Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The plan is set...

We had our consultation with Dr. Peters at SIRM today and it went really well. I loved him, and Garry said what he says about all Doctors "He's a quack, they just tell you what you want to hear." Thanks hun, that helps a ton. But he agreed that Dr. P had the plan that we felt most comfortable and excited about, so we are going to make the three hour journey (one way) to their office to do our last IVF. I thought it was kinda funny how Dr. P explained things to Garry. He used lots of car analogies and even drew pictures on a dry erase board. Hilarious. Garry was half asleep most the time any way since our appointment time was when he is normally waking up.

But none of that is probably what you are all interested in. You want the details, the new plan. Here are the highlights:

- Dr. P does suspect that I have a Diminished Ovarian Reserve, but he doesn't want to officially label me DOR until we run some more tests.

- I got a script for Day 3 testing, I haven't gotten FSH tested in about two years. At least not that I know of, it is possible Dr. F tested it when ever I came in for my baseline appointments and just never told me the results, or put them in the severely anemic copy of my file. AF should be showing anytime this week so I will get that taken care of ASAP.

- We have an appointment in a month to go to the main office for all of the immune testing, something like 29 tests in total. We will also do the mock transfer, SA, and all the businessy stuff that day in the office. I am very curious to see what all this testing brings back. Dr. F ran 4 tests that were kinda immune related, but nothing coming even close to what Dr. P is planning to do.

- Depending on how the blood work all comes back we will likely do either Lovenox, Intralipids or both with the next cycle. This is going to sound weird, but I hope something comes back wacky so we can do at least the Intralipids. I want to be doing something radically different for the first two failed IVFs.

- He wants to up my stim doses to their max level which was 725 (or 750, I forget which one) at SIRM. Last time I was on a total of 525 Gonal F and 75 Menopur. He might mess with the ratio of Gonal F and Menopur a little also.

- He wants to stim me for 9-10 days as opposed to the 7-8 days I have done on the first two cycles. He hopes this will help me get more mature eggs, even if it means sacrificing a couple because they get over baked.

- We will do ICSI.

- We will do CGH (a genetic test that will tell us if the embryos are able to turn into a successful pregnancy) on all the embryos we produce, and do a 5dt of the normal blasts we get (he said he was ok with transferring two, but hesitant about 3 (if I even get that many)).

I also forgot to ask him a bunch of questions, so I am going to see if I can find an email address that I can send the rest of the questions to. Most importantly for me was about DHEA, I want to know whether or not he recommends it, I have been taking it twice a day for the past three months.

Right now we are hoping we will be able to cycle in December or January. I decided I want to start the New Year knowing what 2012 will bring us. Either we will spend the year planning for a baby being born, or spending it getting ready to start the adoption process. I can honestly say I am excited about both journeys. I would be overjoyed to be pregnant, but I will also be super excited about starting the official adoption process. Either path will lead us to the family we are meant to have.

I was also excited to hear that Dr. P is not as strict with the weight restrictions. Their weight limit for IVF is 350, which I am now well below. But that doesn't mean I am going to slack off on trying to lose more weight. I still want to lose as much is safe before the final attempt. I know being a more healthy weight can only help, so why not do everything I can to give this cycle the best chance possible.

So here we go again. This week we are officially trying again. Oy Vey.