Thursday, February 14, 2008

Day 7 and still in the game

Stayed off the Internets most of yesterday. I had to catch up with work. And now I am good for at least a couple of days. Hope my client can't tell that I did what normally takes me 3–5 full workdays in about 10 hours, ending at 3:15 am. Who knows, maybe it's my best work ever.

DH did not believe me the other day when I emailed to say that I was unable to track a thought for more than a minute. I asked if he was calling me a LIAR, and he said no, just a HYPERBOLIST. He hasn't even noticed that since last week I regularly have almost no idea what we're discussing . . . or if we're discussing. I do know when he's talking, of course. And if I ask a question I care about, I can pay attention long enough to take in the answer. But only if I squint.

Today's info:

I got lots of attention and was fine with it. I arrived at 7:22 as they were turning on the main lights, and I was whisked off for bloodwork before I could even fully focus on People's side-by-side comparison of Jessica Simpson's lips from 2005 and 2007. If I am lucky, I will get to read the captions tomorrow.

Four people attended this wanding. (Verbed it!) Sonographer, nurse, Dr. D (today's normal procedure doc), and Dr. K, who came in early to try to see me. She joined Dr. D and me as he was giving his opinion. She missed the part where he brought up my Tuesday appointment and said he did not like that I'd received conflicting messages from the team. I told him I was over it but that, yes, I considered Tuesday's communication with me to be poor.

Sorry for going on and on, but I'm running on drugs and less than 3 hours' sleep and don't have the mental strength to type anything but my thoughts as they come. That's why I will now type that I didn't know it was Valentine's Day until the phlebotomist said the embryology lab was swimming in black balloons. And, did I mention that I walked on a "sidewalk" the other day during the lunchtime rush that was actually the newly paved 4th lane of a very busy thoroughfare? I won't give further details. They make me shudder.

Yes, the report! Feel free to start here:

(1) The 4 decent follicles are hanging in at 19mm, 14 mm, 14mm, and 13 mm. The sonographer went ahead and measured 2 others — 8 mm and 6.5 mm — and called the other 2 "less thans." They did not take umbrage. But the 19 mm one was told to not get too far ahead of the other 3 good ones.

(2) My cyst is still growing. And again, I am to stop thinking about that.

(3) Day 5 E2 was 545, and Dr. K said that was great and expects today's to be great too.

(4) Both Dr. D and Dr. K think we should go ahead but were careful to say that my odds have lowered since the cycle outset based on my response to the meds. They were already low, maybe 15%. But it is so much higher than 0%, which has been our actual success rate since 2003 and our RE-predicted-odds for trying naturally since 2005. I purposely bit my tongue to stop myself from asking for a new percentage. It doesn't matter anymore, because we are either making it to retrieval and taking what we get then or converting to IUI if things look worse just before retrieval. (A few minutes before? The day before? I did not clarify that one.)

Starting here works too:

(5) Current thinking is that I will trigger tomorrow or Saturday, for a Sunday or Monday retrieval.

The rest of my day will include a dog walk, a nap, some kind of takeout, a foot soaking (you are right, Polly!), and maybe the positive meditation CD that tells me my body knows what to do right now. I have acupuncture right after my ultrasound tomorrow, and I'm hoping I can get in for that on the weekend, too.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

6 comments:

Ms Heathen said...

Glad to hear that both you and the follicles are still hanging in there!

Thinking of you, and sending you all good wishes for your next appointment.

Tracy said...

Oh, your day sounds lovely. Maybe I should go home sick and have a similar type of day.

Good luck this weekend!

TABI said...

Hope you have a relaxing rest of the day! It's all so tiring so you have to pamper yourself! I really hope those follicles do well and your ER goes well. Hang in there!

Opus #6 said...

Congrats on making it this far. I hope that cyst doesn't get too painful. They did warn you not to bounce around too much while your ovaries are huge, right? So rest up and take it easy. I'll check back on you later.

Anonymous said...

I've had hormone induced attention problems so bad that I contacted a neuropsychologist colleague to say, "What's up with this, memory stuff?"

I also experienced a bionic sense of smell. I could smell everything and it all smelled bad!

Hmm. All of these symptoms kind of sound like a brain tumor, albeit temporary.

Hang in there!

Anonymous said...

Oh, bless you for posting about your attention problems. Is it wrong for me to be glad you had them too? :)

The acupuncturist was all over that symptom yesterday. Or that's how I remember it. She was so diplomatic with her questioning while trying to determine whether this was a side effect of the meds or, presumably, my blondness.

I really don't think it's a stress-induced s/e, but I'm sure there's no way to tell with everything going on. I just know that I have felt much greater stress in the past (both acute and long-term) and not experienced anything like this kind of thing all day, every day.