IF Testing & Treatment w/o 09/05

optimistgardener · September 2022

This is a place for those of us who have already started TTC, but have started infertility testing and/or treatments. You can express your thoughts, feelings, and frustrations on infertility. TTC can be a long journey naturally, then add in the difficulties associated with infertility, and it becomes a whole new ballgame. The road to infertility can be lonely, frustrating, and complicated, so let's make this a place where we can vent, ask questions, and support one another. Feel free to resurrect this thread at any point in the week if you have something to say. Treat this as an ongoing conversation.

Diagnosis (if you've been):

Status (TI/ICI/IUI/IVF/FET/benched):

What are you doing this cycle? (Testing? Treatment?):

How are things going?:

Any questions?:

GTKY: You put your feet up on the couch after a long day, and some nice person brings you a tall drink of your choice. What is it.

optimistgardener · September 2022

Diagnosis (if you've been): bad old eggs and not many of them

Status (TI/ICI/IUI/IVF/FET/benched): IVF

What are you doing this cycle? (Testing? Treatment?): just finished my baseline u/s and started the md lupron today. tomorrow begins the big guns (225u menopur/225u gonal-f).

How are things going?: i'm worried about those 2 bigger follicles i was mentioning in yesterday's update. they're both right at the edge of being too big. but on the plus side my e2 was very low, at 27. so at least they hadn't started producing their own estrogen? more broadly, it's been a rough week. my dad's younger brother died unexpectedly. i really miss him.

Any questions?: nope.

GTKY: You put your feet up on the couch after a long day, and some nice person brings you a tall drink of your choice. What is it. so anyway i made this the gtky for the week because i am so jazzed about being only a couple of weeks away from being able to drink whatever i want again without guilt, at least for a while. i don't even have a particularly fancy answer, but my just-got-home-from-work-and-kicking-my-shoes-off drink would be a tall ipa with just a bit of foam, ice cold. my post-dinner-mellowing-on-the-sofa-with-a-book drink would be a rye and bitters with a twist of orange peel

anniemarie887 · September 2022

@optimistgardener thanks for the check in on last week’s post, I’m doing well. The doxycycline upset my stomach to badly Saturday morning I puked after exercising (took it on an empty stomach and got on the peloton, oops), but I think I’m past that point now. The only other crappy side affect is it makes me SUPER sun sensitive, managed to burn while sitting in the shade yesterday. Everything else feels… dare I say, normal? I am so so hoping these follicles of yours cooperate, when is your next u/s? And I’m sorry about your uncle passing. Big hug.

Diagnosis (if you've been): uncooperative uterus/RPL, TBD?

Status (TI/ICI/IUI/IVF/FET/benched): benched while on doxy

What are you doing this cycle? (Testing? Treatment?): recovering and antibiotics

How are things going?: we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary this weekend, actual anniversary is in a few days but we always take LDW to go away. We pick a different state each year, it’s quite a fun little tradition.

Any questions?: natm

GTKY: You put your feet up on the couch after a long day, and some nice person brings you a tall drink of your choice. What is it. A big, spicy, bold, red wine.

optimistgardener · September 2022

@anniemarie887 i'm glad to hear that you're feeling well apart from the doxy side effects. that stuff is nasty. i once had to take it for several months as an anti-malarial in an equatorial country and my god, it was so hard to avoid getting sunburns. i like your idea of traveling to a new state every year! that's a great tradition--and i'm sure takes you to a bunch of places you might not otherwise go! re: your question, my next u/s is on saturday.

anniemarie887 · September 2022

@optimistgardener i didn't realize it was the med they used as an antimalarial! it also is used to treat lyme disease - i spent 90 days on it in peak summer back in 2016. i just remember wearing long sleeves as much as i could but then the tops of my hands still burning. ugh. and yes, the travel thing is good - b/c i know i have some bias as an east coaster of like the "best" places and it makes you sit down and realize that there are really interesting places to see EVERYWHERE.

this is a really interesting podcast ep, mostly in the lens of international travel, but still good!

