Twisted Ovaries

Nearly There

The visit to the doctor this morning was a big one.

We were nervous, and we ran late as we always do. The world outside the car window was a hazy, foggy dark spot. Windshield wipers ticked silently across a path, unblurring the blurred.

When we got there it was clear we are old hats. We see the same people in the office now, and they know us by sight. We sit in the same seats and get ready for the same exam room. We know the procedure by now, we now the rota.

As I change in the exam room I see an enormous tub of scanning lube. I pick it up and ask Aidan if he's interested in a fun weekend. He laughs, but the nurse is not amused. I sigh at my weak attempt and mount up on the hobby horse.

The scan begins.

I silently tick off numbers in my head and on my fingers, and I can't believe it.

The minimum size the clinic wants for them to be considered a safe bet that they are mature is 16mm. On Friday, I had only 9 at 16mm. I was petrified that they wouldn't grow.

Her first measurement was incredible. The first follicle was a whopping 26cm. They kept on coming in at the 20+ mark, too. In the end, I had only 5 follicles that were under 16mm, one of them at 10mm the rest between 13-15. In total, I have 18 follicles. 18, and many of them big enough to see with the naked eye.

I get dressed and we go talk to the fertility nurse, a fabulous woman with a smoker's cough and a penchance for using the word "bloody", not as in "your beaver is bloody" but as in "I'm so bloody hungry". I like a health professional that swears.

She draws blood and then sits us down. "Your eggs are cooked," she says with a grin. "You're ready."

We're ready.

She gives us details-tonight I take my final Buserelin, or down-regulation medication at 6pm. I take the trigger shot tonight. This is the final shot, the last thing to do. I take the shot and in 36 hours the eggs come out. They rang me this afternoon with details of the blood test-my estradiol levels are really high, so the follicles I have are packing eggs, they're not just empty follicle sacs. They have a "very high degree of certainty" that there are enough eggs for me and my donee.

We talked a bit about one embryo versus two and she strongly advises two in women my age (which is 32). They say we'll know more after extraction and during fertilization, but that in their clinic the success rates go way down wih one embryo versus two.

Much thinking will have to be done in this house-we're trying to manage it all, and he's trying to keep from freaking out too badly while I'm trying to help him, too.

But in the meantime, it's nearly here.

36 hours to go.

I can't stop from crying, and I don't think it's the hormones.

Posted by Vanessa at April 24, 2006 04:50 PM | TrackBack