Last year, I spent Valentine’s Day in the hospital recovering from the laparotomy (abdominal surgery) that had taken place the day prior. This year, instead of being miserable from post-surgery pain medication, I spent the day driving to/from Tallahassee (that lovely 5 hour round-trip drive) due to my “IVF Start Appointment” for Round 4.
After the transfer failed in November, we decided that we would try again with my eggs, but I didn’t want to start until after the end of January because of family and work obligations/fun events. My doctor didn’t want me to wait too long to start because my eggs aren’t getting any younger, and the longer we wait, the more likely it is that IVF will fail. I was told to call the doctor’s office after I got my period in January to determine the timing to start everything all over again. When I made that call, we had to figure out a start date that would (a) give me enough time on the birth control pill to control the timing of everything and (b) make sure that the retrieval date would be at least a week before my husband’s show goes up (he has a great part in the local community theater’s upcoming production). That was not an easy feat, but we made it work with a start date of Feb. 14. I was told to be in Tallahassee at 11am, and everything would happen from there.
If, over the past several weeks, you’ve asked me how I’m feeling about everything, I inevitably told you that I was not prepared mentally, emotionally, or physically to restart IVF. It definitely gets harder with each cycle, and optimism was never my strong suit to begin with. The closer to the start date I got, the more stressed I became. So when I received a call from the doctor’s office yesterday asking me who they could call to get the results of the mandatory HIV/Hepatitis blood test that my husband and I needed to take before starting IVF, it didn’t go so well since I was not aware that this test was needed. Turns out that before all IVF Start Appointments, the egg and sperm donors need to have that blood test on the books with the results no more than a year old. My husband and I took the test in the summer of 2017 when we first started IVF, but nobody mentioned that we needed to do this again. It didn’t help that the person on the phone told me that under no circumstances could I start IVF without those results, and oh, did I have the consent form/oodles of paperwork notarized with my husband’s signature since he usually can’t come to the appointment with me (nope — I usually go, sign at the doctor’s office, bring it home, have my husband sign in front of a notary, and bring it back on my next appointment). At this point, I may have (okay, I definitely had) a meltdown on the phone because changing the start date meant a delay of about 3-4 weeks to avoid interference with my husband’s show, and that was not part of the plan. I was transferred to someone else who said that I could continue with the start date, but my husband had to get the blood test done before I arrived at the appointment, meaning the day we’re having this phone call, and I would have it done at the appointment. The catch is that if it comes back with a false positive (apparently something that happens more frequently than people think for HIV tests?), we have to redo the test, and they won’t fertilize the eggs until the tests come back negative, which means stress on eggs due to freezing, thawing, refreezing, and re-thawing.
We decided to risk it and continue with today’s start date as originally planned. My husband left his office hours early to make sure there was time to get to the lab for the blood work, and we won’t find out the test results for either of us until mid-week next week at the earliest, so fingers crossed they come back the way they’re supposed to without any weirdness or re-testing needed.
This morning I left at a reasonable hour since my appointment wasn’t until 11am. I donated 3 vials of blood for all the various tests, paid the fertility doctor for another 3-IVF-cycle attempt, had the usual intravaginal ultrasound to make sure there aren’t any cysts, polyps, or interfering fibroids in my uterus, and received refreshers on how to inject all the medicines. I ate lunch at a delicious restaurant, stopped at Trader Joe’s since that’s the closest one other than in Atlanta, drove the 2.5 hours home, and then waited 40 minutes at the local CVS to have a prescription for my husband filled — he needs to be on antibiotics for 10 days as his part of the IVF/retrieval prep. I took a short nap because for some strange reason I was exhausted, then began the process of prepping all my medicines so I could inject them while my husband picked up dinner.
For the next several days, I’m at two medicines (injections) in the evening and one in the morning, but in a week I’ll be back to two at night and two in the morning once the anti-ovulation medicine is added back in. The injections need to be around the same time each day, which means I’m once again tied to the house (or a cooler with a freezer pack) for the next 10-14 days around 8:30am and 6:30pm. As long as the medicines don’t impact me too differently, I have a good idea what to expect in terms of side effects, which means I’ve put “no meeting” blocks on my work calendars to ensure I have time for a daily nap starting on Tuesday because I won’t have a choice — I’ll be too exhausted (and cranky and uncomfortable) to work a full day. It’s back to Tallahassee on Monday for the first post-injection ultrasound/follicle-count appointment, and will likely end up back there on Thursday for the same thing.
And so Round 4 begins.