The IVF process is a lot of waiting, do something, waiting, receive news, wait some more, and then maybe do something else. It requires a lot of patience and a lot of avoiding the "what if" game because each step is highly dependent on the results of the previous step. I'm not good at patiently waiting and I'm definitely not good at trying to ignore the "what if" game, but I'm trying to be better and take it one step at a time. Today was the second step (again) in the long road to an embryo transfer: learning whether either of the fertilized eggs made it to the blastocyst stage.
After an egg retrieval, the doctors call on Day 2 and Day 5 with updates. Unlike last time when I kept waking up to make sure my phone's ring volume was turned up so a call would wake me if I were asleep, this time I slept through the night while waiting for the Day 5 update. Last time the doctor called at 7:45am, so at 7:45am this morning I was ready. At 8:15 I was more ready, but there was no call. I checked the list of recent calls to make sure I hadn't missed it. Nope. I checked the sound again. It was turned up. 8:45am rolled around and still no call. At that point I had a decision to make: do I take a shower and get ready for an event (and potentially miss the call) or did I go to an event sans shower? I had decided to go sans shower and was in the middle of washing my hands to put in my contacts when the phone rang (of course it rang while my hands were wet).
The doctor had my Day 5 update: of the two eggs that successfully fertilized, only one grew to the blastocyst stage. The other's cells stopped dividing, so it stopped growing. The embryo that reached the blastocyst stage was biopsied. The biopsy will be sent out for PGS (pre-implantation genetic testing) on Monday and the embryo itself will be cryopreserved (frozen).
Now there's a two week wait to learn the results of the PGS testing. If, by some miracle, that embryo comes back with "normal" results, then I get scheduled for a myomectomy (surgery). If it comes back abnormal (again), we have one more pre-paid IVF cycle we can try. The odds are not in my favor statistically, and even less so with only one embryo being available for testing, but the doctor told me this embryo is rated a Grade AA -- the best -- and the embryos sent out last time were a BC and a CC (he said something like "this embryo looks kickass under a microscope"). Although a Grade AA doesn't guarantee a normal PGS result, it can sometimes be a good indicator, so I'm trying to remain optimistic without getting my hopes up too much. I just have to remain patient until around Dec. 14, which is when I should get the test results.