Nothing to report

I have my period and am a grumpy bitch. Nothing out of the ordinary really. I have spent the last three days of my life at a conference for work which I really could have done without. I rang the clinic and begged to start our FET this cycle but they refused. Apparently my body needs a break from all the drugs. Fuckers. Like they know what my body needs. I do know that we need a cash injection though and quickly. We have spent all of our cash on IVF and I honestly don't know how we are going to make our mortgage payment this week. I think Murray and I need to have a serious sit down to decide whether or not we can afford to keep our house.

Feeling much better

I am finally feeling like myself again, today is the first day that I haven't needed to medicate myself to get out of bed in the morning. Definitely a big achievement for me! All my OHSS symptoms have dissipated, besides the endless trips to the toilet of course!

My bloating has subsided dramatically, I am still two kilos heavier than when I started but I'm not too concerned with that. My body has been knocked around a fair bit with the bloating. I imagine this is what it looks like after a pregnant woman has a baby, my skin is all floppy and gross which is depressing because I have worked so hard over the past year to really get myself into shape. Murray keeps telling me that it doesn't matter and that I should focus on getting better, but he's not the one whose body is fcuking up. Oh well, I'm feeling better which is the main thing.

I'm really nervous about going back to work tomorrow. Last week was an incredibly busy week and with me being out of action, I know it caused a fair bit of drama at work. I know I shouldn't feel guilty about it, I was sick, there was nothing I could do. But yet I still feel guilty.

Something else to feel guilty about, we had to borrow $2000 off Murray's parents so that we can pay our IVF bill. We thought we had more money free on our credit card but apparently we don't and we didn't have enough to pay for our IVF treatment. Fun. Well I guess not many people have a spare $8000 lying around to make the upfront payment. We will get a big portion of that back from Medicare and my private health insurance thank goodness, I don't know how people manage to keep going back to do this. The FET in August is a lot cheaper, the nurse I spoke to at the clinic said that it is only $2050 upfront plus some extra drug costs like pessaries (around $100) and progynova (quite cheap). We will get a big chunk of that back with the Medicare Safety Net (Thank God for the safety net - it has been a lifesaver this year!) so we should only be out of pocket around $500 at the most - finally some good news!

On a completely different note, I am feeling really close to my husband at the moment. Murray has really been there for me in the last week through everything that happened. Sometimes I make fun of his weaknesses, he is a worrywart and a panicker by nature, but he really came through for me this week and I really appreciate it. Maybe it's because I am off all the hormone altering drugs, but I feel really close to him at the moment. Tonight we are off to the movies to watch Sex and the City, yes I know, a chick flick! But I was meant to go and see it on Wednesday with my girlfriends when I was really sick so Murray is taking me out tonight, we are going to La Premiere! Which means free popcorn and coke and food service - yummo!

My OHSS experience

I finally have a chance to sit down and write about what has been going on over the last couple of days - it has been absolutely crazy.

On Sunday as you know, our transfer was cancelled due to OHSS and I was feeling really sick. I couldn't keep any food or water down all day and finally around midnight we decided to head to the emergency department at SJOG Murdoch. Luckily we were seen straight away and hooked up to a drip. Unfortunately the doctors knew very little about IVF and it's complications, I spent the time in between throwing up, explaining to the doctor exactly what hyperstimulation was, and trying to convince the nurses that "No, I don't have gastro!". I was weighed in at 102kg at this point (98.5kg before EPU).

I was put on a drip and given some morphine to knock me out while the doctors tried to get in touch with my clinic. Unfortunately I got a bad migraine from the morphine which made it impossible to sleep and just added to my pain. By Monday morning, my nausea was still out of control so I was transferred to Bethesda hospital in Claremont which is where my clinic is based. My specialist was able to come up and look me over when I arrived and organised for full fluid checks to be done, some decent anti-nausea medication given and a new drip put in. I had to be weighed and my girth measured daily to keep track of how I was going. As of Monday I weighed 104kg, 2kg more than the previous night and 4.5kg more than before the EPU.

Tuesday morning I wake up feeling a lot better nausea-wise but stomach still in a lot of pain. I weighed in at 108kg Tuesday morning,a four kilo gain on the previous day and now 9.5kg all up gained. I stayed on medication all day but by night time my urine and blood results were dramatically improved.

Woke up this morning and my nausea has completely gone, THANK GOODNESS!! I can handle pain okay (yeah, I'm kinda a wuss but I can do it) but I can not handle throwing up, it freaks me out big time. Urine and blood samples came back even better so time to get weighed again. Today's weight? 111kg!! I have put on 12.5kg in 8 days. No wonder I feel like such a beached whale! Despite the increased fluid gain, I was allowed to be released from hospital this morning on the condition that the moment I start feeling sick I call the clinic or the hospital, and I drink at least 3 litres of fluid a day. I will need to keep track of my weight over the next couple of days as well. My waist measurement is currently 22cm bigger than it was eight days ago - what a disgrace!

The biggest issue now is that the fluid is so heavy, it makes it really hard for me to breathe. I can't lay down on my back, I have to sleep in a half-sitting position which is terribly uncomfortable but I least I can breathe with it. I get breathless just speaking to people normally, which is quite upsetting.

I am hoping that I have turned the corner with my OHSS experience, I can honestly say that it is one of the most horrible things I have done and I do not plan on ever going through it again. Once we use all of our frozen embryos, I think I will need to be convinced pretty strongly to put my body through the stimulated cycle process again.