Travel as a Political Act with Rick Steves - Pantsuit Politics | Podcast on Spotify

bearmomma1 · September 2022

@optimistgardener I feel like your last retrieval you had some almost runaways but then the rest ended up catching up? Especially when you asked for one more day. I hope the same thing happens this time and they get into gear and catch up!

@anniemarie887 oh what a fun anniversary tradition. My H and I used to do a ballpark trip every year and visit a bunch of different states/ball parks. We haven't in a few years but hope to get to be able to soon.

Diagnosis (if you've been): DOR, LPD, unexplained

Status (TI/ICI/IUI/IVF/FET/benched): IUI

What are you doing this cycle? (Testing? Treatment?): 7.5 mg of Letrazole, trigger, IUI, progesterone. I've also decided to quit drinking alcohol. It's about the 1 thing I haven't tried yet. I know I drink more than the average person does, and have been for the last 2 years. I'm going to give my body a break. It's weird but I'm excited because everyone I know drinks, a lot, and I was telling everyone around me that I'm quitting and they all seemed pretty excited and hopeful for me. I guess I was hoping that telling people first won't make it so awkward when I turn down a drink in the future. Don't want them thinking it's because I'm pregnant, although hopefully it is the reason soon enough! Today is day 1 and I'm really excited to stop, for more reasons than just fertility reasons.

How are things going?: They're going. What I thought my out of pocket cost for the full dose of letrazole ended being $100 less, so that was cool. The pharmacy used some kind of discount code to get it cheaper. My first US will be next Monday.

Any questions?: natm

GTKY: You put your feet up on the couch after a long day, and some nice person brings you a tall drink of your choice. What is it. If it's a weekend, a martini? If it's a weekday, a nice IPA or glass of wine. But now the new future me will have to be OK with a diet coke or sparkling water :P

optimistgardener · September 2022

@anniemarie887 thanks for the podcast rec! and yeah, it can be an antimalarial. although i decided after that summer that i preferred taking my chances with malaria, since the other two major options have their own atrocious side effects (amongst them mouth sores and waking nightmares)

@bearmomma1 i responded to some of this in the other thread but just wanted to add here that the other thing that was weirdly freeing about not drinking has been realizing that once i'm "out" with people about not drinking (and in my case, also out about why), all my friends have been super supportive. it's actually lovely.

anniemarie887 · September 2022

@optimistgardener wow those side affects are no joke!
@bearmomma1 i am glad people are being supportive, as they should be!

and just here to say... wow... ghost town.

acleverusername · September 2022

*lurking*

Hey y’all. Just wanted to pop in and say I watched a CNN documentary this weekend called Baby Business (had to ask a friend who still has a cable subscription for his Xfinity login so I could watch it live; Dr Aimee was in it after all.)

It wasn’t particularly insightful although I did leaned that sperm and egg donations are completely unregulated. Sperm donor banks basically don’t have an obligation to ask for any donor medical history so ppl can and do lie about it. There was a very sad story about a family whose teenage son died of an overdose after being diagnosed with schizophrenia, something his donor dad also had / also died from an overdose. One good thing coming out of that was this family is currently in the process of having a bill put through Congress that will hopefully change that.

There was also a story of a woman who was blessed with being hyper fertile and ended up donating something like 238 oocytes across 3 egg retrievals. She’s aware of ~20 children who are genetically hers and keeps in touch with some families that are interested in keeping “open egg/embryo” donation situation going. Dr Aimee encouraged her to stop donating eggs after that because long term effects of stims aren’t yet well known. She then turned to surrogacy (once again: she was blessed with being able to make and carry babies) and has been a surrogate for 3 families. It was kind of weird hearing her discuss her “business.” I also learned that surrogacy agencies are also unregulated so anyone can start one up.

Finally, I was especially happy the documentary going into egg freezing and specially talking about how IT IS NOT an insurance policy, despite fertility clinics marketing it as so. I had a great discussion about that in my RESOLVE WhatsApp group afterwards with multiple other women coming forth saying that they were led to believe that when they froze their eggs 2, 5, 10 years ago that there were set, only to since to on to try and fertilize them and be completely disappointed because of very few fertilizing / making it to blasts. This happened to me as well.

