Theeeeey're i-in.

Friday night - December 26th, 2008:

We went to our final US to determine if we were going to get to do the fresh transfer after all. Based on previous post, the crickets and/ or tumbleweed out there reading this know that we had very low expectations of getting a thumbs up. Doc came in harried, did the US (no magic wand - on the belly) and said we were good to go. OMG! Dan and I looked at each other w/ shared dropped jaws. Did our "terrorist" fist bump and in a happily dazed state, took our orders to follow the next day. Went to one of our favorite parts of town - right near that Sogo, but closer to Dunhua. Stumbled upon the perfect spot. Not only was I excited about being able to complete this cycle, but for the first time since being stimmed, it felt like my ovaries weren't clanging together. We were pretty jubilant. Nice feeling.

Saturday morning - December 27th, 2008:

Transfer on the 27th right on schedule (I realized once I double checked my trusty IVF notebook). Instructions: still take the Progesterone suppository in the AM, drink a shitload of water at 10:00, register at hospital at 10:45. Do transfer at 11:00. All the while, remaining in a constant state of "OMG."
(see - OMGing in the taxi to the hospital.)
Luckily I drank up around 10:15, b/c Dr. Li was running late (he runs a crazy-busy practice) and rushed in at 11:30. I told him to chill, that I wasn't even close to peeing my pants. (Dan and I enjoy giving him our doses of inappropriate American levity - we know he doesn't come across it much.) He seemed to appreciate my attempt to calm him. It certainly wasn't an altruistic gesture though. I wanted him as CALM as POSSIBLE. I knew how important this stage of the IVF process was; getting the embryos centered just right in the sweet spot of the uterus is crucial to help aid implantation.

Dan was getting irritated (for those who know him: he was becoming what I like to refer to as "Forehead Dan") at being lied to about them not having Internet. Pushed his buttons about just how rule-following and robotic in nature the Chinese/Taiwanese culture can be. See, the nurse (?), embryologist (?), the woman who was to load up the catheter w/ our embryos and serve a major role in the procedure had showed us this:

(Day 5: 1 blastocyst - top, 2 embryos [but he kept calling them something else I can't recall. Starts w/ an "m?"])
prior to Dr. Li's arrival. Dan wanted her to send the actual image directly to him via email. That's when she lied about not having Internet service. For some reason, she couldn't tell us her real reason for denying the request. Perhaps it was against the rules, but she lacked the words in English to properly express that. It's hard to believe it was due to rules though b/c when Dan first met...

THE FESTIVE MAST-UR-BA-TOR-I-UM (I know!):

This same professional was babysitting her 4 year old nephew at the clinic on a Saturday while men were to go off in the very next room jerking off to porn. Hmmm. We just found something about that scenario so OFF. So I'm going to go with: laziness. Not sure. I was satisfied with taking a picture of the picture.

For the sake of remaining consistently compulsive, in case anyone is actually following, I screwed up on our stats before. Here's the final count:

Follicles after stims: around 32
Egg Retrieved on 12/22, Monday: 23
Eggs NG right off the bat: 2
ICSI procedure performed on: 21
Day 3: 4 more NG - kicked it, = 17, they left the 4 strongest to grow for transfer, 13 were frozen.
Day 5: blast transfer: 3. Another didn't make it that far.

If he did tell us the quality of what was left, I was too distracted to digest. But based on the fact that they weren't all complete blasts, and my age, we decided to have all 3 transferred.

When I settled into the comfy operating room table, all scooted down and good to go, they were hitting the ground running, I asked if Dan was going to be able to come in. They both said plaintively and in unison, "No." Legs in stirrups, bladder topped off, hard-earned genetic specimens in their color-inside-the-lines hands, Forehead Dan outside, I quickly did the cost-benefit of posing an argument. I knew guilt would strike later, but did not want to compromise the procedure by throwing off their coloring project. "Oh, Okay." The procedure went super smoothly. When I saw the embryos actually injected into my womb, I involuntarily welled up, tears streamed out of my right eye and down my right cheek as I was watching the monitor to my right.

The emotions surprised me (yeah, dur). That eventual guilt I expected? Well... it hit me even sooner than expected. They checked that the catheter was emptied of all embryos and it wasn't. There was a rare hanger-on-er. I was excited I'd get to see it again. They did the procedure again - went just as smoothly. I was also surmising, based on my vast scientific background, that having it done a 2nd time would possibly give us a better implantation opportunity should it be in that much better of a sweet spot.

