Never a dull moment around here

Above is a view of my bedside table here at the hotel, a little sneak peak at what Mo is reading. It's not a bad read really, fairly clear and not talking down so much to the readers, which is a little unusual in the fertility book arena. After everything we've been through and my exhaustive research tendencies, we know 99% of what's in its pages, but there's an occasional nugget of new information. I didn't mean to pack it but somehow it ended up in my backpack, so seemed right to give it a brief perusal before our most likely final IVF cycle.

Despite the calmness implied by the picture above, today felt like a bit of a roller coaster. The day started off with a dramatic "IVF physical" (whatever that is), in which a nurse practitioner freaked out that I had cancer 11 years ago and have had a cough for a few weeks (it MUST be a recurrence! not) and threatened to cancel the retrieval unless I got a chest X-ray. Which I was really opposed to doing for three reasons:

(1) I've had more than 30 CT scans and PET scans (can we all say five miscarriages and more radiation exposure than a Hiroshima survivor - no joke)

(2) right now, after the HCG trigger, is when the eggs shed their extra set of chromosomes going from 46 to 23, and this is when many sequencing errors occur, so the LAST thing I want to do is add even a miniscule amount of radiation to this already tricky mix, and

(3) a chest X-ray isn't going to show anything anyway, so it's just pointless.

After much anxiety and handwringing, around 4:30pm, we finally heard from the nurse that we're good to go. Phew. Big drama for nothing.

The only other news is that despite coasting for a day and taking two shots of Centrotide, my estrogen has shot back up to 7,300. The nurse said she was checking with Dr. Schl. to see if I need more medication prior to or after the retrieval to deal with hyperstimulation issues. Fine, whatever. Not worried about that, as long as the retrieval goes forward.

"We expect to get a lot of eggs tomorrow," the nurse said to me.

God, I hope so.

And may all be quiet until then.

Mo

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