Part 5- Egg Retrieval Surgery

   In Vitro Fertilization isn't the most complicated of procedures.
1- Grow Eggs
2- Remove eggs
3- Add sperm and eggs to petri dish.  Let nature take it's course
4- Re-insert fertilized egg into uterus

   Simple, Right? In a perfect world, in a perfect body... yes. But I guess in a perfect world you wouldn't need a petri dish.  But for some reason I don't have a perfect body (actually we still have no idea if it's MY body or Dale's body that's the problem), and this isn't a perfect world.
   Our Journey to this point has let us up to step #2- Removing the Eggs.  I had not been looking forward to this, I hate surgeries that require me to be put under anesthesia.  What if I didn't wake up? What if I don't actually fall asleep and I can feel everything? Seriously... my anxiety was off the charts!! And in a cruel ironic twist, I couldn't take any of my anxiety meds.  Stupid Irony.
   To make matters worse, there was some issues with the follicles growing on my crazy ovaries.  They just weren't growing big or fast enough.  We had to push back the surgery date just to give them an extra day to grow.   The last ultrasound before the surgery didn't look too promising, there were only about 7 follicles that looked mature.  7 is ok... but I was really hoping to get at least 15 from the retrieval surgery.
   We "pulled the trigger" sometime late thursday night, or early friday morning. I can't remember.  Again, crazy woman.  This meant that I gave myself ANOTHER shot that triggered ovulation.  Typically you'll ovulate within 36 hours of the shot.  Up until this point I had been giving myself all the shots.  They were subcutaneous (in the fatty tissue) and had really thin needles.   This trigger shot kinda scared me.  It was intramuscular (had to be in the muscle) and the needle was 2 inches long. Plus, I could barely reach behind me to where it was supposed to be at (the outer quadrant above the buttocks).  I made Dale do it.  He had no sympathy.  "Lie on your side.  Don't worry, I you-tubed how to do this." Ok, great!
  Saturday the 25th of June we showed up to the Hospital around 9.  This was basically sleeping in for us at this point.  I wasn't allowed to use shampoo, hair product, nail polish, deodorant... nothing.    There were three couples having the surgery that morning, and of course we were the last in line.  We all had our own "sections" of the room, divided by curtains.  I put on my fabulous hospital gown and slippers, and Dale played games on his phone.  For someone who hates surgery, 2 hours is a long time to wait.  And it wasn't event really the surgery that was scary.  It was not knowing what the results were going to be.  What if I just did all of this and they couldn't get any eggs? What if they released too soon? What if I never woke up? Seriously.....

   This is a lovely screenshot of a photo I posted to Instagram of Dale helping me tie my lovely hospital gown.  I find the black and white filter makes my skin look not-so-terrible.














The nurses at Walter Reed are amazing.  They did soo much for us, and I couldn't be more grateful for them.  When it was our turn, I gave my glasses to Dale and kissed him goodbye (who knows, I could have died...).  You may not know this about me, but I am BLIND without my glasses.  Like... I can't read my phone 6 inches from my face without my glasses.  I had to stop one of the nurses and have her guide me to the right room.
  At this point I could barely stop shaking.  I don't even know why.  I've never been afraid of hospitals, surgery, blood, needles.... but I think it was all becoming real to me.  This was it.  This needed to work.  I had all this pent up anxiety and fear and the only way my body could handle it all was to shake uncontrollably.  Of course the anesthesiologist noticed.  How could he not? I'm sure the people in the cafeteria 3 floors down could feel the vibrations from my shaking.  But he was really cool about it.  He held my hand until everything was set up and ready to go. 
   Unfortunately he picked this time to ask me why I was soo scared.  My response- "I don't like giving up control of everything to y'all." He laughed while pushing the anesthesia, and said "So I take it you are a type A?"
   And my last words before going under? "NO!!!! I'm O Negative! Don't give me the wro......"  And I was out.  Of course he meant that I was a type A personality (which is absolutely true), but I totally didn't catch that.  My last thoughts were that I hope I don't start losing blood, or I'm screwed.

    Surprise. I didn't die.  I woke up an hour later missing 18 eggs that they were able to retrieve from my ovaries.  I was pretty excited.  Well, as excited as I could be while still sort of groggy and drunk-like.  Also, super dehydrated.
   Next step was to take Dale's sample (that he gave that morning) and put them in a petri dish with the eggs!  Survival of the fittest, I guess.  Side tangent... There are two types of In Vitro (at least that I know about): Standard In Vitro and ICSI, or Intracytoplasmic sperm injection.  The latter is slightly more complex than the petri dish method.  With ICSI, the specialist picks the best looking sperm out of the whole bunch and pulls them aside.  They are then individually added into the eggs.  One sperm, one egg.  With standard In Vitro they just put everything together and the best sperm *should* win. Just like in a normal conception.  Dale liked the standard method better because he likes the idea of the competition.  But it's not like we had a choice.  The specialists would look at our case and determine which type we needed.  Coincidentally, ICSI is about $1,000 more than standard.  I wasn't going to complain when they went forward with the standard method.  
   So, Surgery went great and they got lots of eggs.  We went home and I slept. A lot.  They gave me some great pain meds, but I ended up not actually needing them. I didn't want to take anything more than what I needed.  I could stop doing all the injections, and all I needed to do was insert a Progesterone tablet inside me 3 times a day.  
   Two days later we got a call from the Doctor saying that we had 6 super healthy and large fertilized eggs.  Success.


