Sunday, November 17, 2013

A meeting with the Pope (kind of)

We took a day trip to NY to meet with His Holiness, Dr. Braverman, yesterday.  We left @ 5 am & thankfully the traffic gods smiled upon us, as wel as the weaher gods.  Afterwards we went shopping @ the giant Indian grocery store nearby & had a nice South Indian lunch (Vid's people) before heading back home.     
 
Overall, it went well. DH was impressed with his office set up (4 monitors = comp sci prof's dream) & his liquor bottle collection, LOL.  He was very approachable with a good sense of humor & also wasn't afraid to use big words with us.  I like big words!

We're starting out with testing for karyotyping & basic immune stuff. He's also testing my AMH. The nurse will call to set things up next week, hopefully locally to us, or @ least nearby in Boston where Reprosource has an office, which is way closer than Long Island.  He says results should be in by around New Year's or so.

For IVF #2 we did "low & slow" with a Clomid kickstart, adding Follistim, Cetrotide & Menopur which by far gave us our best results. Based on this he thinks we need a flare type protocol but is not sure about micro flare Lupron given wh...at a disaster IVF #1 was. He also suggested maybe straight Menopur.

He did a pretty in depth exam/ultrasound & found something interesting: the blood flow in & out of my right ovary is very restricted. He asked if I knew how many eggs were retrieved there vs. left as well as mature eggs out of left vs. right & I said I don't know. I told him I feel it when I ovulate out of lefty but never out of righty. While he doesn't suspect endo it's in the back of his mind & depending on other tests I might have another lap.

When it comes to my weight he does not think it's what's preventing me from becoming pregnant. He does suggest going back on Metformin since it can normalize leptin levels which tend to be higher in obese folks who don't have IR. Leptin affects the release of LH among other things.

For the hubs, based on his sperm frag test & low morph he says to try the FertilAid & see what happens. Clomid might also help with the morph. Ensuring my other half takes his pills will likely be the most challending part of all.  He doesn't think Vid being the product of a cousin marriage is an issue. Also suggested a course of antibiotics prior to cycle which we also did with IVF #2.

3 comments:

Liz said...

We had success with pure menopur with Dr. B. the blood work is extensive but it gave us a lot of answers. I hope you get some answers as well!

Rebecca said...

Hoping that the new protocol does the job!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good meeting! Hope the new protcol is just the ticket!!!