Begin (November 3)

I love beginnings because they hold so much promise. They aren’t yet tarnished by unfulfilled expectations or the “shoulda, coulda, wouldas” that come with progress.

I called the doctor finally about a month ago (10/1). I had questions regarding my last appointment and wanted to understand how they felt about going forward.

So, issue #1. I wasn’t prepared to be told at my follow-up appointment that I should go to donoreggs.com (if this is a site, it’s not the actual site that I was given) and choose the woman with whom J would create a biological child. So, I was unprepared to ask any questions about how they come to that determination and what the actual percentages were of each path.  I felt strong, emotionally stable and logical when I made the phone call. Rather than characterizing the conversation in some weird passive voice, I’ll just recount it to the best of my ability below.

Annie: hi, I just wanted to touch base about a few things. After my last appointment, I had some questions but was unable to ask them.  How did you come to the conclusion that my eggs are bad ? Do you not want to go forward with my eggs again because it will lower your success rate? Are you refusing to treat me?  I need the people with whom i’m working to be just as passionate as I am regarding this. 

Doctor: We were all wondering when you were going to call. To start from the beginning, you have had poor reactions to medication from the beginning.  As you recall, the first round, after 14-15 days of stims, you did not meet the minimum 3 follicles to proceed forward to egg reretival.  During the second attempt, there was some weird developments that were growing too rapidly to proceed. The third attempt, after 14 days, you had 4 follicles, one of which was a gamble but we decided to proceed since it was over the baseline. After the 80 ultrasounds that you have had, it is apparent that your ovaries are incredibly small, so while your egg supply appeared normal previously, the ovaries are so small that there is a decreased reserve. The extreme endometriosis also makes it extremely difficult for the one ovary to be productive at all.  There are very few parts of your reproductive system that are not covered in scar tissue, so the probability of this working as it should is low.  Our job is to give you your options with the knowledge we have. So, proceeding with donor eggs would give you a much higher chance of producing embryos that will be able to be transferred. That being said, we would absolutely proceed again and had already assumed that’s what you were going to say so we have worked up a plan for you….shall you choose to accept it. 

Annie: sniffle sniffle sniffle sniff. Okay, great. — at this point, after listening to 10 minutes of talking about what’s wrong with my reproductive system, I had lost my emotional stability.

Doctor: Were going to need you to start millions of vitamins and supplements for the next 6 weeks and then we will start the suppression cycle with injections rather than birth control. So, call the pharmacy and start the order for new injections and call us on 11/3 for instructions on how to administer and where we go from here.

So, happy November 3.  It’s coming at a stressful time for me personally, but there’s no time like the present, right?

I did my first midday injection today (11/3) and I’ll continue on various supplements and injections for the next 6ish weeks.

Doing an inventory of my meds tonight to see what I need to order from here.