18 posts tagged “ivf”

The bad news was made official at 8 A.F.M. this morning.  In a nuthsell, we're fighting a loosing battle.  For the sperm, they like a count of around 20 Million.  I produced 10 Million.  For motility the number should be around 50%; mine was a whopping 14%.  Not great numbers, but not horrible either.  With IFV the sperm are handled individually and shoved into the egg, so it's not a problem.

On Wife's side, the doctor said she's seen women in their early 40s get pregnant, but it's hard.  By this time most of the eggs are brittle and dried up.  We've been getting embryos with random chromosome damage (missing 21, extra 18, etc.)  Maybe 70% of the eggs out there in women over 40 are genetically abnormal in some way.  Given all that, our changes of birthing a healthy baby with our own genetic material is around 10%.  Wife was distraught by this, and left he appointment in tears (which she NEVER does).

Going forward, our options include using a donor egg (got any for sale???) and adoption.  Donor eggs have about a 65% success rate, but cost (in very round numbers) $11,000 for the fertility drugs, $7,000 fee for the donor, and $3,000 for an agents' fee for someone who will help you work your way through this maze and help you find good, healthy eggs.

Adoption is about the same -- $20K - $30K and long waits per child.  Which makes me think about what I really want.  Do I really want to do my bit to save the world by adopting one or two needy children from whatever country?  I need to think about this.  Right now my Ambien is kicking and and I can't remember shit about what I was trying to do 5 mins ago.

Four little eggs.  Such teeny, fragile things.  And so ephemeral.  Gotta us 'em while they're fresh; they don't last very long.  One was too small, so it didn't get fertilized.  That leaves three little eggs.

One failed the polar body testing -- it had an extra chromosome 22, which would have caused it to not go to term.  Two little eggs left.

Now they're bigger; multi-celled blastocysts that can be biopsied.  One had an extra copy of chromosome 21 – downs syndrome – so it's goodbye to that baby.  That leaves one.

This afternoon we get a call from the IVF doctor scheduling us for the insertion tomorrow at 7 A.M.  Great!  We made it!  We're in like Flynn.  Then we another call from our genetic counselor.  She has a Ph.D. in biology.  I took high school biology.  I hated it.  All those dead frogs staked in trays, and the room always smelled like Formaldehyde.  *yeech*  I'm trying to understand all of this.

Somehow our last remaining embryo is missing a chromosome (22, I think).  They're recommending against insertion.  They tell me this after the call to schedule the appointment.  So not only is it Game Over (again), but I had my hopes doubly dashed.

Thank you, everyone, for your kind wishes, thoughts, and prayers.  It's all much appreciated. 

Right now I'm a little numb, but mostly what I feel is a sense of relief.  In baseball, once you hit the ball there's nothing else you can do to help it.  The ball travels along it's trajectory based on the initial force and environmental factors (wind, gravity).  It's either caught or it's not (yes, I know you can run faster, but that's not the point). 

My part is done, for the moment, and I feel a huge sense of relief.  Aurora Snow and I spent a wonderful 10 minutes together in the bathroom (twice.  I figure it couldn't hurt) which contributes somewhat to my sense of relief.  But mostly it's that this part is over.  It's all in the hands of God, Nature, and a few scientists, not necessarily in that order.

We left the house so early it was still last night.  The sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon.  Sunrise is supposed to be this big romantic thing.  To me, it was more like coming home really really late.  The fog of sleep deprivation prevented more than a cursory glance.

We arrived at the hospital at 6 AM, and spent most of the next two hours waiting for the doctor to arrive.  I dozed on and off, while Wife was interviewed by the night shift nurses, then the day shift nurses, then the anesthesiologists.  They kept asking me if I knew where the doctor was.  The idea that I would know before the hospital staff was just a little scary.  She finally showed up about 8, and wheeled Wife out of the room.  I went back to sleep, then 15 minutes later was woken up as the medical team wheeled her back into the room. 

The doctor gave me the rundown, but in my sleep-deprived haze I only vaguely recall what she said.  The bottom line is that four eggs were retrieved, two more than last time, which gets my hopes up.  The fertilization is happening in a lab this afternoon, and we'll get the results of the pre-implantation genetic testing probably Monday.  I think that's very important to do, even though the cost isn't covered by insurance.  At our advanced age, the chances of genetic deformations are larger than I want to think about.

If all goes well, the implantation will be Thursday morning.

