On Monday, after three extra days on estrogen pills, my lining was finally deemed thick enough to proceed with the next steps in the mock transfer. That meant starting this past Tuesday, I added in the twice daily progesterone suppositories and the every-other-day progesterone shot (once again with circles drawn in sharpies on my butt so my husband had a target for the needle). The last two times I was on this regimen, I didn’t feel like myself. I was super stressed, extremely anxious, and felt physically off. This time, whether it’s because I knew this wasn’t prep for a real transfer or because I could continue exercising throughout it all, I wasn’t quite as miserable. Sure, I still had weird food cravings and went through more candy than is healthy for a person (even me) within a 48-hour period, but overall it wasn’t nearly as awful this time around. In fact, I almost felt good this week (I blame the return to a regular exercise regimen).
Yesterday my husband and I drove to Jax in the late afternoon so we could be there for an 8:30 am appointment this morning. This was for the ERA test — the biopsy of my uterine lining/tissue that will determine whether I need more or less progesterone to increase the odds of a successful “real” transfer. I was told that it would be done in the regular exam room, not their operating room, and that no anesthesia was needed or provided. I believe the term the doctor used to describe the experience was “very bad cramps.” Well, it wasn’t as bad as the HSG I had when we started this whole thing two years ago, but it still hurt a lot (like really, really, really bad cramps). How could it not? The doctor used a speculum to create an opening for a catheter that had some sort of suction thing on the end and then suctioned/scraped tissue from my uterus. Twice. The second scraping was because the instructions left for the doctor on call said to scrape enough tissue to also do the endometritis biopsy that I thought we weren’t going to do, and she didn’t want me to have to come back to go through this again (I did not disagree with that statement). Since I don’t want to pay for a second endometritis biopsy unless it’s deemed medically necessary, and I thought it was already deemed not necessary, they’re not going to prep that tissue sample to go out right away, but will confer with my regular doctor tomorrow.
In case you’re wondering, it felt exactly how you think it would feel if someone was scraping your insides. Luckily the intense pain only lasted for a minute or two, and when we were checking out I got some water so I could take the extra strength Tylenol I had brought with me. Thankfully that kicked in quickly-ish, so by the time we were done breakfast at a nearby diner (the French Toast was SO good), the sharp pain had mostly lessened to a regular crampy feeling. So I did what any normal person would do … I decided that we should check out the IKEA in town to scope out potential purchases for the house we’re renovating. By the time we left IKEA an hour-plus later, the pain had gone away and I was left with mostly just soreness and a dull ache. I think all that walking helped. From IKEA we went over to Whole Foods, because if we’re in a place where these things exist, we may as well take advantage of them. A few cookie purchases later, we were on the road home.
Now I go cold turkey off the various hormone medicines, which is never fun (can’t wait for those night sweats to return) and wait for two weeks to get the test results. But, for the first time in months, I won’t be on any kind of hormonal medicine at all for at least four weeks. The plan is that I’ll get my period in a few days, and then I wait for my next cycle before starting birth control again to begin the prep for the next transfer. That means I get the rest of August and practically the whole month of September without any meds, which is amazing. I’m free to exercise as I want. Eat as I want. Be out and about when I want without worrying about taking meds at a certain time. And even when I do start meds again, it’ll just be birth control for the first two weeks, and that’s a simple one. So I basically have through mid-October to not worry about medicines and doctor appointments and let my body reset.
Unless something super weird happens with the ERA results, the next blog update probably won’t come until mid-October when I will (hopefully) begin prepping for the real transfer of the last embryo from the donor eggs.