Friday, November 18, 2011

Game plan



Even though neither of us slept well last night due to my sister's news, Vid & I managed to make it to our appt this morning with RE #3 today, henceforth known as Dr. W. She seems nice enough & I love the nurse we'll be working with who, when I told her about my sister, quipped, "Of course she'd tell you the day before an IVF consult, right?"; I chuckled a bit.

Anywho, the plan for me: when Aunt Flo comes to town (due on or about Thanksgiving) I go in for CD3 bloodwork & have another HSG somewhere between CD 5-12. She also wants me to chart (going back old school) so she can do some additional bloodwork later in my cycle to see if I'm a "weak" ovulator. She agrees with RE #2 that I likely have some sort of egg quality issue or perhaps empty follicle syndrome. Although my FSH has risen a bit from when we started TTC 3.5 years ago, I'm not in the scary zone. Still, when I had it tested almost a year ago it was 14, so it's worth looking into. Hey, at this point what's another vial of blood?

The plan for Vid: repeat SA which has been scheduled for 12/16 as he is having umbilical hernia surgery next week & needs a few weeks to recuperate. His last real SA was in 12/10 but they also looked @ the lab reports from our Hail Mary IUI this past spring. There appears to be a downward trend in motility over the past several years which I was unaware of. Dr. W is thinking although his count is ok it still could be affecting things so she's going to set up an appt with the reproductive uro in addition to just doing an SA in case it's continued to get worse.

What we're doing for the IVF cycle: since next cycle is all repeat testing, I will start my BCPs 2 cycles from now, meaning likely the week before Christmas. We will be ICSI'ing all of my eggs given our issues. Dr. W plans on doing your standard long Lupron protocol, which means beta will be somewhere in the early February range. Happy anniversary to us? We shall see.

Total cost to us: roughly $3000, or a month's pay for me. And we're lucky it's only that much because we have 80% coverage. I want to throw up just thinking about the fact I could be out $3k & have nothing to show for it since success rate for people in our category are on the 45% range. Not horrible but sometimes I think we'd be better off using it to wipe our asses. It's just so hard to be positive when all you've ever seen is negatives.

1 comment:

Kate said...

Sounds like a great plan, so exciting you guys are taking this next step. I hope IVF brings you the baby(ies) you've been waiting so long for. Sorry about your sister... I know it's tough, my sister is on #4 since we got married. All I can advise is try to focus on what you are doing and try not to let it get you down. (((hugs)))