AARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, I KNOW I'm being dramatic and that I have lots to be thankful for, but right now I feel as though NOTHING is working for me. IVF #5 has been a pain from the getgo and now it looks like it might get cancelled. (WTF?! - more on that later). Work has been downright painful lately. My child's behavior has been far from angelic and causing me mucho angst. And the latest injury, after such a long hiatus, I'd actually finally spent some time on the home computer this weekend and written up a blog entry. I mailed it to myself at work so I could put on the finishing touches and post it today, but guess what? The email didn't come through! I could really, really scream.

'Course what I'd written almost seems irrelevant, since now I'm totally consumed with why the F*ck my body is not responding and that this cycle might be cancelled, AND the $2000 worth of meds that I might as well have dumped down the drain (not to mention the doctor's fees).

I swear, twice just before we started this cycle I thought to myself that maybe we should delay a month and know I can’t help thinking that it was a huge mistake pushing forward.

We’d been anxious to get started again. So with my first period (early Feb), after the new insurance went into effect (Jan), we started the ball rolling. Of course, I had work and vacation travel planned, and it would require me to stay on the pill for 2 extra days, but no big deal. We were still waiting to find out if the new insurance would actually cover the IVF and my doctor was deciding whether or not we needed to do ICSI and I was realizing that I would have to back out of some travel for work. But none of that was surprising or seemed to be a big deal. Anyway, a couple of weeks go by, there are the inevitable phone calls with the clinic’s financial folks, the insurance company, the pharmacy, but I’m feeling ok. Hell, I’ve done this 4 times already, so I’m feeling pretty relaxed and “been there, done that” about the whole thing. UNTIL I realize that my meds are all new and the method of delivery is new. I’ve never used a pen before and am feeling a bit nervous, but still figure how hard can it be. The pharmacy my insurance contracts with is out of HCG, so they have to transfer part of my prescription. I manage to get all my meds just in time – annoying, but again not a new experience and not the end of the world. I’m scheduled to start my stims on Sunday, Feb 24 (225 follistim, 10 HCG). That evening I’m prepping the counter getting all my supplies together, kind of happy to finally be starting. Then I realize that I do not have the low dose HCG, I only have the HCG for my trigger shot. Keep in mind it’s 8pm on a Sunday. I burst into tears. I fumble around with the box full of paperwork and finally find a phone number to call. I call, leave a message, and wait for the doctor to call me back. He says no worries, just take the follistim and get the HCG in the morning. OK, so that’s a relief, but now my Monday morning is all effed up. Next morning I get up and call the office, BECAUSE it says they have a nurse available starting at 7:30. Guess what when you call you just get the stupid answering machine with no option for the on-call nurse. So I wait until 8am, when they are supposed to start answering their phones. I call at 8, 8:05, 8:10, 8:15 (actually I called many more times than that, I kept hitting redial). Finally, my husband suggests I just drive over since it’s pretty close. I do that, get a prescription, drive to the pharmacy, pick it up. Ok, so things are ok, but I’m increasingly stressed. I won’t bore you with the drama that I had with the follistim pen the first couple of nights. Turns out everything was fine, no big deal, but let’s just say there was added stress that I didn’t need. Anyhoo, I go in for monitoring after two days and my dosages are increased to 375 follistim, 20 HCG. I’m not worried, with the first 4 IVFs I was always slow to stim. But then 2 more days go by, another monitoring appointment and on Friday I get the message to increase to 300 follistim in the AM, another 300 in the PM, and up the HCG to 30. Now I’m getting a bit nervous. ALSO, by the time I get this message it’s 4:15 on Friday. I realize that with the increase in my dose I’ll barely make it to Monday. I call the pharmacy to order a refill – which two days prior they’d confirmed that I had – and, after talking with 2 people and being placed on hold 3 times for a total of 25 minutes, I am told that I can’t get a refill until the doctor submits another authorization!!! What? It’s late Friday. (Note: I’m on my cell phone outside of my daughter’s ballet class at this moment.) So, I choke back my tears, call 411, get the number to the main office of the clinic and dial. I almost cry when someone actually answers the phone. I think I actually yelled into the phone “thank goodness you picked up!” without even saying hello. So, she takes my number and says someone will call back. I wait 30 agonizing minutes and finally the phone rings. The on call nurse says they can’t do anything about the authorization until Monday, but she does have some spare Follistim that I can pick up on Monday morning. I hang up, relieved but so stressed that I burst into tears. I make the mistake of calling my mother. I love her and she is supportive in her own way, but without going into detail about now I’ll just say that I hung up feeling worse.

So the weekend goes by and I am acutely aware that after a week on ever increasing stims I still feel totally NORMAL. There is no swelling, no tenderness, nothing seems to be going on. Except that my belly looks like a really ugly pincushion, something I have not experienced before -- with my past IVFs the injections did not leave me bruised like this. Anyway, I go in this morning and the monitoring doctor didn’t see much follicular activity and actually said the words I was dreading. If my levels haven’t increased much my doctor may call about stopping this cycle and rethinking how they stim. ARGH!!!! Though with my past cycles I was a little slow and produced tons of follicles/eggs, I was NEVER cancelled and it was NEVER even discussed.

So now I sit and wait for the phone to ring. Will it be the nurse with a plan for my meds, or my doctor telling me to cease and desist. With all the uncertainty and stress of IVF, I never expected to be facing a situation like this. I’m really not sure how I will cope. I’ve already been feeling like I’m on the edge. Life is overwhelming me right now. I’ve been feeling as though I fall further behind with every breath and it takes all my energy to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to how I’ve been feeling and I should have postponed this cycle. I can’t dismiss the notion that my state of mind has certainly not been ideal for doing this now. I know I’m not ready to give up yet. If this is cancelled, or fails otherwise, I know that I will tell my husband I want to try again. But I am really tired. I thought the months of time off since the miscarriage (Nov), and the even longer break from treatment (June), would have let me start this new cycle feeling slightly rejuvenated, but I wasn’t and I’m not and I’m too old to wait a long time inbetween cycles, so I think I need to figure a way to move past this funk and fast.

Aren’t you glad I’m back? Some cheery reading huh?