Lilypie

Friday, October 31, 2008

I BIG PUFFY heart you!


The following wonderful, supportive, strong, inspirational, caring gals recently honored me with the "I Heart Your Blog Award": Emily from No Expectations Except a Baby, Jill from Maybe Baby, and Megan from Lawyers Do Not Eat Their Young. Thank you so much ladies! I heart all of you as well and certainly heart your fabulous blogs.

Now, the way this works, is I answer the following questions with single word responses, and pass the award on to 7 other bloggers:

1. Where is your cell phone? Next to me
2. Where is your significant other? Downstairs
3. Your hair color? Blond
4. Your mother? Selfless
5. Your father? Sweet
6. Your favorite thing? Vacation
7. Your dream last night? Weird
8. Your dream/goal? Happiness
9. The room you're in? Bedroom
10. Your hobby? Reading
11. Your fear? Failure
12. Where do you want to be in six years? Moved
13. Where were you last night? Home
14. What you're not? Mommy
15. One of your wish list items? Children
16. Where you grew up? Kentucky
17. The last thing you did? Read
18. What are you wearing? Clothes
19. Your T.V.? Off
20. Your pet? Sonny
21. Your computer? Laptop
22. Your mood? Anxious
23. Missing someone? Grandmother
24. Your car? Chrysler
25. Something you're not wearing? Shoes
26. Favorite store? Macy's
27. Your Summer? OK
28. Love someone? Many
29. Your favorite color? Blue
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? Awhile

Now, I'd like to pass this award to 7 bloggers who excite me when they publish a new entry:

Our Journey

Maybe If You Just Relax

Planet Davila

Journey For Baby Reilly

Our Story: A Blog About Infertility, IVF, and Adoption

No Regrets

Conception Deception

There are so many others....but these all stand out for me. All are in different stages of our journey towards motherhood. But all are similar-I admire and their strength and determination. Thanks for your continued examples of persistence, hope, support and love.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

First Lupron shot-done!

I began Lupron shots last night for our upcoming transfer. Strangely enough, I was looking forward to my old friend Lupron returning. This actually signals to me that we're finally off and running. I didn't feel that way when I began my BCPs on 10/20. So, FET-here we come!

And Denver-here we come! I finally got our flights, hotel, and rental car all booked for our Thanksgiving adventure. We are getting in early (~11am) on Thanksgiving Day so that we can get settled in. Well, that's only partly true. Steve felt we really needed to be there before football games got underway, particularly the Cowboys game. So, looks like he got his wish. We've been wondering about where we'll have our Thanksgiving feast. Who knows what will be open? Chinese? I did the Chinese Christmas dinner alone several years ago when I was nurse and had to work the Christmas holidays. I couldn't go home to my family, and friends and boyfriend had all gone home to their respective families. I remember crying about it having to eat at Hunan's Chinese Restaurant. And then I went to work and felt a little better when I had some work colleagues around to commiserate with...

Okay, back to Denver. Because flights were so expensive to leave on Sunday following Thanksgiving, we decided to stay until Monday morning instead. We get back home in the early afternoon, so shouldn't be too bad. And so I guess I'll just have to spend one more day on bedrest at our favorite little Summerfield Suites hotel, watching NFL games all day. Hadn't thought about the little plus of football Sunday until after we'd made the decision to stay, but that certainly makes things better.

Finally, I got a great deal the last time we were in Denver for a rental car and I also got another one this go around. Because it was pretty cheap, we got one of those little SUVs that had 4 wheel drive capabilities. It's Denver and it's likely we'll see snow out there during our visit.

So between the Lupron and getting everything booked, we are finally rolling with our FET!

Friday, October 24, 2008

And the verdict is...

Well, 6 weeks and 2 days later, we finally have results! We have 2 normals and 1 no result available for transfer. The other 3 were abnormal. Steve was hoping for 2, but of course I wanted all 6 to be normal. Oh well, as the song goes "You Can't Always Get What You Want", and so it is with me...but I'm happy to have some to transfer.

The normal ones were the 5AA and one of our 2/3 grade embryos. The nurse said that having the highest graded blast (5AA) come back normal was kinda unusual as she said in her experience, a lot of times the highest graded ones come back abnormal, so I guess that's good? Who knows...The no result was the 3BC, which was my worst graded embryo. My abnormals were the 3BB (my next best blast) and the other two 2/3 embryos.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get the nurse to fax me my test results due to the sex of the embryos being listed. I told her she could white it out and send it to me, but she said we'd just have to wait until after our transfer was completed to see the entire report. I still plan on asking my regular nurse when she returns to the office on Monday. I am a persistent person, so I won't give up that easily. So for all of your encouraging comments to me over the week to call and speak to someone or email someone, don't worry-I did. I'm sure I bugged all of the nurses at CCRM!

