One down, lots to go....

Today is the start!! I am soo excited. However, my day did not start off well. This morning, I just needed to start taking my Doxycycline (antibiotic). I took it at 6 am, since that would be the time I would normally take it when I work and then went back to sleep. About 45 mins later I woke up and ran to the bathroom and threw it (and my dinner from last night) up! BUMMER....

I had an appointment with Dr. Carnovale today anyway to go over my surgery stuff. So I told him what happened and he said to try and eat with it tonight (I take it twice a day) and see how it goes. If I throw it up then he wrote me a prescription for a new drug. 

In the evening I needed to take the Lupron (shot in the belly) and Aspirin and try the Doxycycline again. 

Here is how the Lupron went....

 The shot goes in.....

 That hurt worse than I thought!

And the Lupron BURNS!!!

Aspirin went fine (it is a pill :) and I took the Doxycycline about 30 mins ago and it is still in me....so far so good!

So this will be my routine until June 4th and then I will add more belly shots!! I have an ultrasound on June 3rd, I will post more then!

Have a good Memorial Day!

There was something in there!

My hysteroscopy yesterday went well. We arrived at the surgery center at 6 am, they started my IV and I got visits from Dr. Carnovale and the anesthesiologist (Dr. Kiley) and then they took me back to the OR. I laid down with my arms out to the side (felt weird doing this and not being the one working around the pt.) I then felt this intense burning in my arm all the way up to my shoulder....it was the Propofol (knock out med) I just kept thinking I wanted to go to sleep so I couldn't feel it anymore! The next think I knew I was waking up to those stupid SCD's (things on my legs that puff up every so often)....oh how I hate those! The nurse asked if I was cramping and I was...badly! She gave me some Fentanyl...didn't help. They then took me back to the room I started in and there was Matt! The brought me a warm blanket to put on my belly (didn't work) while the nurse went to see if I could get some Toradol through my IV. She came back and said that I bled a little too much so I couldn't have any Toradol or Ibuprofen! Wonderful! That is all that works for me and my cramps!! I asked Matt what Dr. Carnovale said and he said that there was some polyp in my uterus and he had to do a D&C to get it out. For those of you that do not know, a D&C is a procedure they do mostly after a miscarriage. I don't meet with Dr. Carnovale until the 24th, so I won't know the exact details until then. We got home and I slept most of the day. I think they gave me a million liters of fluid because I kept waking up to pee! I never do that! Today was better, cramps still there but better...more like period cramps.

The next step starts in t-minus 10 days....I begin taking these....

They arrived the other day..I went through all of them and made sure I know what was what. I love that they sent me a sharps container, I was wondering what to do with all those needles!

More to update soon!

Something to keep...

Okay, another post. Before our first IUI I started journaling on a website...I had, until recently, totally forgotten about it. I got an e-mail today that said that unless I got the paid version I was going to loose all of it. I didn't want to because I wrote alot that one and only time. So I thought I would share it here. Keep in mind that it is old!! Like around November.....


