coming up for air....

It’s been a long time since I last posted.  Almost two weeks.  An eternity in the blogworld.  Well for those who are reading, I thought I’d give an update.  

When I got to the clinic on the morning of the scheduled embryo transfer, there was a problem.  I hadn’t been feeling well ever since the retrieval a few days earlier, and was a bit bloated, but nothing out of the ordinary.  When we arrived at the clinic, the first thing they make you do, before anything, is go on the scale.  Of course.  Of all the indignities that doctors make you go through, this is the worst.  Forget about the gowns that have a cross-breeze.  Never mind the poking & prodding.  This is the real torture.  When I stepped on the scale, my husband very smartly looked away, so he wouldn’t see my reacting to a non-waif weight.  I winced when I noticed the New Nurse nudging the little scale weights to the right…I started to slightly panic.  No way, I couldn’t have gained any weight… I couldn’t have gained THAT much….10 pounds….in just 5 days!?!  I didn’t even have any chocolate!

The nurse led me & dear husband over to the recovery area, where we were to wait for the staff to summon me for the transfer.  We waited and waited, until our regular nurse came over to me and said she needed to see my belly.  She placed her hands on my stomach and assessed my girth like a crystal ball.  “We’re just checking to make sure you are ok, that you didn’t hyperstimulate”.  Hyperstimulation is one of the rare but very dangerous & potentially life threatening side effects of the IVF drugs.  Very scary indeed.

I was immediately whisked to the procedure room, where the nurse performed a quick  ultrasound, and whisked back to the recovery room.  More waiting.  Dear husband looks at me and says “I bet we don’t do the transfer today.”  I can’t think straight.  My optimism was wearing thin.  Usually he’s right about these things, but I don’t want to know the truth.  We are being tested yet again – another hurdle.  What else?

The waiting is getting more difficult, as I have more-than-full bladder, which is a requirement for the embryo transfer procedure.  I once was denied from going to the bathroom for over 4 hours whilst on an Egged bus from the middle of Israel to Haifa many years ago.  I keep telling myself that if I could do that, I could wait a few more minutes before having a meltdown.  Of course, my bladder was 12 years younger, and I wasn’t hyped up on industrial strength hormones back then.  

Husband & I hear voices…shoes shuffling…many shoes…and the curtain to our recovery area opens.  We are visited by the doctor, two nurses and two embryologists.  A staff meeting.  Not a good sign.  We are told that I am on the verge of hyperstimulating.  On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being bad), I am a 9…I am this close to landing myself in the hospital.  The doctor explains to me that he would like to do the embryo transfer, but if I he did, and I became pregnant, he could guarantee I would be in intensive care within days.  Basically my body kept stimulating, even though I was off of the Gonal-F ovarian stimulation drugs.  This explains my gaining of 10 pounds (of fluid in my abdomen)…my discomfort, everything.  The doctor tells me that the option now is to do a frozen embryo transfer in a few months.  A FEW MONTHS??      

My main concern at that moment wasn’t pregnancy.  It was getting well.  I was scared.  What if I sneezed wrong?  What if I moved the wrong way?  Would my ovaries erupt?  Would I be in immeasurable pain? When will my body return to normal?  

For the next week, I was on bedrest.  I watched a lot of horrible tv.  I took more drugs to decrease the swelling.  I felt like an amoeba just breathing for the sake of medication and sleeping.  

Now that I’ve pretty much recovered, I feel like I am in a holding pattern until I start the drugs again to prepare myself for the frozen embryo transfer cycle.  I don’t know if I can do this again.   If G-d forbid, this does not work in a few months, I don’t think I want to spend more money, time, and emotional heartbreak on IVF.  I just want to be a parent.  I want to be somebody’s Mommy.  I want my husband to be a Daddy.  He would really be good.  I want to share that with him.  He deserves it, and I do too!