have a few boxes worth of stuff inside and about half of the garage at the old house. We're getting unpacked, but it will take a bit of time, mostly because I haven't taken any time off work to do this. While I hate to pack, I actually rather enjoy unpacking and getting things organized, so if I had a big chunk of time to do it, we'd be completely unpacked within a few days.

My mom moves in this weekend. It will be interesting. My mind keeps blocking the fact that the whole reason for this move is so she could come live with us. Let's hope we manage to co-exist with minimal strife and that we don't all kill each other.

I talked with Doc the day after our BFN. He gave us two options: 1) do another FET, this time transferring three blasts or 2) leave the 8 blasts we have frozen and go onto another fresh cycle, this time with slightly lower stims. He is concerned that at this point we've transferred back two terrific-looking day 3 embryos and two fantastic day 5 blasts, and nothing has stuck. He thinks we've got the blood clotting issues and immune issues under control, and my lining looked great. So he thinks it may be an embryo quality issue that isn't visible to the naked eye, even via microscope.

He thinks that given R's drastic swings in sperm production (from almost literally zero sperm, highly fragmented while he's not on meds to pretty much totally normal when he is), there could still be an inherent sperm quality issue that is causing problems. He also thinks that while my E2 levels didn't rise too terribly high given the 32 eggs retrieved, he would want to keep everything even lower next time to try to make sure it isn't an egg quality issue. I wasn't on a high dose of stims to start with (300 units for the first two days, then 225 after that), so there isn't a whole lot of room to go lower, but there is a little bit. I imagine he'd start me on 225 and then drop down to 150, but we didn't get into details.

I'm not up to another fresh cycle at the moment, so we've opted to do a frozen cycle in December, then consider another fresh cycle after the beginning of the year (probably March or April) if the frozen doesn't work. Lupron begins on Nov. 11 - hard to believe it's less than three weeks away - and the transfer will be sometime around Dec. 15.

I'll keep trying to catch up with all of you as I can, even though I'm not posting a whole lot right now.

October 08, 2006

In Other News…

“…and now, we’re taking a break from our regularly scheduled fit of self-pity to bring you this important news bulletin:

I hate packing.

I promised R that I would pack like a Tasmanian devil this weekend. I have no motivation to pack, and I’ve been doing everything I can to procrastinate on it for the past few weeks.

My ‘Taz’ imitation lasted until I finished packing the guest bathroom, which was the first room I tackled. It consisted of a few towels, a couple of candles, a flower arrangement and a harness thingamajig with suction cups on both ends that is (theoretically, anyway) supposed to keep the dogs from leaping out of the tub when we’re giving them a bath.

It took me all of 10 minutes. And after that, I was ready to be done with the packing. But I pressed on, mostly because R wouldn’t let me stop.

In the room where we keep the cats when we’re not home, I dumped scratching posts, kitty beds and toys into a box without bothering to vacuum the coating of hair off them first. My mother is one of those people who cleans her entire house every weekend, and the idea of packing something without cleaning it first is beyond comprehension to her. The first thing she will do as we begin to get settled is unpack the pets’ stuff. Let’s hope I get to that box first, because if I don’t, the shock of it may be more than she can handle.

There’s still a ton of packing left to do. Did I mention that moving day is this Saturday?

It should be an interesting day. R has no problem paying other people thousands of dollars to paint the inside of our house, install landscape, etc. But spend a few hundred bucks to hire movers to load our stuff up, drive it over to the new house, and unload it? No way! He insists that he and his dad are going to move us. I don’t think it’s a money thing – it seems to be more a matter of machismo.

But here’s the thing. R is not in shape to do this, and neither is his dad. Not that I’m the picture of fitness, because I’m certainly not. But I have learned to recognize my limits. R, on the other hand, got out of bed this morning by rolling gingerly onto his side while moaning, then slowly slid his legs over the edge of the bed until he was kneeling on the ground, then put his hands on top of the bed and used his arms to push himself up, his face contorting in pain the whole time.

This, after only half a day of packing. I can only imagine what he’ll be like next Sunday morning, after moving the entire contents of a house into and then back out of a truck.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…”

October 05, 2006

It Didn't Work

The first beta was less than 2. I don't know what the second one was because I was in a meeting when the clinic called and couldn't answer my phone. But seeing as how the message was to stop taking my meds, clearly the second beta didn't come back with some fantastically high number.

Our clinic usually doesn't give out the results until after the second beta. But on Tuesday I couldn't stand the not knowing any more, so I got the cycle coordinator to tell me. I can be a bit of a PITA patient, so she doesn't even fight it anymore - I think she figures it's easier to just do what I want, because then I'll go away and won't keep bugging her.

I didn't tell R until last night. I wanted to let him have one more day in the Land of Hope, because he was so happy there. As I was walking out of my building at work, he called to find out if I'd heard anything yet. I'd been really calm up until that point - faking hope during the injections he helped me with on Tuesday night, not crying at all since getting the news. But telling him gets me every time. I sank down on a curb in the parking lot and sobbed and sobbed as I told him. I was probably flashing the world since I was in a skirt, and other employees were driving by on their way out of the parking lot, but I didn't care.

At least we have the house to focus on and keep us distracted. I'm hoping to talk to Doc today to get his thoughts, and then I think we're going to do the next FET in the beginning of December. We'll find out the results right at Christmas. A couple years ago, there's no way I would have been willing to do a cycle with that kind of timing. But now my thinking is that we have no child now, so in that sense, how can it get any worse? If it's a negative, we're simply in the same place we are right now. If it's a positive, it's another reason to (reservedly, with great caution) celebrate.

Oh, and you want to hear something ironic? R and I tried to adopt for two years. We let all of our family, friends and neighbors know that we were wanting to adopt, but none of them ever heard of any potential situations. Now, since Friday, two friends and a neighbor have all said, "I just heard of someone I know who is pregnant and planning to put their baby up for adoption. Would you be interested?" It would figure. I've left it up to them to find out more information for us. We wouldn't be totally against it, but given that we've already lost tens of thousands of dollars on that process, we're also not willing to be matched with someone who needs major living expenses for several months.

I haven't told R about any of these situations. Apparently, I'm getting very good at keeping things from him. That's probably not a good thing, but sparing him dashed hopes and pain spares me pain. And right now, I've got just about all the pain I can handle.

God, when does this end? When is it our turn? It seems like almost everyone we know who is dealing with infertility, in the blogosphere or in real life, is having success while we're still left standing here, watching them all go on to have the happy lives we can barely even dream of anymore. I know that's not true of everyone, that some of you who are reading this are still in the boat with us. I wish it was a place none of us had to be.