The nurse did give me a little more info about the 3 abnormals embryos. One was called "chaotic", which I thought was a very fitting embryo for Steve and me (lol). She said something like the chromosomes were scattered in irregular patterns. Weird. Another embryo had a chromosomal defect on #18, which was an extra chromosome that could lead to Edwards syndrome (similar to Downs Syndrome). The final embryo had a extra chromosomes on #9 and #13, which can lead to Patau syndrome (similar to Edwards) and mosaicism. So, that's all we know on the 3 abnormals.

My hope is that in our previous cycles, we were just transferring the wrong embryos, even though they may have looked good under the microscope. Gosh-we hope so!

The nurse said our options would be to transfer the 2 normals or 1 normal and the 1 NR, and keep the remaining embie frozen. But, 2 would be the transfer number, so we'll have to make a decision. I do hope to speak to Dr. Sch more about all of this next week on his opinions on which ones to transfer...

Thank you all so much for the support you've given me. I truly appreciate you all! Please keep sending us good thoughts, good vibes, prayers, well wishes, etc. We'll need all of them for our FET on Nov. 28!

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Going out of my mind

Nothing. I know everyone keeps asking and wondering, yet I know nothing. This sucks! Where are my results??

I do have an FET date: Nov. 28 (Day after Thanksgiving). I'm glad that we were able to keep up the "Holidays at CCRM" theme. If you guys recall, we spent July 4th out there for our 1 day work-up. Then, we were in Denver over Labor Day for our egg retrieval. So, looks like we'll continue with the tradition over Thanksgiving for our FET. Provided we have normals to transfer. Seriously, where are our results??????????

I'm been having nightmares every night for almost a week. They're crazy. I'm crazy. One was a nightmare about having my test results in front of me. I read each line: "Abnormal. Abnormal. Abnormal. Abnormal. Abnormal. Abnormal." No normals out of six. Pretty scary. I was crying and somehow woke up.

Another nightmare: I was told I have an inoperable brain tumor. Great. Someone from my past helped me get in a clinical study and I had all of these stupid needles, probes, electrodes, etc. all over the base of my brain near my cerebellum. The hope was for a miracle to occur and the tumor could somehow shrink and disappear. Okay. Woke up.

Then last night my nightmare was the old "back in school" dream. Remember those? "Teacher asks for homework and you have nothing to turn in" kind of dreams? Well, this one was a little more elaborate: it was science project fair time. I had 3 different stations set up, each receiving different grades. I can't remember what was on my poster boards, but I think they were adequate enough, even though I hadn't prepared as much as I would've liked. Anyway, grades for each project: 96, 86, 70. 70-wtf? I started arguing with my teacher over my grade, determined to get it up to an A or at least B. I've never gotten a 70 on anything in my life! So for me, that was pure horror! See-NIGHTMARES SUCK!

So, please pray/cross fingers/cross toes/send a word up to whomever: I want my results TODAY. It's been 6 weeks as of today. I'm going out of my mind waiting! Please help preserve whatever sanity I might still have. Thanks everyone!!

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Weekend visitor

No, not anyone fun or interesting, just ole AF. She arrived without surprise this morning. Why without surprise? Well, first off this marks our 21st cycle of TTC. Nothing is a surprise after this long. Football analogy: If the Chicago Bears pass the ball off to Matt Forte for 20 consecutive times for him to run down the field, then news flash to this week's opposing defense-they'll give it to him for another time to make it 21 in a row. No surprise. Secondly, we did actually try (as always) to have a hail mary BFP. Obviously did not work, as most hail mary football attempts don't work either. In fact, they usually end up in an interception. And finally, AF arrived today because it's Saturday and it would've been too easy to arrive on a week day when I actually could've spoken to a nurse, been excited, and worked on my calendar. Now, I'll wait until Monday. Still no flippin' word on the test results. I'm done with being patient. Never was a strength of mine anyway. 5 weeks and 3 freakin' days...

Looked at a lot of flights, but not booking anything until results are back. Of course Thanksgiving flights are outrageous. I could wait until the next week when they are much cheaper, but I'm over waiting. Really, really over waiting. And, we don't have to burn more vacation time if we go out over Thanksgiving. Stay tuned...

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

5 weeks, but who's counting??

Me! I'm counting! Each and every day!

I called CCRM again today. When I first was told the 4-6 week waiting time frame, I decided I would try to be patient (at least until 4 weeks were up). Of course, 4 weeks came and went last Wednesday and I broke down and made the call. One week later here I am, so I made another call. Here's the skinny:

While my new cycle hasn't begun yet, I got one of the nurses to go ahead and order my BCPs for pick-up in the next few days. Also, I convinced her to give me some potential dates for our transfer. They let us ultimately choose the date, but she started with some dates the week of Thanksgiving-just as I had originally hoped! WOOHOO! So, we get to choose a day during Thanksgiving week or the following first week of December. Needless to say, I'll be searching the internet for flights the rest of this evening. That will probably be the ultimate deciding factor on which date we'll choose.

