December 2016 - Final Results Summary, All Rounds

Now including the outcome from Round 5

Eggs to Embryos to Blastocysts, All Rounds

December 2016 - IVF #5, Day 5-6

I haven't kept up with my posts this time. This time has ended up quite a bit harder than I expected it to be. 

We are now at the end of round 5. The round we hoped and were fairly sure could be our last. And we have nothing to show for it. 0. 

All 3 embryos made it to Day 5 and were still growing. This was better than I expected since we had that 1-cell embryo on Day 3. I thought that one was not going much further, but it did. That gave me hope. Surely this is good enough news to allow us some confidence in the 7-cell, right? Wrong. 

We were strung out to Day 6, yet again. Michelle reiterated not to get too hopeful for the 1-cell, even though it was still somehow in the mix. Than she called around lunch time on Friday. I was at my desk, and everyone else around me was at lunch. 

"Kelly, I'm not calling with good news," she said, "None of the embryos made it. They all degenerated overnight. I'm so sorry."

I said something in response. It included "Oh no," and "Thank you for hanging in there with us, Michelle."

"I have told Dr. S. He will call you soon, I'm sure. Try to have a restful and good weekend, ok?" she said. We hung up. I sat there a second, realizing how much I had both wanted and even (a little) expected this round to work out. We had figured out a formula. We had like 7 follicles! Shouldn't that have made it ok to assume the odds were good. 

IVF = Isn't Very Fair

Yep. That about covers it. 

My eyes pricked. I called Michael. He had taken the day off and was at home. He knew by the sound of my voice when he answered the phone. 

I still had meetings and a couple things that had to get done at the office before I could leave. No one would have blamed me for chucking it all and just going home. I went to the restroom and cleaned up my eyes in the time I had left before my meeting, which wasn't long. I pushed it all down. Got my emotional shit together and buckled down for the next 3 hours. 

As I pulled out of the garage, I pictured Michael's face waiting for me as I came through the door. The tears started streaming. He was right there when I pulled in and wrapped me in a big warm hug. I cried hard and long. Didn't have to hold it in any longer. 

I didn't know how much this round meant and how much I thought it would work out until that point. My gut reaction to myself when Michelle told me of the total failure was something to the effect of:

"No, this can't be it. 

I'm really not ready to call this the end for my ovaries.

2 might not be enough. I can do it again. 

Can I do it again? 

I just told Michael SEVERAL times this week through tears that I CAN'T do it again. 

Are you crazy? Masochistic? Maybe. 

I bet I can do it again. 

Will Dr. S let us do it again? 

Should we just stop? Oh, God, is this really it?

I can't think about this right now.

I'm just not going to think about it until I get home."

So that's the current question. And I don't know the answer. What will we do? What's next? I don't know and it's a little scary. In so many ways, I don't want to quit, but I'm also exhausted. Thankfully we have lots of options. We'll meet with our doctor sometime in the next week or so to talk about it. Meanwhile we're dealing with the loss of hope from this round. The loss of our 3 little embryos. We've lost so many in this process and it's never easy. 

For all of you who are checking in frequently, thank you for your patience and prayers. I'm sorry I didn't keep up this week. It's been a doozy. I don't have anything snarky or any memes to make it easier. Not there yet. More to come soon, though. 

We are tentatively attending our first IVF support group on Monday night. Not sure how it will go, and it would have been much easier to go with a recent success vs. our now very real failure. But maybe that's the point of going.

December 2016 - IVF #5, Retrieval and Day 1 & 3 Reports

Retrieval went very well, and they were able to get 5 eggs from my follicles.  4 of them were mature enough to attempt fertilization, and 3 of them made it through the first 24hrs.  The attrition has officially begun.

Right now I'm waiting on the Day 3 report.  It's 1:15pm, and still no word from Michelle.  Even though it's just a mid-point report, I still get anxious about what it will reveal.

10 mins later...