  

Part 4- Blood, Needles, and Ultrasounds

  Back to Maryland, back to reality.  It didn't take long to get back into the swing of things.  We were getting into the busy season at work, so I knew taking off days for doctors appointments was going to get harder.  Sure enough, my boss wasn't happy when I came to him after my vacation with more leave requests for doctors appointments.  It's really difficult to explain to your boss how important this is, when you can't actually tell him what you're doing.  But I brushed off his annoyances and reminded him that it was my sick leave, and I'll use it however I need to.  It's almost laughable now, looking back on how much I ended up using.
   The morning of my physical and blood tests started like most days.  I woke up, fed the dog, started showering.... but there was this nagging feeling like I was forgetting something.  Half way through my shower I remembered. My appointment.  And it was at 8:00, which happened to be in 5 minutes.
   Sh*t Sh*t Sh*t Sh*t. How could I have messed this up? It would take weeks to get another appointment. I jumped out of the shower and threw on clothes.  I ran out the door and headed to my jeep.  And my keys?  Oh, they were back inside the house.  Sh*t Sh*t Sh*t Sh*t.  Where the hell was that spare key I hid just for these stupid occasions? Hidden. 
   Please forgive me, I've lost my mind by this point.  I'm soo tired and exhausted from the constant stressing and panicking of the last 6 months, I can barely remember to eat.  Or I can blame the birth control the hospital made me take... either way. Every aspect of my life was suffering.  But I'll save all of that loveliness for another post.
   I'm convinced my jeep has warp speed, and that I'll be receiving a few speeding tickets in the mail soon.  At 8:10 I ran into the doctors office.  No makeup, hair dripping wet (probably still with shampoo...), and whatever sweat pants were on the bathroom floor.  I also may have been crying.  I'm very grateful for all these receptionists who have pitied me the last few months. But I must have looked pathetic enough for her to agreed to let me see the doctor.
   The appointment was routine.  The only strange thing she noted was an unusually fast heart-rate. Weird.... Then I was informed that she would send the results to the Hospital in a week.  A week? How about... I don't know... now?  Of course not.
   I left feeling defeated.  Again.  I didn't bother going straight to work, no one needed to see me like that.  I went home to clean up and gather my thoughts.  At this point there was no way I could start the IVF in June like we had planned.  The cycle had already started.  But all the tests were done (unless they had something else in mind they hadn't told me about...), so maybe I could do the September cycle?  Sure, we'll shoot for that.
   The Lord sure does work in mysterious ways, because two days later I got a phone call from Walter Reed.  "We received all your tests results, can you come in on June 9th for your Baseline ultrasound and Blood work?"
   I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number.  There's no possible way you have all my results. In fact, you should be telling me something else that has gone wrong.  Have a good day.
   But to my complete surprise they actually wanted to talk to ME!  It was happening.  I emailed Dale the schedule so he could inform the Marine Corps what was happening, and printed off a schedule to take to work.  I was kinda worried about telling my boss about how much time I was going to need off.  He definitely did nothing to make me feel better about it.  Thankfully, I had already taken a week off in June for Girls Camp, and it just so happened to be the same week that I was scheduled to have my Egg Retrieval Surgery.  I thought they would be happy that I actually wouldn't need to take off the entire week, just a few days for recovery.  Nope. Still mad. Oh, and I couldn't lift of pull anything over 10 pounds for a while... which is pretty much my job. Oops. 
   I'm pretty sure the next few weeks were the craziest of our marriage.  Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is about 45 minutes away from our house (without traffic), and just happens to be situated right off of the DC beltway.  If you hit traffic, the commute time will at least double.  I think we drove there at least 7 times for just blood tests and ultrasounds.  Thankfully, the tests are done between 6 and 6:45am.  If we left the house before 5:15, we missed all the traffic.  And depending on how long we were at the hospital (it could range between 15 and 60 minutes), we missed traffic going back the other way to Fort Meade for work! All those days I told my boss I would be late... I never was. You're welcome.
   Then there was the medication.  The birth control I was on previously was just to control the start date of my cycle.  I had gone off of that a few weeks prior.  I was now starting Menupur, a follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), and Gonal-f, a menopausal gonadotropin (HMG).  And a prenatal vitamin, of course.
   One Vial of HMG, and 150 Units of FSH every day.  Needles. Super cool.
   Here is a picture of my original calendar.... Fun, right? Green is appointments, red is medicine.

 

Here are all my meds. I tried to be a little organized. I used Star Wars band-aids to feel better about myself.

    And off we went. I didn't take pictures every day. Aint nobody got time for that. Most days were pretty much the same.

This was when the doctors finally noticed that my follicles weren't growing very quickly.  So they up'd the dosage of the meds.  Now there were shots in the morning and evening. 

 And the follicles still weren't growing quickly enough, so we up'd the meds again.  Shots in the morning, afternoon, and evening.  This resulted in a migraine soo terrible that I puked. Lots. 

So. Much. Tylenol.

New Medicine to Start! The Ganirelix Acetate is supposed to stop the follicles (eggs) from being released too early.  We didn't want them to detach before the surgery.






























So that pretty much summed up my life for a few weeks.   I also....
Got in a car accident (she hit me...)
and
Drank LOTS of pomegranate juice to help thicken the lining of my uterus,
and
Went to acupuncture 1-2 times a week,
and
Worked full time (except when I needed to leave early so I wouldn't puke at my desk),
and
Continued to fulfill my calling as the Young Women's President in my Ward.
Oh, and I think I gained 5 pounds... but who's counting.