All systems go ...

I'm sorry I've been so quiet lately. As many of you know, when you get kicked in the gut, you usually stay down for a bit to recover your breath ... looks like it's taken me 6 weeks to catch it.

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Well, if all goes according to plan, I will be cycling in Colorado in less than 3 weeks.

I have hesitated to post any updates as things have been so fluid, not knowing if we were going to head to Colorado this month, next month, or if we'd have to wait until May. If AF stays at bay until 3/20 (I'm on Prog supps, 400mg/day) then all should go smoothly.

I head out to Colorado on 3/26, with an estimated retrieval date of 4/2. I will stay through until 4/5. This cycle will be similar to the last cycle: we will retrieve eggs, biopsy them, vitrify them, send the biopsied portion off to another lab for genetic testing, then in 6-8 weeks when we get the results we will only fertilize the eggs that prove "normal" in genetic competency. It looks like our next attempt at pregnancy will be end of May/beginning of June. You ask why would I attempt again what just resulted in a huge embarrassing failure back in January? Read more to find out ...

Ok, it's been awhile ... let me catch you up:

1. Planned a February injects cycle at local University clinic: The second I found out about our negative beta, I called the local University Clinic and asked them if I could cycle there (if you remember they consulted for me back in October). I knew that CCRM would make me wait until an LH surge, but I knew the University clinic (NOT the monkey clinic) would allow me to do an injects cycle at AF. I could not stand the idea of waiting one more month (when we'd waited nearly 12) to execute our last attempt at pregnancy (we waited from Feb 2008 to Jan 2009 to do an embryo transfer ... the patience that took was outstanding). I even set up a new cycle at the University clinic before doing a cycle post mortem with the monkey clinic or a consult with Dr. Schoolcraft to see what he thought of the whole January fiasco.

2. Had a consult with Dr. Schoolcraft: I scheduled a consult with Dr. Schoolcraft - a cycle review if you will (of a cycle at another clinic! How ballsy was that?) to review what happened during the January cycle. If you remember, we had our three best eggs fertilized with our 3 best sperm and we had two embryos that arrested at 24 hours and the third that was getting a failing grade by day 3. Dr. Schoolcraft basically said - he thinks the January failure was caused by a lab error. He said it did not make sense that a girl who has gotten pregnant four times (note: embryos have gotten to the blast stage in all four natural attempts at pregnancy) should have her best embryos arrest at day 1. Makey-no-sensy. He said that there are many points of breakdown and considering how consistent the results were - he believes that something broke. I asked the big scary question: "will you still cycle me?" he said "absolutely, the January cycle does not detour him in any way, and I shouldn't let it discourage me" ... that's what he said verbatim. It was at that time that I cancelled the aforementioned local University clinic injects cycle and decided to wait until LH surge for a CCRM cycle.

3. Failed cycle "post-mortem" with monkey clinic: So what do you think they blamed the failure of the cycle on? If you said "Polly," you're correct. The bastard blamed it on me. Can you believe this? The afternoon of the first negative pregnancy test I asked how to wean off of the Dexamethazone (as my WBC on my CBC were going up and Dex can cover over an infection). They told me that I couldn't wean and I needed to continue the meds until the second [NEGATIVE] pregnancy test - as it could turn into a positive test ... um, yeah, I'm smarter than that. So I told them that I skipped a dose of Dex between the first and second negative pregnancy tests and they said that we'll never know if that caused the lack of pregnancy. (Meanwhile: they've told me MANY times that they give enough drugs that if a girl accidentally forgets to take 1 of them 1 day - that it won't adversely affect the cycle ... but I guess not in this case). Liars. They had us retake our AMH, as I didn't share with them my CCRM values (they think it's been 3/08: 1.0, 11/08: 4.2). They think that we should do the ridiculous poor responder protocol, which we've failed at twice over now ... unless my AMH stays elevated. Then, in that case, they will reconsider a new plan. Whatev, I'm moving on.

4. Waiting for my LH surge to schedule CCRM trip: So considering that the cycle following a failed FET should be similar to a "normal" cycle, I should have surged on 2/12 and was planning on going to Denver around 3/2. Well, come 3/2, I still hadn't even LH surged (ovulated) ... so I finally did (but that lined up with a schedule in Denver that I couldn't make) so eventually, I asked to be put on Prog supps, which extends out luteal phase - which in turn allowed me to get a CCRM schedule that works for me.

So we're all systems go ... unless we hear from AF.

In my next posts perhaps I'll bring you up to date on the emotional and spiritual aspects of these last 6 weeks ... I'm still catching my breath.