Hey everyone! Tomorrow (3/15) I have my cervical polyp removal surgery. I had the pre-op appointment on Monday and found out that it will not just be light anesthesia, but the full general anesthesia (tube down throat and all). This makes me a little more nervous than I already am, but I know it will be ok. I will be down for the rest of the week so today basically marks my last day of spring break. That stinks for all of the lazy/fun reasons of a break I am going to miss, but am so grateful that I am not having to miss multiple days of work for this surgery!
Please keep me, Justin and Dr. Craig in your prayers tomorrow. She is not only going to remove the polyp but is going to go into my uterus and just triple check that everything is ok there. Justin - the hospital is referring to him as my 'responsible party' - will be taking good care of me. He is always so wonderful when I am sick so I know I will be in great hands!
Thank you for the prayers!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Recovering
I know that by sharing this journey it has made everyone that follows this blog interested in what is happening and what is going to happen in the future. Sometimes sharing has made it hard but we really feel like if God is going to use our journey to help others, the first step is for us to share. This is a very hard post to write.
The last post I made was about our crazy back and forth schedule during the IVF process. So I think it would be best for me to pick up where I left off.
After my last post we had 4 more days of appointments and then the egg retrieval happened on Saturday the 5th. This process involves me being put under anesthesia and they go into my ovaries with a needle and poke each follicle (remember I had almost 20 in each side) and get the egg out of the follicle. This only took about 45 minutes and I woke up in a pretty good amount of pain. Most women have about 10-15 eggs retrieved TOPS, but I had 39 which is because of my age and the fact that I have PCOS (I asked if I broke the record but I didn’t!). Being that many eggs kept my chances of Ovarian Hyper stimulation up because there is fluid from each follicle that is still in the ovaries. Basically after the procedure I had to ‘recover’ for about an hour until they could get the pain under control and then they released me. I got in the car, knocked out and woke up when he told me we were home. We had planned on staying up there, but I wanted to be in my own bed when I felt bad so he made that happen. He said on the way home every bump he hit I would wake up and say ouch. I don’t remember much.
The next few days were hard. I felt like I had literally been cut open in my lower tummy. I could not walk standing straight up because of how bad it hurt (my enlarged ovaries). I had to urinate every 15 minutes and it drove me crazy. We did figure out later that the reason for that was because my ovaries were so large that they were pressing on my bladder and I was getting rid of all of the fluid from the IV.
They call you with an update of your eggs (now embryos) daily. By Sunday, just a day after the procedure, we had 21 that had been fertilized. We knew all 39 weren’t mature enough to fertilize, but they remove them so that you don’t get really sick. Leaving them would have caused me to overstimulated more which would have required a hospital stay. They were the eggs that weren’t meant to make it.
I attempted work on Monday and actually made it all day. I was in so much pain from pushing myself that if I could change something that is one of the things I would change. I felt better mentally because I got some things off my pending to do list but I am not sure it was the best time to do that. We got a call on Monday the 7th saying that they wanted to do the transfer on Tuesday the 8th. Basically this is a procedure that we had a practice run of back in December and it takes about 10 minutes to put the eggs back in. I am not under any anesthesia, it isn’t a big deal. Or it least it wasn’t then.
Of course we break the mold on everything so the transfer wasn’t what we expected. Our practice run had gone smooth a few weeks earlier, but I had since had a polyp grow on my cervix. This was from the fertility meds that we took during the process. Not everyone develops these from the meds, but my levels would go down than triple the next day because my body was being hard headed. The problem was that it wasn’t just a small polyp that many women get, it was huge and it took them about 55 minutes to do the 10 minute procedure. Basically they had to get through the polyp because it was blocking the entrance to my uterus. After what I now call the most traumatic/painful part of the process was done, Justin and I got to watch as 2 beautiful embryos were placed in me. It was emotional and surreal. Our 2 best babies had been placed in me, now it was my turn to take care of them.
Now the wait began. I did have to have a Progesterone shot every night to help my uterine lining. If you want to see a BIG needle, go to youtube and type in PIO (Progesterone in Oil) shot. Knowing that it was helping keep those2 embryos in me though made the pain ok. Unfortunately this shot gave you all the normal feelings of a pregnant woman. It is the actual hormone that makes you feel all of those feelings and I was shooting a good amount into me. That really messes with your head!
On Tuesday the 15th, 1 week after the transfer I started to spot. Not much, but enough to have me call my nurse because I was on edge about everything abnormal. They were not concerned since it was just a little bit of blood and said it is actually normal. It continued to be a small amount until I woke up in the middle of the night Wednesday night/Thursday morning and at this point it was a lot of fresh blood. I let Thursday play out some to see if it would slow down but I sent my nurse an e-mail. After a meeting at 1:00 I got a call asking me to go ahead and come up. We were not supposed to do a pregnancy test until Monday but they wanted to do that and check my progesterone levels. They upped my progesterone that night.