After writing all of the above, I realize how optimistic this all sounds. We haven't even gotten our Micro-array results back yet. I have no idea if we'll even have 1 genetically normal to transfer. But, I really, really hope so...

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

A little update from CCRM

Well, today marks 4 weeks since our embies were biopsed and sent off for testing. I decided to call CCRM to check-in. The nurse told me that testing results were taking around 6 weeks at this point. Gosh-I hope we get our results soon! This is the longest wait I've ever had. I went back and thought about the longest I've ever waited for results of any kind to come back. I think this one wins out over: 1) Nursing Board test results (about a month), 2) A.C.T. results in high school (I think it too was about a month) and 3) Contest wins at work (varies, but again about a month after a contest end date). So, this really is the longest I've ever waited for any results EVER. I'm trying to be patient. I really am...

Some other news from CCRM-I asked nurse if I could go ahead and begin drugs with my next period (coming soon to a theater near me in about 10-14 days). I was worried she would say no and that I would have to wait until my results were back before starting BCPs, but I was happily surprised: she said I could start them and they can control my cycle accordingly with BCPs until the results come in. YAY! YAY! I feel more reassured and not as on edge now about when AF arrives.

Everyone uninterested in my answer to the below opinion-seeking post: please stop reading here and save yourself from a boring embryo politics rant!

First of all, you guys always amaze me at your ability to so eloquently describe your raw honest feelings on such a painful, personal topic. Thank you for your all your comments-very appreciated. I wanted to see what your thoughts and feelings were without the bias of my comments. I'm one of those people who believes there are always two sides to every story. Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, I respect your thoughts and opinions on the topic.

So, what are my thoughts? I wouldn't have posted the article if it hadn't struck a nerve with me. I'm scared. I'm scared that politics (which I ABSOLUTELY LOATHE) are now entering my bedroom, or petri dish as the case is with us. If the government can tell us what we have to do with our unborn children, then what's next? I'll tell you: overturning Roe vs. Wade. Most of you have probably figured out from previous posts that I'm a registered Republican. But what you don't know is that I have some strong opinions that fall into line with the Democratic party. The one I'm discussing is Pro-Choice. I've always been Pro-Choice. It doesn't mean that I would have chosen abortion if I'd ever been pregnant previously, but I never had to address it personally. I don't think I could've or would've in that position, but I don't think you can ever really know unless you've been faced with making that decision. We all have our life stories and I believe that someone's decision should be just that: their decision. Not the government's decision. Why am I discussing abortion? Because I believe it will be the next to go if these types of legislations are actually passed in several states.

I believe that frozen embryos are future potential children. I also believe that the 4 embryos we've previously transferred were potential children as well and have mourned their loss similarly to someone who has suffered a miscarriage. So, of course, I consider my embryos to be life. But, I don't believe they are yet children and therefore not of personhood status.

I'm frightened of the ramifications to us "infertiles" should some of these state and federal bills pass. I believe that for those lucky enough to have frozen embryos remaining after successful cycles, the couple should be ones to decide what happens to them. If they feel their family is complete, then the couple should be allowed to decide if they should be discarded, donated to research, or donated for adoption to another couple. Again, I'm Pro-Choice. The government should have no say, in my opinion, on what happens to those embryos. Where the government could help is making embryo donations to research (ie, stem cell research) a real viable option at a federal level. I believe that stem cells can quite possibly hold the key to potentially treating several diseases. If the couple doesn't feel right with discarding them, yet can't embrace the idea of having their genetic child being raised by someone else, then research truly is a happy medium. I do believe that those embryos can maybe save a life (or many lives).

We live in challenging times and these are all tough discussions and decisions. Thanks for listening to my opinions. And as usual on political-type discussions on my blog, please respect my opinions. It is my blog. If you have strongly opposing beliefs, please address your opinion on your own blog and don't attack me. On a side note, this is why I run from political discussions in general. Rarely can two opposing sides leave a political discussion feeling the same about one another as when they first entered into the discussion. Better left unsaid, or be prepared to feel distant from that person.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Seeking your opinions

I want to hear your opinions on the following article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-he-embryos6-2008oct06,0,7185026.story

There are other articles embedded within this one, so check them out as well.

I won't give my opinion just yet because I want to hear what you guys think first. I didn't want to slant the comments by giving my opinions. So be open and let me know your thoughts! I'll post mine soon!

Sunday, October 5, 2008

New look

I decided to change things up a bit with a new look to my blog. Not sure that I'll stick with this one for long, but it's something different for now.

I've been trying to catch back up on my blog reading. I've certainly not been on here very much lately. Hope everything is going well with each and every one of you!