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.
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