So Friday the 18th we had an appointment that morning. All they did was take blood. They did not do an exam in case it was my polyp bleeding, they didn’t want to make it bleed more. Basically if it was what we feared it was, there was nothing that can be done. We came back home and waited on the call. Usually if my nurse calls me, she calls me as soon as they get results, but if my doctor wants to talk to me it usually takes a little longer. It was taking a little longer. It really isn’t abnormal for Dr. Craig to call me because she feels very connected to us and has been the one to call us multiple times, but I wanted my nurse to call so that I knew it was no big deal. I got the call and it was Dr. Craig on the phone. I told her I knew it was a bad thing if she was calling, and she said she would have grabbed our folder either way but yes it wasn’t good. It didn’t work. She cried with me on the phone for about 15 minutes as we just processed. She explained what the next step would be when we are ready.
So that is where we are at. I know your question after all of this is what is the next step? Well first I have to have surgery to remove the polyp. She wants it gone before we do another transfer. The polyp doesn’t affect anything pregnancy related, just causes pain when doing the transfer procedure. It is too large to remove in office so it is one we have to schedule a surgery day where they put me under anesthesia.
Thankfully we had 6 embryos (other than the ones they put in me) that were good quality (13 of them stopped growing, which is normal). We ‘froze’ those 6 so that they can be used at a later date. Having those frozen means we do not have to go through all of the IVF again. Basically I will have to take some shots, but nothing like before, and only go up there a handful of times. Once they think my body is in the place it can handle it, they transfer a few of the frozen embryos into me.
My question is just like yours – why in the world would we think it would work next time. Her reply was simple and practical. Basically there is no “reason” that it didn’t work, she cannot find anything wrong other than the ovulation in me and we got over that using the egg retrieval. She said that sometimes though, our body is so unnaturally hormonal from the IVF procedure that our bodies reject the eggs. She said that when patients with my history go through a frozen cycle (FET) that they have very good results because their body is more in the ‘normal’ state. If you know me, you know I am a realist, and this was the only thing that has comforted me.
My body is going back to the “Pre-IVF” form. My ovaries had gotten SOOOOO large that it was miserable. In the past week and a half I have lost 8 pounds. It was pure water weight from all of the fluid in my ovaries. I am finally being able to sleep more than an hour at a time without having to get up to use the restroom. I guess these are both good things to be thankful for.
So that is the story. To say that Justin and I are sad is an understatement. We are devastated. We believe life starts at conception and conception started the day of the egg retrieval. These babies were very real and we very much feel like we lost 2 children. Our doctor gave us a picture of them on the day of the transfer and it was so crazy how instantly attached we felt. Of course I feel an extra burden because it was my body that rejected them. Every day it is a struggle to not be an emotional wreck. I think we are also both in shock. That was the hardest 6 weeks we have had in our entire life. We felt like we were tested in every way possible. We just cannot believe it didn’t work. We always had IVF in our back pocket, knowing if everything else failed, that would work. We were wrong and it hurts.
We will be ok. We are fighters and we are believers that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. We don’t think we are as strong as He thinks we are though. Right now we are just trying to make it day by day. That is all we really know how to do. There is no rule book on what to do in these situations. We just have to trust God and allow him to comfort us. As the song says, sometimes he calms the storms but other times he calms his child. Keep us in your prayers.
J&M
The last post I made was about our crazy back and forth schedule during the IVF process. So I think it would be best for me to pick up where I left off.
After my last post we had 4 more days of appointments and then the egg retrieval happened on Saturday the 5th. This process involves me being put under anesthesia and they go into my ovaries with a needle and poke each follicle (remember I had almost 20 in each side) and get the egg out of the follicle. This only took about 45 minutes and I woke up in a pretty good amount of pain. Most women have about 10-15 eggs retrieved TOPS, but I had 39 which is because of my age and the fact that I have PCOS (I asked if I broke the record but I didn’t!). Being that many eggs kept my chances of Ovarian Hyper stimulation up because there is fluid from each follicle that is still in the ovaries. Basically after the procedure I had to ‘recover’ for about an hour until they could get the pain under control and then they released me. I got in the car, knocked out and woke up when he told me we were home. We had planned on staying up there, but I wanted to be in my own bed when I felt bad so he made that happen. He said on the way home every bump he hit I would wake up and say ouch. I don’t remember much.
The next few days were hard. I felt like I had literally been cut open in my lower tummy. I could not walk standing straight up because of how bad it hurt (my enlarged ovaries). I had to urinate every 15 minutes and it drove me crazy. We did figure out later that the reason for that was because my ovaries were so large that they were pressing on my bladder and I was getting rid of all of the fluid from the IV.
They call you with an update of your eggs (now embryos) daily. By Sunday, just a day after the procedure, we had 21 that had been fertilized. We knew all 39 weren’t mature enough to fertilize, but they remove them so that you don’t get really sick. Leaving them would have caused me to overstimulated more which would have required a hospital stay. They were the eggs that weren’t meant to make it.
I attempted work on Monday and actually made it all day. I was in so much pain from pushing myself that if I could change something that is one of the things I would change. I felt better mentally because I got some things off my pending to do list but I am not sure it was the best time to do that. We got a call on Monday the 7th saying that they wanted to do the transfer on Tuesday the 8th. Basically this is a procedure that we had a practice run of back in December and it takes about 10 minutes to put the eggs back in. I am not under any anesthesia, it isn’t a big deal. Or it least it wasn’t then.
