Still Plugging Along

First of all, thanks to all of you who commented about R and his heart issue.

R had the EP study done last month, and he got the defibrillator. The way the EP study was done, his cardiologist injected a medication to see how easy it would be to trigger cardiac arrest. The cardiologist had only injected about 20 percent of the medication he was planning to inject when R arrested, so the doctor felt it was clear that R needed the defibrillator, and he implanted it right then.

Thankfully, R's recovery has gone very well. The pain is almost all gone, and the bruising is gone. This particular doctor implants the device as if it was a pectoral implant, so R now looks very buff on his left side. The doctor (and the rest of us) have teased him that he will need to focus on working out his right side now so that he is even.

The biggest change for him has been mental - adjusting to the idea of being a "cardiac patient." The morning after his procedure, while I was down in the hospital cafeteria getting myself breakfast, a cardiac rehabilitation specialist came by to talk to him. When I got back, he said, "But it's not like I'm a 60-year-old with a pot belly who just had a heart attack!" During his follow-up appointment at the cardiologist's, we were the only people in the entire waiting room under the age of 65, except for one guy about our age who was there as his grandmother's ride. All the other patients kept looking at us, no doubt wondering what we were doing there.

His restrictions (no driving, no lifting more than 10 pounds) will end on Oct. 1, and we'll likely be out of state at our clinic later that month for the next cycle. Right now I'm just waiting for CD1 to show up so that I can start the BCPs. It should happen toward the end of next week, but I had some spotting last week, so I don't know if it will happen next week or if my body is on another wildly irregular cycle. If it doesn't happen by CD35, I'll do a round of progesterone withdrawal to induce it.

Our new RE is cutting my stim meds in half - I'll be starting with 75 units of Gonal F and 75 units of Menopur per day. I know that sounds insanely low to most cyclers, but during our last cycle I started out on 300 per day and wound up with 32 eggs. (And 17 embryos and 0 babies.)

Given that I am R's chauffer for the next month and that I really want to focus on the cycle, I began taking steps last week to scale back my second job (real estate). I'm hoping that by the end of this week, I will have reduced my load in that area by at least 50 percent. I'm also hoping that means I will have more time to blog again. I've needed the space from it - and really, from all things infertility - but it's time to step back in again.

Here's hoping for a relatively uneventful autumn.