In the concept of mindfulness I know you're supposed to enjoy the moment.  Be present right now, without attachment or judgment.  But what if you don't like the present moment?  What if you just want the moment to end, so you can get to the next one.  What if you don't enjoy the process any more, but just want to skip ahead to the results.  Good or bad.

The anticipation of tomorrow is starting to get to me.  I feel nervous in the pit of my stomach.  Like I'm going to the hospital for surgery, except I'm not.  My part is easy.  I shouldn't be worried.  Wife's the one getting poked and prodded.  I really hate hospitals.  Whether I'm a patient or visitor, they make me nervous and uncomfortable.  They smell funny.  And there are germs everywhere.

P.S.  I saw a great bumper sticker tonight:  The Best Things In Life Are Not Things.  At the risk of sounding like a total sap, I think that's true.  If you have health, happiness (or at least contentment), and maybe some love you're doing pretty good.

Wife went in for another ultrasound and blood check this morning.  Everything looks good.  She's down to six good follicles now.  The extraction is set for Saturday morning.  We have to be at the hospital at 6:30.  That's A.M.  Wife asked if I was sitting down before she told me.  I was already so tired this morning I could barely move.  I laid in bed for 15 minutes this morning, just petting Stinky, trying to gather the will power to make it as far as the shower.

Hi.  My wife and I can't seem to get pregnant and it's really becoming a problem. 

After the last attempt was unsuccessful, Wife moped around and was depressed for a while.  I waited for all the bills to come in.  Now it appears that we have about enough money for one more stab at IVF (pun intended), with the help of some drugs generously donated by our fertility clinic.  We're using slightly different meds this time, adding Bravelle and Leupro to the Gonal-F.  The injections began Friday and within a day she began getting a lot of side effects like headaches, stomach pain, tiredness, and irritation of the injection site.

For me, honestly it's all somewhat of a blur until the extraction, tentatively scheduled for Friday or Saturday.  That's when I get (or have) to do my part, which is merely show up on time and jerk off into a little plastic container.  Wife, on the other hand, gives herself one injection every morning, and two every evening.  Her lower abdomen has a lovely purple design from all the subcutaneous blood spilled by the injections.  It would be pretty in an abstract art painting.  Not so much on wife's body.

Yes, I plan on cutting down my bicycling mileage this week in anticipation (not that I'm riding any serious distances at the moment).  I'm trying to eat more vitamins and fruit.  And generally take care of myself in anticipation of my big (but brief) involvement in the process.  The rest of the time I try to be a supportive husband holding her hand and wincing in sympathy pain.

I haven't written about this before because, well, I just haven't.  I'm still trying to verbalize exactly how I feel, other than generally nervous.  As of her ultrasound Monday morning she had eight good-sized follicles, each of which could produce one or more eggs.  This would put us significantly ahead of the first time, when we had four or five follicles that only produced two eggs.  I'm just riding along in auto pilot mode until I can get a better grip on my feelings.  I think they're there; just tucked away into a nice, safe corner of my psyche.

Maybe a good, long road trip will help sort things out.  I could leave Thursday....

Instead I'm hiding out at SBUX, enjoying a leisurely breakfast.  Wife and I met with the cute fertility doctor (hereafter referred to as Dr. Hotness) at 7 AFM this morning.  We're still waiting for the rest of the bills from the IVF to roll in, but I think we've used about $20K of our $25K insurance limit.  Our out-of-pocket costs will probably come to 15% - 20% of that and we really don't have a lot more to add.  I wanted to discuss some of the results from previous testing (they did a sperm count on me during the IVF process and my numbers were low, but not terrible) and discuss next steps.  What can we do with around $5K, since another round of IVF is, unfortunately, unattainable.

My visiting a urologist is not likely to produce any functional results.  Dr. Hotness recommended IUI, which is doing the same regiment of fertility drugs for a couple of weeks to produce lots of super strong eggs, then trying to get pregnant the old fashioned way.  We lose the advantage of genetic testing and the odds of success are lower than with IVF.  But it's much less expensive, we have some drugs left over from last time, and the clinic has a program where they get samples and donated drugs to help defray the cost.  My sperm counts are good enough that this has a reasonable chance of success.  We'll start in a few weeks, at Wife's next cycle.