Which on the topic of frozen embryos - we have four blastocysts on ice! Or in our case they have been vitrified, whatever that means!?! My doctor wants me to have a cycle in between to let my body recover from the OHSS which I am happy to do as the next month at work is going to be crazy busy. I am currently on Day 3 of 10 Provera tablets, at the end of which I will have a bleed apparently.

OK I have just read back and realised this post is a bit of a jumble but the short version is, after an interesting couple of days in hospital with OHSS, I am back home and okay - Oh and we have four frosties!

No transfer... again

Sometimes I feel like I'm in a permanent state of dejavu.

No transfer. Again.

OHSS is too bad, the clinic did a scan and my ovaries are huge and I have fluid everywhere in my abdomen and chest. Have been throwing up all day, can't keep any food or water down which is fun.

Murray wants to take me to hospital tonight, I've been resisting as I haven't thrown up for an hour or so, but when it starts again we will head there.

The scary thing is that the specialists say the worst day for OHSS is day seven and I am only on day five. I don't know how I'm going to keep going if this gets any worse :(

I haven't even allowed myself to think about not having an embryo inside me. I'm too sick to concentrate on anything but that. For the moment, that is all I can handle. I will defer my pain at yet another fucked up cycle to another day where I don't want to throw my guts up.

All fun and games

Yep I have OHSS. And as per my previous post - it sucks hard. I have put on 12cm around my stomach, 5cm around my abdomen and 4 kilos in the four days since my egg collection. I still can't walk without wincing from the pain and have constant nausea. I rang the clinic this morning about the nausea and bloating (OK so maybe I didn't tell them all my symptoms...) and they told me to keep drinking lots of water, at least three litres a day, and to drink some protein shakes in addition to that to keep up my strength. I'm scared of the transfer tomorrow, I really want to go ahead with it but once the clinic see how big my stomach has gotten, I don't know what they'll do. Honest to god, I look like I am five months pregnant. Will update tomorrow morning, hopefully with some better news.

OHSS

Sucks. That is all.

Update on our embies!

Some great news from the clinic today - all 14 of our fertilised embryos are still going strong, they are all at 6-8 cells or above, with a couple of star performers beyond that! The three IVM embryos are still going full steam ahead also so we may actually get to put some away to freeze - yay for us!

My transfer is booked for 9.15am with Dr Aitken who I haven't met before, but he is who has been suggested as a good obstetrician to have if and when I get pregnant, so hopefully he can put my baby into my belly and take it out again in nine months time!

One last hcg injection tomorrow to give me a bit of a boost and then I just continue with the crinone gel until Thursday 19 June - D-Day

Still feeling awful but will get through it now that I can think about my beautiful little embryos that are growing :)

Recovering slowly

So the last couple of days have basically consisted of trying to very steadily recover but my body hasn't been cooperating with me the way that I would like. I have been really sore since my EPU. At first it was just the normal soreness of the ovaries and feeling constipated, but I had a lot of referred pain in my ribs and shoulder, and now the pain in my ovaries has spread up my sides and into my upper stomach area. The clinic has advised me to keep drinking lots of water and protein shakes, and to call back tomorrow if I'm still feeling unwell. A friend suggested that it could be gas which I guess is possible but it is so incredibly painful, even walking is proving to be difficult. The day after my EPU I went into work but only managed to do a couple of hours as my head was so fuzzy, I couldn't concentrate on anything. I've had a few headaches in the last couple of days that have migraine symptoms without the migraine itself. Fingers crossed my migraines don't reappear on the scene, I don't think I could deal with that as well as all this crap.

Anyhow, the good news is that of our 17 mature eggs, 14 fertilised through ICSI which is a fantastic result. Of our three IVM eggs, all three fertilised although two look abnormal at this point. They will keep an eye on those for us anyway. So tomorrow is really the big test, we should get a grading for our embryos and see what stage they are at.

Keeping everything crossed for tomorrow!

Wow. No I mean WOW!

I am feeling so blessed right now - something has finally gone right for us. We managed to get twenty eggs in my egg collection this morning!!! Nope, that's not a misprint - 20 eggs! After all the stress of the last two weeks, worrying that we wouldn't have a lot of eggs, we ended up with the perfect amount. 17of the eggs that were retrieved are mature, and three of them are immature, which they will do IVM on. Apparently there were a lot more immature follicles but I started to bleed a little bit which made it hard to locate the follicles with the ultrasound, and because they already had such a good run with the mature eggs, they decide to live it at that instead of risking doing damage.

In terms of my body, I was quite perky after the procedure. We even stopped in at a baby store near the hospital that I have always wanted to look in and I felt fine. The moment I picked up the panadeine forte for the pain, which is what was prescribed to me - an extreme wave of nausea came over me and I didn't cope very well from then on. Luckily we weren't too far away from home at that point and I managed to crawl into bed and take some Maxalon. Still feeling a little foggy at the moment but need to get myself better so that I can get into work tomorrow.

Yay, twenty eggs - I can't stop smiling! We will get a call tomorrow with fert results, Murray has to head back in in the morning to do a second sample for the IVM eggs. And then we aim for a Sunday transfer. The last Sunday transfer was meant to be on Easter Sunday but it wasn't meant to be. Maybe this is it for us :)

The countdown is on!

I did my trigger injection this evening at 9pm so the countdown is officially on! In 34 hours time, I will be getting my eggs collected. I'm really nervous about it, I haven't been sleeping properly because I can't stop thinking about it all. My goal is to get at least 10 eggs. I'd really like to have obviously an embryo to transfer but if possible, also one to freeze. I am struggling this cycle to get through everything and I don't think I have it in me to do another fresh cycle anytime soon. Fingers crossed this is it.