Day 20

It's mixed news according to the nurse who called with my results this afternoon. My hormone levels have risen which is a good sign, but they are confused about why my follicles and estrogen aren't matching up. They think that it could be a sign that the eggs aren't the best quality. He nurse said the doctor is considering whether to cancel the cycle. She also said that an alternative may be to go ahead with egg collection and freeze all the embryos.

My comments back to her were that firstly, if we do an egg collection, unless I am hyperstimulating, I want to have an embryo transfer. There is nothing lost in trying it, and if it doesn't work, we are no worse off than if we had chosen to not have a transfer. The other thing I said was that I needed more information to make an informed assessment of the situation. Does 'the eggs may be poor quality' indicate that no these eggs wont work at all, or is it simply sub-optimal. If it is the latter, and it is only a reduction in quality (eg from a 45% success rate, to a 35% or even 25% success rate), then I want to keep going. There is a school of thought that embryos that come from a OHSS cycle are poor quality, yet we managed to get pregnant twice from those eggs, so surely it's not the be-all and end-all? But I also realise that if when they mean poor quality they are actually saying the eggs are unusable, well that's a different story. The nurse mentioned that fertilisation can be poor with these eggs, but surely that is what ICSI is used for, where there is a prediction of poor fertilisation?

My estrogen level today is back at 3400 and I have another scan tomorrow morning. If things go well, I may have to take my trigger injection, smack bang in the middle of a concert we are going to tomorrow night. My favourite artist of all time is coming to town and there is no way I am going to miss the show, but it will certainly be experience trying to get a needle through security!