Ready to pop

Ok.. so for reference, here is the text of an email that I sent out to some friend's on Monday..

"hi all,

warning: this is going to be a long vent.

disclaimer: i'd like to reiterate the fact that i'm married to the most wonderful person in the world.. more on this later...

vent: so.. my wonderful cycle has come grinding to a halt (hopefully only a pause.. )..

story: so i went in for my cd9 monitoring yesterday morning. it went REALLY bad. to the point where after i send this email, i'm going to be putting together a letter to Toth to fill him in on my thoughts.

we started off in a great mood.. we were joking about everything and anything and spent a good part of the morning laughing.. up to the monitoring fiasco. i met a new RE at mgh (harris, i think) and he walked in with a young woman and they introduced themselves.. all well and good. she is a resident and was getting some "hands on" ultrasound training. i immediately got stressed.

anywho.. i tried to brush my anxiety aside yesterday and told myself that obviously people need to actually do ultrasounds to get a feeling for it all and there's no way to learn it out of a book. so she poured about half a bottle of lube (again.. no joke.. i'm still cleaning up) onto the wand and went for it. she stirs around in there for a while and then says "there's the uterus..." and pauses and looks at the RE and says "right?...".. to which he responds "yes.. that's where the baby will implant". at this point, i almost told them to get out..

again.. told myself that i was just being hormonal and that it was ok..

then she measures my lining.. she comes up with 6mm at a faint triple line.. at this point shiela and i look at each other. on friday, my lining was still homogeneous, but it was 7mm.. how could it get thinner?

then she starts rooting for my right ovary.. she couldn't find it and decided to look at my left side instead. she found the follie that was 10mm on friday. she measured 10mm.. i still don't believe the measurement.. i've had enough ultrasounds to have a general knowledge of what it all looks like.. and she didn't measure the largest diameter view of that follie. then she sees a smaller one and says "that's just the same one, right?".. the RE says that it doesn't look like it and tells her to measure it anyway.. i twas down around 6mm. the rest were tiny. whenever the other REs have done ultrasounds, even when we're on cd3 and everything is just like little bubbled.. i can always see the definition of the little circles and how they can manipulate the view to count them up... this time, we could barely make out the larger follies. she was also barely inside of me..

so at this point i asked about the fact that it hadn't grown.. and was that "normal".. the RE then proceeded to give me a lecture about how we don't want things to grow too fast and that we're only trying for one mature follie. i was like "no shit.. you're kidding me.. if i didn't know that.. and didn't want that level of conservatism.. i'd be a flippin BIVF still".. but i held my hormones in check and just bit my lip.

so now she goes back to the right side to try to find that ovary again. she swishes around for a while until the RE finally stops her and points to the ovary. now.. they usually have to press a bit on that side to get a good view of that ovary.. so it didn't surprise me that she couldn't find a good view.. but i was pissed enough that i wasn't about to offer any assistance.

then she says.. "well.. there doesn't seem to be anything measurable on this side.." to which the doc responds "ok.. just pick one representative follicle and measure that for the record".. she measures a 6mm and says "several 6mm or less". at this point i lost a bit of my control.. i held it together, but i said (relatively calmly).. "on friday i had two 7s, an 8 and a 9.. where did they go? is this normal?" to which the RE responds "well we'll look at your E2 and then decide whether to adjust your meds.." and went on to talk about how they have to modify dosages to get one and only one good mature follie.. i was sick of being lectured about the fact that they are conservative and bit my lip again and waited for her to take that damned thing out of me so i could escape.

i didn't say a word as they did the standard "ok.. we'll call you later.. blah blah blah". i didn't make eye contact as they said goodbye and left the room. i didn't even make a full turn toward shiela before she said "they're wrong.. she's a bleeping moron".. or something to that effect. i burst into tears.. just totally lost it. we finally agreed to get out of there and when the nurse called we'd tell her what happened and demand to be seen again this morning and that we'd also tell them never to come near me with a student again. i finally pulled myself together and we left the room.