Here was our surprise: I was to be on STRICT bed rest for the next FOUR STRAIGHT HOURS.
(Where's the hidden camera? You're fucking with the gringos, right?!)
So strict, in fact, that I got to have a catheter poked into my bladder and they drained it for me, right there and then on the table. (Good thing I have shitty boundaries or else that would have qualified as potentially humiliating experience no. 112.) Then they g-e-n-t-l-y transferred me to the hospital bed they'd rolled in. It was a strange experience to be fully sans sedation and watch the ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights flow by as I rode the elevator down to the 6th floor to spend the next 4 hours pulling my hair out. OMFG. Think they could have told us to at least bring some reading material??!
(Dan played the snake game so long, his phone ran out of juice.)
Time has not crawled by that slowly since I was in detention with Emilio Estivez and that girl who made her hair into a snowflurry.
(4 hours + first time bed-pan pee experience later... we made it.)
Dan picked up a crap load (no pun intended) of Indian food to last us for days. LOVE Indian food. Indian food, risotto, mac-n-cheese... they all have a beloved common theme: comfort food you don't need to chew.

Now I'm back to bed rest to calm my ovaries down and we're waiting the 2 weeks just like a normal couple whose sperm may have properly traveled up and thrust itself into the egg. Hoping we get an implantation right about... NOW. This is about when it should happen. Then the HCG levels would start to build and my OHSS will get more exacerbated. So if I start to feel WORSE, it could be a good sign it worked. But then it will mean more time to get over the OHSS. At least, and thankfully, I have the luxury of having the time to deal with it while here.

HCG shot tonight - egg retrieval Monday morning!

Had a bunch of follicles ready tonight and many more that should grow a bit more so they're good to go come Monday morning. All in all I should have a total of about 30 ready to be injected w/Dan's genetic material via ICSI - a harsh introduction, but they'll finally get to meet each other after all!

So, done w/ Lupron - took last shot this morning.

Done w/ Gonal-F - took last shot last night.

Taking HCG trigger shot tonight at 10:00.


(Can you believe the size of this gut? This is one of my 3 bad bruises after several days passed. Was v. proud of myself for only having 3 during the span of all the injectibles. I gave myself mostly all of my own shots s-l-o-w-l-y, but on this one freaked b/c the needle became dull w/ the mixing, etc. so Dan did the honors - symbollic, being the "trigger" shot and all.)

Then tomorrow I get a day of reprieve from the shots - only need to remember to take the PNV + baby aspirin - just need to lay around like a poor beached mammal.

Gotta stop eating or drinking by 12:00 a.m. to prep for the anesthesia. I think my biggest paranoia here is that this OHSS makes me super thirsty and I tend to need water after one of my crazy bronchial coughing fits (which have escalated to ceaseless at this point - stomach muscles have literally become sore), so abstaining from drinking will be a huge challenge.

So aside from the fear of being utterly parched, I'm actually ready and excited for Monday's procedure. Excited despite having accepted the probability of the transfer/cycle being canceled due to these excitable and hard-working swollen ovaries of mine.

Speaking of the hyper gals, yesterday's ultrasound showed my ovaries "kissing." This evening's ultrasound showed them hot and heavy. Listen ovaries, you two should be NO WHERE NEAR EACH OTHER. YOU'RE NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO KNOW THE OTHER ONE EXISTS. No exaggeration, when he got them both within the same frame, they looked like a fucked up rendition of how it feels my lungs are looking right about now. Yeah, seriously - they formed that kind of butterfly shape, but with all the vacant pockets where the follicles have formed... where the eggs inside will start to hop to after I inject this HCG.

Under different circumstances I'd be wise to be scared by what I saw tonight, but I can't go there. I know this is a common side effect and I'll get through it. But I think it's safe to say the next week or so is pretty much going to be lost to all but me going through the surgery and recuperating from the escalated OSHH. Apparently, what I've experienced thus far is nothing compared to how bad it's going to get; should the various symptoms present themselves, we have been instructed we'll need to go to the hospital no matter the time. These are the moments during IVFing where we keep the end result in mind - you know, changing explosive diapers and having a child who grows up to despise you in their adolescence. No wait, the nurturing, cuddly, helping raise a good person part; hopefully someone who adds something to society. Yeah, that.

So in my mind, I will have gone through the hardest part of IVF - the stimming and retrieval.

We're prepared to do the FET for the next cycle and feel optimistic that doing FET could work fine. We've reset our thinking to: if we CAN do the transfer on the 27th, it'll just icing at this point.