I decided to start journaling becauase I needed an outlet. Over the last year my life has changed dramatically, for the good and the bad. I got married to a WONDERFUL man and we started out lives together. Thats when it all got hairy...the living part.
For a little background, I have wanted kids since I was a kid. I couldn't wait to get married and start a family. The joy a baby/child brings into your life is amazing and I couldn't wait to experience it.
Well, I got married and couldn't wait to start trying to have a family and thankfully my husband felt the same. I knew it wouldn't come as easy as some people (I had been on birth control for 10+ years for irregular periods, which I stopped upon returning from our honeymoon), so I went to the doctor to be educated on trying to conceive. I may be an OB RN but I didn't know a thing about getting pregnant, I knew what to do 9 months later! I never got a visit from aunt flo after stopping my pills, I met with the doctor about 6 weeks after stopping the pills. She informed me on what a regular cycle should look like and when I should ovulate, etc. She also drew some blood to see if my hormones were all in check. The blood work came back showing my Prolactin level was elevated, so my OBGYN put me on a pill (for which I got every side effect in the book) to lower it and said to have it rechecked in 6 weeks and to montior my cycles and try to get pregnant. So we did.....I started peeing on ovulation sticks at that point, I believe it was around September. I remember getting up every morning and peeing on this little stick, only to tell me that I wasn't ovualting. Then one morning (I was off work that day and Matt was at work), I got up peed on my stick, set it down on the counter and started brushing my teeth like usual. When I went over to look at the stick to see my negative result, when low and behold it was POSITIVE! I was so excited, I took a picture with my phone and sent to Matt!! For the next few days we "tried to get pregnant" as often as possible. Then came the dreaded two week wait....the longest 14 days of my life! The end of that 2 weeks was also about the time I needed to have my blood drawn again. So I went to the doctor and asked to have and HCG drawn with my Prolactin level, the did. My doctor called the next day to tell me that not only was I not pregnant, but my Prolactin had stayed the same. At this point she said it was a little beyond her and I needed to see an infertility specialist, so she sent me to see Dr. Carnovale. I had my first appt with him on Feb. 4th, that is when this infertility journey began.....
Since then I have had many ultrasounds, a procedure where they put saline up in my uterus while looking at it with and ultrasound to check for polyps/fibroids (this one hurt...apparently my cervix does not want anything passing through it), a laproscopic surgery to correct endometriosis, and switched the route and medication to lower my Prolactin. Here it is mid Novemeber over a year later and still no pregnancy. My Prolactin level is normal, but my cycles are 50-60 days in length and I don't always ovulate. So after meeting with Dr. Carnovale again he wanted to go straight to IVF. I was all for it, I figured it would work and I would be pregnant! Then the price bomb got dropped on us....even with the discount I get for being a hospital employee, the cost was way more than we could afford. Matt said that we could borrow money from our parents, and various other resources but then we would have no money to prepare for the baby it produced. I think that is when I became a little depressed. In my eyes, the only way (I thought) that I could for sure get pregnant was out of our reach and we would never have a baby. On top of that Dr. Carnovale wanted me to have some more blood work done to see if I was infertile. I sat there and thought about what I would do if this was true....my life has depended on my ability to have children......I couldn't fathom a life without having children. Matt said we could just get a donor egg or adopt....I can't see either one of those being an option for me. I want my children to look like myself and Matt, not someone else. This is when I started losing hope. Matt has been as supportive as a man can be, but he just doesn't understand. I spend so many days at work delivering babies to people who don't deserve them and it sucks....and yet god won't give me one!
It is hard to express my feelings with this......
I told Dr. Carnovale we couldn't do IVF and he suggested we try taking Clomid, then HCG to trigger ovulation then IUI. It is costly, but not as bad. So that is where we are....I took Clomid on days 5-9 of this cycle. I am now CD10, I have an ultrasound on Wednesday 11/17 to check follicle size and hopefully we will do IUI this week! I am excited, but I am also trying to stay neutral as I have been burned so many times so far.

It's Beginning!!

Today was a good day. I was looking forward to this day ever since they called and made the appointment. Nothing really happened, but to me is signified the official start of the IVF process!
My appointment today was with Sara (a wonderful RN at Dr. Carnovale's office) where she gave me a packet...

In this packet was everything I needed to know about the upcoming "procedure." First there was my calendar, which has all the drugs I will be taking throughout the whole process.

•  I will start with the Lupron, which is a shot in my belly. This drug basically shuts down my ovaries to prevent them from helping us out!  That way Dr. Carnovale can control what my body does. I take that until the actual egg retrieval. 
• After a few days of that I start Follistim and Menopure which are both ovarian stimulating medications. These are also shots in my belly. I will also take both of these until the egg retrieval. 
• During this process I will also take aspirin and an antibiotic.
• After the retrieval I start taking Progesterone (a very important hormone in pregnancy). This shot is the one I am least looking forward to. It is an intramuscular injection and it goes in my butt. I have heard it hurts.....

Also in my packet are info sheets on some of the medications, instruction sheets on how to give injections (I have that one down!), and a 30 or so page consent that Matt and I both have to sign and have notarized! 

Sara told me how the retrieval would go, that I would be under conscious sedation (basically asleep) and then for the transfer I will take a Valium. I have never taken that before, so it should be interesting. 

After meeting with Sara, we were sent over to Dr. Boldt's office. He is the man that will put our "specimens" (my egg and Matt's sperm) together and watch to make sure they do what we need them to. This was very informative. He went through every part of his process and explained what he wanted to see and what he didn't want to see. He also mentioned several times how he thought we had a very good shot at getting pregnant. I needed to hear that because lately I have been wavering on that. There are some days where I think we will come out of this with a baby and then there are others where I don't. 

I got home and called a pharmacy that Sara had set up for my medications. They are like a mail order pharmacy that deals with specialty medications such as fertility, chemo/caner, etc. With this phone call, we made our first major purchase for the IVF......WOW. I am not ashamed to say how much this is costing us so I will clue you in on the cost of just the medications....$1769.31. That isn't including the aspirin or the birth control pills I have been on for a couple of months. This amount is less than what we budgeted for, which is a plus, but it is still a major cost!

Well, now that I have written a book on here I will go. My hysteroscopy is next Friday, the 13th. I will update after that :)