Anyways, it was an interesting watch although not really relevant to anyone in this group.

optimistgardener · September 2022

@acleverusername folks over on the ivf subr e d d i t were talking about the program. i obvs haven't seen it but i think i'm more or less on board with the hot take that it seems like the show took a bit of an alarmist angle, highlighting a handful of extreme cases at the expense of what is overall a success story. it's true that there are all kinds of problems with sperm banks and, apparently, with egg donor programs as well. to extend the analysis, there are really problematic issues with many international surrogacy programs, etc. but it's also the case that donor sperm and donor eggs get a lot of people to their goal of parenthood and do so in a way that gives prospective parents agency. it's certainly worthwhile for folks interested in using donor services to check out what kinds of safeguards individual clinics/banks use. my sperm bank, for example, provides a list of the tests each donor takes and the results of their consultation with a geneticist. i am sure they could do better, but it's also the case that we don't necessarily know our own genetic backgrounds or those of our partners. it may turn out that i, for example, carry a genetic mutation that might make me somewhat more likely to wind up with a rare cancer. does that mean i shouldn't try to have a kid? or that (in some alternate universe where i was highly fertile) i shouldn't donate my eggs? we don't yet know with many cancers exactly how they are inherited, even when we can guess that genetics play a role. and cancer is just one example. there are innumerable potential ways in which a person's genetics might be less than ideal. if a person knows they are carriers of a genetically transmissible syndrome like schizophrenia, but they opt to become sperm/egg donors anyhow, then sure, that's a problem. but schizophrenia is also a disease that is in some measure about environmental factors as well, and it is possible that therapies for people diagnosed with schizophrenia will dramatically improve in the next couple of decades. we just can't know how a kid will turn out, what their opportunities will be, or how much of it will depend on the genetic component provided by the donor. what if a person donates their sperm with the "selling point" that they're nuclear physicists who look like idris elba, but then their genetic offspring turn out to be physically wimpy and content to work in sales all their lives? in most cases it's a very very blurry line. anyway. just a bunch of mixed up thoughts from a person who has bought more sperm than she wants to think about.

bearmomma1 · September 2022

Today is my last day of 7.5mg of letrozole. I never noticed any side effects with the lower doses, but by the afternoon/evening of every day so far I'm bloated and crampy. It's super uncomfortable, but I'm hoping that means my ovaries are busy making eggies!

optimistgardener · September 2022

@bearmomma1 oh i hope so! i swear to god that about an hour after my gonadotropin injections i can feel my ovary kind of buzzing.

anniemarie887 · September 2022

@bearmomma1 🤞🏼🤞🏼 For you!!

@optimistgardener 🤞🏼🤞🏼 For a perfect u/s tomorrow!

AFM, follow up was uneventful. She confirmed we will do another biopsy (in office) set for 8/26 to make sure the endometritis is gone. She did say not uncommon for it to take two rounds of antibiotics. But I am just really hoping something can go easy for me and this is gone.

bearmomma1 · September 2022

@anniemarie887 I hope so for you too. You deserve a break!

optimistgardener · September 2022

@anniemarie887 hoping so hard that you only need the one round of antibiotics

optimistgardener · September 2022

also, lol, i looked at the timing of your follow-up exam (8/26) and was like, woah, but that's so far in the future! she shouldn't have to wait that long! and then thought about it for a second and was like, actually that is in the past. 😐

anniemarie887 · September 2022

@optimistgardener lol, duh on my part 9/26! And yes - she wants to do it one week after I finish antibiotics to make sure the antibiotics didn’t just cover it up. The purgatory continues…

optimistgardener · September 2022

@anniemarie887 it just made me laugh because my reaction just showed how scrambled my brain/personal calendar is. so glad you don't have long to wait.

afm: my appointment this morning went well. as usual i love my doctor, he's so strange but great. they found 5 follicles between 10-14mm, and an insane (by my standard) # of smaller follicles--he counted as many as 10, which is like, are we sure that's my ovary in there? of course we need to assume that most of those won't catch up but some of them may! fingers crossed

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