as we were walking out, we saw that dr toth's nurse was on for the day.. thank god. i tapped on her door and asked if we could talk to her.. she took one look at my red poofy eyes and took us right in and closed the door. we explained what happened and she was absolutely wonderful.. she explained that my E2 won't lie and that she'll watch for my results and if there is any hint that my follies are more mature than what the ultrasound showed, she'd call the doctor on it and make sure it didn't slip through the cracks. i was terrified that i'd go in on tuesday and they'd have several follies over 18mm and i'd get cancelled.

so we left.. this is when shiela kicked into gear as the most wonderful spouse.. i was in tears on and off throughout the day, but she was able to still make me laugh. she joked about us having to walk out through the waiting room and how all the hormonal women in there would see my red eyes (it was really hysterical.. when i'm REALLY upset my face turns bright red and blotchy and blows up like a balloon).. and they'd all burst into hysterics too.. we then went to the container store in newton to shop (like all good IF women) and she accidentally made a TOTAL fool out of herself. we were tucked in an aisle that was short and out of the main area and there was a good song on so i did a little dance.. a few minutes later, we were in the next aisle.. and shiela ripped into a dance.. totally goofball dancing.. she was shaking her butt and had one leg in the air and both arms up.. i only half saw the movement and by the time i turned to look (and laugh), she had noticed that our aisle was indeed open to the entire store and several shoppers had stopped to stare with odd expressions on their faces.. it still makes me laugh to think about how mortified she was.. there's no way to save yourself from something like that!

anywho.. i got the call back from barbara shortly after we got home. turns out my progress had tanked.. my E2 went from 74 to 80.. that's it. she said that her guess was that the follies didn't shrink, but they also hadn't grown much if anything.. and that while the resident's u/s was a waste of time, they hadn't missed anything major and i wasn't at risk for being cancelled because things had progressed beyond what they'd want. they increased my dosage of follistim from 75 units to 100 units and i'm going in tomorrow to see if that has helped.

i'm feeling a bit better today. my stress yesterday triggered a major migraine.. so i took some tylonol w/ codeine and slept like a rock. it's ironic/unfortunate that my progress tanked at exactly the time where a moron did my ultrasound.. i have absolutely no idea what to expect tomorrow morning. i'm going to put a letter together outlining my concerns.. my main issue is the fact that given the invasiveness of this whole procedure, they should ask the patient whether it's ok to have an inexperienced trainee do an ultrasound.. some people may be fine with it.. i was not. they should also have the RE repeat the ultrasound if there are any inconsistencies. i straight out told them that there were larger follies two days ago and was worried about what was being said and they brushed me off. the RE should have sat down and repeated the scan and confirmed on the spot whether there was anything to be concerned about. instead they ignored my concerns and even ignored the fact that i very visibly shut down at the end of the scan.. any doctor worth his salt would have noticed how upset i was and taken even a minute to explain. the nurse took that time and i plan to rave about her in my letter. the doctors also should watch their friggin mouths.. it is NOT acceptable to throw around a phrase like "that's where the baby will implant". while some women may be ok with this type of bedside manner, many.. especially on the 7th friggin IUI cycle.. find it offensive.

anywho.. sorry for the length of this.. i'm doing better today.. i'll be doing much better after tomorrow when i have a real ultrasound."



so that was over the weekend and it's now Thursday. this morning i had the same RE from Sunday and he had a resident with him again (a different one this time). something must have been said, because it was a completely different experience. I was asked twice whether it was ok for the resident to do the ultrasound (i said no.. but that she could stay in the room) and the RE was pleasant as punch. so.. the update?

I have one mongo follie at 21mm on my right side and a bunch that are 10-11mm and smaller. My lining is clear triple layer and is 10.5mm thick. I'm still waiting for my E2 results, but it is looking pretty positive that I'll trigger tonight for lucky #7 IUI on Saturday morning.. yay!