Monday, January 5, 2009

I had my consult...

...and all I have to show for it is a picture of a plastic uterus:


Okay, so I have a little more to show for it than THAT.

I met with Ye Olde Fertility Clinic this afternoon. SuperDoc called me back with a bit of a smirk on his face. He looked... bemused. I said, "I'll bet you never expected to see me again!" "No, no I most certainly did not!" I told him that if he could see the gorgeous smiles on my babies' faces every morning, he would know why I have to make more babies.

"Well," he said, "I'll tell you for sure, if you're serious, all I have to say is IVF with SINGLE embryo transfers; no discussion."

"You think??" I retorted. "Hello? I begged for IVF the last time around. I swore to you I'd end up with HOMs if I did IUI and from the looks of my ultrasound report from that day, I'm lucky I didn't end up with three or four more!"

He pulled up my charts on the screen and said that it was really out of the realm of possibility - my estrogen level was very low, so low, in fact, that the possibility of HOMs hadn't even been on the radar. This was also why they weren't concerned about me hyperstimming when I triggered - with estrogen that low, it wasn't a factor. This made me feel significantly better about what I'd found in the report, at least with regards to the risk of hyperstimming. I still maintain that if I'd ended up with HOMs, given the follicles that I had, low estrogen or not, I'm lucky I didn't end up with a few more.

Anyway, I told him I'd met with The Hatchery and that they've never done elective single embryo transfers - I'm petrified of that. Ye Olde Fertility Clinic does ~15% SETs in their cycles (and has a 67% pregnancy rate in those elective SETs - but that's because with elective SETs, generally you're dealing with a population of women who have lots of very high quality embryos to choose from. He predicts that my chances of pregnancy in an elective SET cycle are closer to 40%). I do have a 2% chance of having monozygotic twins in an SET. It does happen. But then we'd just know G-d has a sick and twisted sense of humor and that would be the end of that.

I'm doing my mock embryo transfer/sonohystogram tomorrow at 7:45am. I'll be starting on Lupron injections either this week or in a couple weeks, depending on what my nurse tells me in the next couple days. Then 125IUs of Follistim injections and 37.5 of Luveris (I have no experience with Luveris whatsoever - do any of you?). We'll likely be aiming for a 5 day transfer since with SETs they try to go to blast.

I have to send my HSG results from The Hatchery and my ID bloodwork from The Hatchery. My nurse is calling in my drugs to the pharmacy downstairs from their offices ASAP. We'll get everything rolling as soon as we can. My husband and I have a notary public coming over this week to get our consent forms signed (if they're not signed in the office, they have to be notarized. Since my husband and I are never in the office at the same time to sign the consents - a notary it is. Sigh. Big pain in the tushie.

And that's all the interesting news there is. Now I need to go to bed.

5 comments:

Lori said...

I thought you were going to do a different protocol than Lupron? I did Luveris with Gonal-F(?) for my IVF cycle. I think my clinic thought they had better results and embryo quality with patients over 35 when they used Luveris. I don't remember any side effects with it. I mixed the 2 drugs together so it was only 1 shot. Annoying but less needle sticks.

Beth said...

I'm so excited for you! What great rates of success for a singleton pregnancy! :)

LJ said...

I am SO glad the appointment went well! Let the games begin!

amber said...

very excited for you. :)

barrenisthenewblack said...

Oh good! You can be my Luvaris tester:) I'm adding it to my next cycle too. I'm looking forward to your reports.

You sound confident in your clinic decision. Good for you.