Holy fuck. My Ovaries are behaving like spastic children with ADD

I have officially overstimulated my poor ovaries. The dreaded OHSS. Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome. I had a nagging feeling I would be susceptible to achieving this wondrous state due to my previous follie response back in '02 when I did 3 rounds of Clomid.*

(Back when I received the Rx from my [extremely reputable, UCLA faculty] OB/GYN whom in hindsight I believe unthinkingly participated in the brotherhood of misogynistic OB/GYNS [hyperbole much?] by prescribing this AWFUL infertility drug for me to take PRIOR to testing Dan in order to rule out any misbehaving sperm on his end. Male factor infertility. Are their egos SO fragile they project that every male couldn't bare that "burden" that their swimmers might be fucked up? I mean, what the fuck?! Jerking off into a cup is far easier than living with a raging moody bitch where the means to the end is doomed from the start. Dan would have gladly gone that route [what's more exciting than wanking {AKA Polishing the Pink Pope} off in a small room at a doctor's office staring at worn out porn?] had we more knowledge of the big picture. I think it should be mandatory protocol for the SA to be STEP #1 when a couple embarks on fertility treatments. Least invasive approach first. Doesn't that make sense? Ladies, never forget business is business. Doctors ARE running a business. Yes, we're called patients, but we're also called paying customers. Agenda: pharmaceutical companies in bed with doctors, perhaps?

If infertility has taught me one thing it is this: Doctors are NOT Gods. I have since rescinded the unwarranted Daddy Authority I had bestowed on them prior to my rude awakening.

They are very fallible.

And egotistical, arrogant, and successful business men/women - if you're seeing one of the good ones.

There's the rub.

Play God much? (Use that much writing device much?)

We hope so.

That's the point isn't it? That the very aforementioned "negative" qualities they possess are also the qualities they employ in helping us achieve PREGNANCY. Nevertheless, do not hesitate to ask questions, be your own advocate, and hold them accountable for the utmost in customer service and care. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. (Case in point, I JUST received a call from my RE here confirming I know to keep taking the Lupron and if I'm feeling too bloated and awful tomorrow to call/come in for an adjusted dose of Gonal-F. I am liking this Dr. Li!)

*So based on those wasted and trying 3 months, I knew I had solid follicular response.

(Dan is grossed out by that term. He'd rather me call them puppies. Fine. My puppies are kennel-yapping.) In the litter vein, I have oh, around 32 follies. You read that right. 32. While staring at the ultrasound monitor, I was fondly picturing the eggs inside those not-quite-fully-developed-follicles bouncing up and down in excitement adorably yelling over each other, "Pick me! I'm the one! Will you be dis herez baby mama?!" (Kinda like how I used to picture the Cheerio Os scrambling to be the ones to go first. I think some '70s advertising execs thought it'd be good salesmanship to animate those Os into darling little characters. [Or maybe not. I may have just made them into characters in my head. I can't recall. Remember, I have that pesky overactive imagination.] I got over my guilt about consuming the cutie pies by sparing them the sad and soggy drowning death-by-milk-puddle - achieving a proud record of never leaving a single O in the bowl.)

Off topic. Right.

Annyway. Chances are fairly good we'll stop this cycle after oocyte retrieval. Or at least I'm prepping myself for that outcome.

So, outcome #1 (preferred):
Keep going, get incredibly bloated as I grow my symmetrical grapefruits, retrieve eggs, pull decent sperm from Dan's fun-time-with-a-cup and inject viable eggs with viable sperm (ICSI), wait 5 days as my OHSS calms down and the zygotes evolve into blastocysts, then transfer said blasties and keep fingers crossed during the ever dreaded 2ww.

Outcome #2 (waaah-ish):
Same as above minus the transfer. They'll freeze the litter and we do another IVF as FET (frozen embryo transfer). Or I guess in our case it would be a FBT. Bad news: Lose our fresh chance and have to wait a month or so. Good news: We should have plenty of top quality little frozens to choose from.

Imagination running wild night time soap outcome: Either Dan or I kick it. We move on with our lives, but we can't go on without the other in some form or another. So we hire a surrogate uterus and have them bake the frozen embryo then write a bad screenplay about it. Then there's a bidding war for either Dan's or my genius and we sock the money away for the kid's formative years therapy fund b/c they'd be in serious need of therapy very early on by not only the above scenario, but by being the recipient of our lovely combined genetics.