You can't imagine how happy this made her.  She's been mopey and depressed for weeks now, afraid that we'll never become parents, that her dream is over, life as we know it is coming to an end, blah blah blah.  I'm tenacious.  I know there was more we could do, we just needed to figure out how to fit a square peg in a round hole.

This also means that I'm guaranteed to get laid in about 5 or 6 weeks.  Mark your calendar.

I had another enlightening conversation with the fertility clinic the other day, where the suggested that, since I am a man and biologically incapable of having an egg implanted in me, that my insurance would not cover IVF.  So, I called my mostly worthless health insurance company, spent 20 minutes on hold waiting for a supervisor, and yes indeed, they don't cover men for IVF.  If Wife was on my plan it might be covered, after submitting a letter of predetermination from our doctor, but not me.  They cover sperm aspiration (thankfully not necessary in our case -- I can still get them out the old fashioned way) and some diagnostic testing, but not any procedures that will help us.

This sucks, and has put a big dent in our plans, hopes, dreams, and urban renewal.  Wife has become very depressed.  She's mopey, drinking too much at night, and not really giving a shit about anything around our place.  I'm tenacious by nature, and not ready to give up yet.  I'll talk to a  (an?) Urologist to see if there's anything I can do to get my numbers up.  I also want another session our Fertility doctor to see if there's something less expensive than IVF we can try.  We still haven't received final numbers on costs, but I think we'll have a few thousand left in coverage on Wife's insurance -- not enough for a round of IVF, but there's gotta be something we can try.

I have an MRI scheduled on my right knee scheduled for Friday night.  All the major joints in my body are stiff and sore -- knees, elbows, shoulders.  Getting down on my knees for 10 minutes last night to plug some cables into the back of a computer was torture.  And I'm already taking 600mg Ibuprofen three times per day.  Something's got to change.  The pain is making me cranky and short tempered -- even more so than usual.

Oh, and on top of all the other fun I've been having, our heating system broke yesterday afternoon.  It's 20 degrees outside and only slightly warmer inside. The boiler people were called, heat came on once about 10pm, and that was it for the night.  They got called again this morning, and someone is rooting around in the valves and thermostats now.  The thermometer in the living room, which usually reads high, says 61 right now.  Even the cats are wearing turtleneck sweaters.

The PGD testing (specifically, the polar body test) of the two eggs did not produce good results.  The first had an extra chromosome 21, which causes Down Syndrome.  The second had an "abnormal" chromosome 16, which causes miscarriage in the first trimester.  Neither are suitable for implantation.  So that's it.  $12k in drugs, who knows how much in doctor and hospital bills, a month of our lives, huge emotional ups and downs, and nothing to show for it.

To say I'm upset and depressed doesn't even begin to cover it.  We get details tomorrow when we meet with the fertility doctor at 7 AFM.  I'm too upset to write more right now.

"Life is hard, and so am I" goes the opening line.  I've been thinking a lot about that today.  Did he mean hard as in erect?  Or hard as in a rock?  Or hard like an egg shell?

The news from the hospital this morning wasn't great.  Ultrasounds done two days ago showed eight follicles, each of which generally produces one egg.  Except in our case.  For some reason that I don't understand (yet), The Great Pincushion only produced two eggs, so we don't have any extras to freeze.  We were hoping to have enough leftovers for at least one more attempt, should things not work out this time.

There are still several more hurdles to overcome.  We won't know until tomorrow whether either of the eggs are any good.  And then comes the PGD -- pre-emplantation genetic diagnosis -- which could rule out any of the eggs or post fertilization preembryos.  Then will they implant?  Will they stay?  Etcetera.  All it takes is one good egg and one good sperm.  Getting them together just takes too damn much work.

In an ironic twist, our infertility doctor (who is a total babe, by the way) was there showing off her new son to the nurses.  I can understand it if she hasn't been at the hospital for a while and everyone wants to see the new baby, but it seems almost cruel to bring an infant along on to infertility case. 

P.S.  I almost forgot my part in the adventure.  I was ushered into a stinky little room with a toilet, dvd/tv combo attached to the ceiling, and a rack full of incredibly dog eared copies of four-year-old Playboys, Penthouses, and a Gallery.  Pretty disgusting.  For my purposes, I came equipped with my "entertainment", but it's still a pretty tacky room.   I wonder what it would be like if women had to produce the samples instead of men.  What kinds or types of porn would there be for women to ejaculate?  Or toys?  I think that would be an interesting design project.