Apparently writing about it did the trick!  Michelle called at 1:25pm with the Day 3 update, and it's a mixed bag.  We have gone from 5 eggs, to 4 mature eggs, to 3 fertilized, and now it looks like only 2 are progressing.  We have 1 7-cell embryo, which is perfectly in range and has a 0% fragmentation score, and we have 1 3-cell embryo, which is quite a bit slower and also with 0% fragmentation.  Our 3rd embryo is still at 1-cell stage, which means it has likely failed.  They will keep watching it, but in all reasonable likelihood, it's finished.

With an update to the chart I showed last round, this is where we stand:

Updates with Round 5 Day 3 info included.

Round 5 data added, the dark green stripes indicate embryos that made it to blastocyst stage
(recall, however, that the Round 3 blastocyst failed genetic testing)

We have not been successful with any embryo that was <6 cells on Day 3.  That doesn't make it impossible, just highly improbable that anything but our 7-cell one will make it.  We have also had an 8-cell and 2 6-cells fail between Day 3 and Day 7, so we have had embryos of similar size not make it to the end.  Only time will tell if we will have any success from this round.

The next update is Thursday.

December 2016 - IVF #5, On the way

Alarms went off around 6:15 this morning and now we are driving down the tollway to Piney Point Surgery Center, which is about an hour away. It's raining. It was raining on our trip in for round 4 retrieval. Feels a little de ja vu, of course that seems to be the theme of the last (nearly) 3 years. Though maybe today it's a good sign?

It's been a little over a year since my first procedure on this journey, my D&C.  That day I carried, though Michael ultimately carried, a large Orvis totebag we had gotten as a Christmas gift from my parents a number of years back. It was full of the "just in case" type items: wallet with ID and insurance, chapstick, all my prescriptions in the event they needed to see them, phone, pen, paper, my Kindle, a pair of socks to wear in the procedure, snacks and a bottle of water for Michael and for me afterwards, and a change of underwear (because you never know).  It was a Girl Scout's outpatient kit. 

Today, I carry my phone and a pair of socks in one hand.  Michael carries my ID and insurance.  Done. 

What a difference a year makes. 

Well, here we go.  We will find out how many eggs they get before we leave the facility and what their maturity grading is.  Then The Waiting begins. 

I very much want this to be the last retrieval. 

December 2016 - IVF #5, Trigger Time!

So my estrogen is plateauing and we have a couple 20+ mm follicles, which makes it go time!  Tests today went well, and I got to see my doctor in person, which was reassuring.  As promised, here's some data:

Round 5 blood test and ultrasound results

We have a total of about 7 follicles that are over 10mm as of today, but 1 of them is the "inactive" follicle on my left ovary (hard to tell which one it is now), and only 5 of these are in good range for retrieval of mature eggs.  Dr. S said he would like to see us get 3 good eggs out of the retrieval, given what he saw today.  He will unfortunately be out of town this weekend, so I will have a different doctor doing the retrieval.  Queue the revolving door sound effect as more people get up close and personal with my lady bits.  Sigh...modesty was out the window long ago, I'm afraid.

Here's another bit of interesting data (if in fact you, like me, consider data to be interesting):

Comparing the estrogen trends across all my rounds

This shows that my 4th and 5th rounds have the best and second best estrogen trends, followed closely by the trend from round 1.  And also, that my round 3 was 20 full days of shots...man that was a long round.

So tonight I will take 3 shots at exactly 10:00:00pm.  2 Ovidrel shots and 1 Lupron shot.  Tomorrow morning at 10:00am (at the office, yay!).  If you recall, these are for inducing the final maturation of the eggs over the following 36 hours, so they can be retrieved at their best possible state and ready for fertilization.  My retrieval is scheduled for 9:30am on Saturday.

Next week is the week of waiting.  I'd rather they just keep me under anesthesia until they know the outcome, honestly...

Yep.