Of course we break the mold on everything so the transfer wasn’t what we expected. Our practice run had gone smooth a few weeks earlier, but I had since had a polyp grow on my cervix. This was from the fertility meds that we took during the process. Not everyone develops these from the meds, but my levels would go down than triple the next day because my body was being hard headed. The problem was that it wasn’t just a small polyp that many women get, it was huge and it took them about 55 minutes to do the 10 minute procedure. Basically they had to get through the polyp because it was blocking the entrance to my uterus. After what I now call the most traumatic/painful part of the process was done, Justin and I got to watch as 2 beautiful embryos were placed in me. It was emotional and surreal. Our 2 best babies had been placed in me, now it was my turn to take care of them.
Now the wait began. I did have to have a Progesterone shot every night to help my uterine lining. If you want to see a BIG needle, go to youtube and type in PIO (Progesterone in Oil) shot. Knowing that it was helping keep those2 embryos in me though made the pain ok. Unfortunately this shot gave you all the normal feelings of a pregnant woman. It is the actual hormone that makes you feel all of those feelings and I was shooting a good amount into me. That really messes with your head!
On Tuesday the 15th, 1 week after the transfer I started to spot. Not much, but enough to have me call my nurse because I was on edge about everything abnormal. They were not concerned since it was just a little bit of blood and said it is actually normal. It continued to be a small amount until I woke up in the middle of the night Wednesday night/Thursday morning and at this point it was a lot of fresh blood. I let Thursday play out some to see if it would slow down but I sent my nurse an e-mail. After a meeting at 1:00 I got a call asking me to go ahead and come up. We were not supposed to do a pregnancy test until Monday but they wanted to do that and check my progesterone levels. They upped my progesterone that night.
So Friday the 18th we had an appointment that morning. All they did was take blood. They did not do an exam in case it was my polyp bleeding, they didn’t want to make it bleed more. Basically if it was what we feared it was, there was nothing that can be done. We came back home and waited on the call. Usually if my nurse calls me, she calls me as soon as they get results, but if my doctor wants to talk to me it usually takes a little longer. It was taking a little longer. It really isn’t abnormal for Dr. Craig to call me because she feels very connected to us and has been the one to call us multiple times, but I wanted my nurse to call so that I knew it was no big deal. I got the call and it was Dr. Craig on the phone. I told her I knew it was a bad thing if she was calling, and she said she would have grabbed our folder either way but yes it wasn’t good. It didn’t work. She cried with me on the phone for about 15 minutes as we just processed. She explained what the next step would be when we are ready.
So that is where we are at. I know your question after all of this is what is the next step? Well first I have to have surgery to remove the polyp. She wants it gone before we do another transfer. The polyp doesn’t affect anything pregnancy related, just causes pain when doing the transfer procedure. It is too large to remove in office so it is one we have to schedule a surgery day where they put me under anesthesia.
Thankfully we had 6 embryos (other than the ones they put in me) that were good quality (13 of them stopped growing, which is normal). We ‘froze’ those 6 so that they can be used at a later date. Having those frozen means we do not have to go through all of the IVF again. Basically I will have to take some shots, but nothing like before, and only go up there a handful of times. Once they think my body is in the place it can handle it, they transfer a few of the frozen embryos into me.
My question is just like yours – why in the world would we think it would work next time. Her reply was simple and practical. Basically there is no “reason” that it didn’t work, she cannot find anything wrong other than the ovulation in me and we got over that using the egg retrieval. She said that sometimes though, our body is so unnaturally hormonal from the IVF procedure that our bodies reject the eggs. She said that when patients with my history go through a frozen cycle (FET) that they have very good results because their body is more in the ‘normal’ state. If you know me, you know I am a realist, and this was the only thing that has comforted me.
My body is going back to the “Pre-IVF” form. My ovaries had gotten SOOOOO large that it was miserable. In the past week and a half I have lost 8 pounds. It was pure water weight from all of the fluid in my ovaries. I am finally being able to sleep more than an hour at a time without having to get up to use the restroom. I guess these are both good things to be thankful for.
So that is the story. To say that Justin and I are sad is an understatement. We are devastated. We believe life starts at conception and conception started the day of the egg retrieval. These babies were very real and we very much feel like we lost 2 children. Our doctor gave us a picture of them on the day of the transfer and it was so crazy how instantly attached we felt. Of course I feel an extra burden because it was my body that rejected them. Every day it is a struggle to not be an emotional wreck. I think we are also both in shock. That was the hardest 6 weeks we have had in our entire life. We felt like we were tested in every way possible. We just cannot believe it didn’t work. We always had IVF in our back pocket, knowing if everything else failed, that would work. We were wrong and it hurts.
We will be ok. We are fighters and we are believers that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. We don’t think we are as strong as He thinks we are though. Right now we are just trying to make it day by day. That is all we really know how to do. There is no rule book on what to do in these situations. We just have to trust God and allow him to comfort us. As the song says, sometimes he calms the storms but other times he calms his child. Keep us in your prayers.
J&M
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