Tonight was morning #3 and night #10 of IVF injections (the morning injections start later than the evening injections). That's a whole lot of needles inserted into my poor bruised and sore abdomen -- one needle every morning and 4-5 needles each evening (when the medicine in one injection pen runs out before the prescribed dose, I start a new pen to finish the dose). Based on the last two rounds of IVF, I'm guessing that I have another 4-5 mornings/nights of shots to go. For some reason, my body takes its sweet time responding to the high doses of fertility medicines even though it responds quite strongly to any other medicine on the planet (if you see my husband, ask him about the first and last time I took adult Claritin, as it's one of the reasons why I mainly take children's cold/allergy medicines now).
On the one hand, I'm glad my body is even responding to the medicines since some women don't respond at all. On the other hand, I think the side effects of the medicines hit me harder with each round. I've had the pleasure of a headache since last Saturday -- sometimes it's dull enough that I almost forget it's there, and other times it feels like a pre-migraine. And I can say for certain that my ability to deal with anything is zilch. I'm usually good with customer service issues, but when one arose earlier this week regarding the delivery date for a vitamin my doctor prescribed to potentially help my eggs divide better (hoping that it would create better chromosomal test results), I asked my Mom to fix it for me because I couldn't think about it without turning into a sobbing mess. That is not my normal response, by the way. Also, thanks, Mom!
I've had two check-up scans since starting the injections, and the doctor says things are coming along nicely, but they said that the last two rounds and I ended up with 1-2 eggs at retrieval (that's a very low number). I have to go back for another check on Monday, but since that's Memorial Day and the Tallahassee office is closed, it's off to Jacksonville on Sunday to be there for the Monday appointment. At least I won't have to miss a day of work for this appointment - during the first two rounds of IVF my schedule was much more open and flexible, but my workload picked up significantly last month. It's been quite a feat to keep up with everything when I have to miss 1-2 days a week to do the 5-hour round trip to/from Tallahassee in addition to dealing with the grumpiness, depression, fatigue, and brain fog that set in around day 4 of the injections.
I'm guessing I'll have to go back to Tallahassee on Wednesday for another scan with the egg retrieval Friday or Saturday. At least I'm really hoping it will be no later than Saturday -- I have a full-day meeting to run on Monday which I really can't miss, although I'm not sure what kind of shape I'll be in that day considering I usually want to just sleep all day for the week post-retrieval. At least by that point I'll be allowed to drink caffeine again, so that should help a bit (I hope).
I suppose this post is a lot of complaining, but there's really nothing at all fun about IVF. It makes me super cranky, which is coming out in this post. And we're out of lemons, so I can't have my fake evening tea (hot water with lemon) as part of my "time to wind down" routine. But, that's only for another week or so and then I'll be allowed to have my evening mint tea again.