Fertility Part 4

The 35 hours between the "trigger shot" and egg retrieval were awkward to say the least. I felt like I had a bunch of grapes in my pelvis. I had to walk slowly, I avoided bumping up against counter tops, I wore maternity leggings (no waistband). It was difficult to sit comfortably. I was getting some aches and pains in my back and my legs. Dear husband took Monday, March 18th off of work to be available for all my needs so that I wouldn't be tempted to do much. I did hard-boil 24 eggs, but that's about it. He did all the lifting when water needed to be poured out.

The image below shows like some kind of female anatomy. I don't like to use the word "average" so let's say that this image depicts one woman's body. Many times when I went for transvaginal ultrasound, the doctor could see one of my ovaries but not the other. Four times out of five he had to use an ultrasound on the outside of my body. So I don't know how exactly they went in to retrieve my eggs, but he mentioned that they may have to do it from outside my body. I don't know if it's all my belly fat that caused my ovaries to be in a different place, because my hips and waistline surely don't resemble the image below.

The day of the operation, Tuesday, March 19th, I was feeling good and ready to get those eggs out. We woke up at 4am to arrive at the doctor by 6am for a 6:30am check-in time and 7:30am procedure. We met a nice woman in the waiting room that told us her daughter-in-law was having egg retrieval and her son was having his sperm removed surgically. I think that made my husband feel better about being able to release naturally.

Everything about the procedure was easy, I was given several medications to calm me down and knock me out (propofol) when I woke up they brought my husband in. They told us the good news, 14 eggs were retrieved. They wheeled me out in a wheelchair and I went back home to recover in our La-Z-Boy recliner. We binge-watched Limitless on Netflix. We binge-watched Designated Survivor. I took all the 300-30 tylenol-codeine that they gave me on a 4-6 hour interval.

Dear husband got it in his mind that we definitely needed to get rid of our second car. He called up KPCC vehicle donation program and agreed on a pick up date of Thursday, March 21st. The auction company called me on Wednesday, March 20th to schedule a time (morning). They came by on Thursday, March 21st exactly on schedule and loaded 'bandito' up on the truck bed and drove it away. I'm not going to lie, I did cry a bit. Ok I sobbed. Let's blame the hormones.

End of an era #smartcar Smart was originally an acronym for ‘Swatch Mercedes Art’ #microcar #citylife #LosAngeles aka rollerskate aka bandito #lifegoals #BucketList https://t.co/sdNQiZlWz2

— Dr. Kayla A. Kaiser (@hamerk02) March 21, 2019

Wednesday, March 20th, dear husband went to work and left me home alone. I binge-watched The Order on Netflix. Thursday, March 21st dear husband went to work and left me home alone. I binge-watched The Big Family Cooking Showdown. I understand that he needs his space, but I definitely didn't hesitate to ask him to make me a protein shake for dessert. I was hard to watch him eat cupcakes after dinner, but at least the Whey protein is chocolate flavored.

A friend asked me what it felt like and I think it's like what liposuction must feel like. It was like I had been stabbed in the gut many times. Not a great feeling. The discharge papers suggested that it would feel like bloating or cramping and I disagree. It fully felt like I was healing from being stabbed. My weight didn't fluctuate, so I don't think I'm suffering from OHSS. Luckily, a friend told me "not gonna lie, egg retrieval hurts like a bitch" and she told me that was the worst part. So at least I was fairly warned.

I want to emphasize again that my experience will not be everyone's experience. Every woman reacts differently to these circumstances. Some women have said that Follistim, Menopur or whatever their doctors were giving them turned them into a crazy dragon lady. For me, it mellowed me out. In fact, I wouldn't mind feeling like that all day every day. Also, some people go back to work the day after retrieval and I don't think I could have done that. My job is strenuous on my body, I do a lot of running around, pivoting, lifting, drawing on the board, moving chairs around and I know I could not have done that 24 hours after egg retrieval. No way.

Gel Eye Mask

My symptoms included body aches (neck, lower back, backs of my legs) and headaches. These aren't too surprising to me since I get similar symptoms at different times in my cycle (ovulation and PMS). During the 35 hours between the "trigger shot" and egg retrieval, I used a frozen gel eye mask to get to sleep without taking medication. Sometimes I take Tylenol PM or Aleve and Benadryl when I have a bad headache that is preventing me from sleeping, but I was trying to avoid any additional medication so that it wouldn't interfere with the surgical anesthesia. I would definitely include a gel eye mask in an IVF gift basket if you are considering making one for a friend or family member.

Speaking of a family member... I acknowledge that this process is painful, but if I had to go through it again for one of my sisters -- I totally would. Today is my first day without 300-30 tylenol-codeine and I'm making due with 1000 mg tylenol. I took one dose at 5am when I woke up in pain and I just took a second dose now at 1pm. I'm not pain-free yet and it's hard to not lift and not exercise. But we proceed with a hopeful heart and a positive, grateful state of mind.

Without the Follistim and Menopur, I was a lot more restless and it wasn't as easy for me to fall asleep, so I can say that those medications genuinely did make me more tired. Or if not the medications, then what they were causing my body to do was making me tired. In fact, I wasn't able to work a full day on Thursday or Friday (March 14-15) which would have been DAY 8 and 9.

Wow, I've basically been writing all morning (for 4 hours) so it might be time for lunch and then time to do some actually work to prepare for Monday morning classes. The good news we got on Wednesday, March 20th was: out of the 14 eggs retrieved, 12 were mature enough to ICSI (inject with your Mike's sperm). Out of those 12 eggs, 11 fertilized normally. This is amazing! They are incubating now and growing (hopefully) to a day 5 blastocyst stage. I don't know if that day will fall on Saturday, Sunday or Monday (March 23, 24, 25) but we should get that news soon.

On day 5 or 6 after fertilization, the blastocysts will have some tissue removed for preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) testing. This is recommended due to age risk (maternal age over 36 years). This is not cheap $5000-6000 but it is complex enough to warrant doing. PGS testing involves fluorescence in situhybridization (FISH), array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH), single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays, multiplex quantitative PCR or next generation sequencing (NGS) to determine the chromosomal status of the embryo to facilitate selection of desired embryos for implantation. The results look simple but the testing procedure seems pretty complicated.

https://meetthehopefuls.com/2015/08/20/ivf-2-cycle-update-and-pgs-results/

So we await the news about how many of our embryos have grown to blastocyst stage. Then we'll have a 10-14 day wait until we get the PGS results back. That's OK with me since I kind of want to wait until my mid-May cycle to stimulate for embryo transfer (assuming we get at least 1 normal embryo).