Friday, September 20, 2019

Looking "Eggcellent"

Whew! What a bumpy ride I've had so far!!

On Monday I started the Follistim and by Tuesday night I was miserably sick with a low grade fever, chills, sweats, and the works. I felt like I had the flu which really concerned me. I wasn't sure if being sick could affect the process or if I was having some horrible reaction to the medication. I was reading the package insert of the meds and a "serious side effect" of flu-like symptoms was listed with the recommendation to call your doctor immediately. Great. 

So I got on the phone and they got me in touch with the on call fertility doctor at the clinic. She reassured me that it was probably a huge coincidence and that I probably just caught something going around. What horrible timing! So all of Tuesday night and Wednesday morning I was feeling like death, but by Wednesday evening I was feeling like an entirely different person! Whatever I had it ravaged my body very quickly and left quickly as well. 

Other than that, I have been doing really well! Day's 1-3 I haven't had any symptoms at all from the medication. Today is day 4 and I can definitely feel my ovaries when I bend left or right and I've been getting some minor cramping and twinges from them as well. It hasn't been a big deal and to be honest, it is kind of a relief to actually feel something because I know that the medication is working. 

Today I had my first monitoring appointment. Things are looking great! I've got 8-10 follicles on each ovary ranging from about 10-13mm each which is an excellent number to begin with! I have a couple of bigger follicles and a few smaller ones as well, but they might not amount to anything, only time will tell! My doctor was very pleased with how I'm progressing. My Estrogen level is fairly high and so she changed my "Trigger" medication that will trigger the eggs to release when we need them to for the retrieval. For those of you IVF-savvy it was changed from an HCG trigger to a Lupron only trigger which should reduce my risk of OHSS.

Each follicle should house one egg... so we are looking at an estimated egg count of around 20 as of right now. Not all of those eggs will be mature, not all will fertilize, and not all will make it to the important blastocyst stage that they need to to freeze. So just because we get 20 eggs doesn't mean that we will have 20 embryos to work with... only time can tell. But my RE reassures me that it is a great number to work with. :) 

I go back for another ultrasound and more labwork on Monday and we will go from there! Hopefully the follicles continue to grow at a steady pace. We are looking at an estimated retrieval on Wednesday or Thursday... it continues to get SO REAL!

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