Fall 7 times, stand up 8 - infertility edition

Here in seemingly never-ending infertility-land, Will and I had another "falling down" experience yesterday.

My sister told us a week ago that her doctor messed up the AMH test, delaying moving ahead, and so we had that redrawn last weekend, much to my frustration. I'm ready to get this show on the road, people! I want to get all the information together to give to Denver to get their opinion - should we cycle with her or find an anonymous donor? So at the time of the re-order, we ordered the AMH test stat...and it is now a week later...with of course no results yet...

For the past two weeks, I've also been hounding my sister (nicely, I hope) for her karyotype results - and so she finally got in touch with her doctor yesterday.

This is when her doctor shared that - oh, the karyotype? - oh, well, actually there had been a mistake with that test too and it wasn't done.

My sister supposedly had all these tests drawn on November 17. NOVEMBER 17!!! And to clarify, Will had ordered them himself - she had a prescription with the test names written down, and her doctor failed to honor what the prescription said - or tell her that they couldn't be done through their lab - or whatever was the reality. Unbelievable!

I feel like I've lost a month of my life here waiting for these results. We've been waiting for these so we can talk to Dr. Schl. and see if she is a reasonable donor to use, and if not, to regroup and move on. Again.

And now we find out that her doctor didn't run the right tests and then on top of that, didn't bother to even inform her?! Aaaaarrrrrgh!!! It is so frustrating to feel like there are so, so many obstacles in our path. I feel this especially because we are pursuing third-party reproduction. I can't believe how difficult this is. I feel like the universe should cut us a break already - as though I'm due some sort of ease in things since I've bent my psyche inside out to accept giving up on having my own genetic child, to accept the possibility that I won't be able to carry my own child. I know it doesn't work that way, but ugh.

On top of this, all of my feelings are magnified while I am on the dreaded Deport Lupron, both because that drug makes me extra emotional and because I AM TAKING IT SO I CAN DO A TRANSFER!@! (Bang head repeatedly on desk). Which makes me feel like the biggest moron within a 20-mile radius.

So here's what I think of this "Fall seven times, stand up eight" proberb right now...I really don't feel like standing up again. Not one bit.

What do I feel like? I feel like giving up. I feel broken. I feel incensed. I feel helpless. Why is it so hard to find our way out of this? Why is it so challenging to even get to a place where I can make an attempt to get out of this, like being able to do a transfer?

I know I will stand up again, because that is what I do. And really, what else is there to do?

But really.

Really? Does it really have to be like this? Couldn't something work out already?

Mo

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“Fall seven times, stand up eight”

This quote is posted on the website of our friend who has stage 4 cancer. The one whom I wrote about at the beginning of November, who was intubated and expected to pass away soon.

Well...he didn't pass away. He eventually got extubated, which we thought was a miracle. He managed to get out of the ICU and into a regular oncology ward room, which we thought was amazing. Then he had the feeding tube removed, then he went to rehab, and now this week, he is back "home" or at their temporary apartment at least, since they came all the way across the country to get him help here in NYC.

We can hardly believe it - it is incredible. Outstanding, a miracle.

Make no mistake, he is a very, very sick man, but we are so pleased that he is going to hopefully be able to survive longer than everyone expected - and in the process have more time with his wife and 4-year-old child. And hopefully now that he is home, he can die on his own terms, however he wants to have that happen, surrounded by his wife and toddler and mother and sister, in as comfortable and as dignified a way as possible. And that is really good news within the context of this terrible situation.

Not exactly sure how this quote applies to our friend's situation - he has certainly fallen and stood back up multiple times, showing incredible perseverance. But I think now his journey is about something else. He could choose to try to "beat" the cancer if that's what he wants to do, and although that's impossible, it wouldn't be a bad stance to take. But I think it would be just as honorable and courageous to do something else. Something like, choose to fall as gently as possible, or choose to give oneself permission to fall and not worry so much about the standing again part.

I guess that's sort of the question that comes up for me when I read this quote: what does a proverb like this mean when you are facing not being able to keep standing up? Where is the line between "giving up" and accepting a tragic and unwanted reality?

I don't know the answer. But however our friend navigates the coming days and weeks, we wish him good management for his pain. We wish him as much time with his wife and daughter as possible. We wish that he feels viscerally the love of all those around him. We wish him peace.

Mo

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To bris or not to bris, that was the question

One of my good friends who was pregnant had her son last week and the bris was this weekend. It took place in another state, so we had every excuse not to go. This is my friend who has been so gracious about being pregnant while we are not pregnant and fear that we may never again be pregnant, so I knew she in particular would understand if we declined.

So I thought about it, and Will and I talked about it. He said he'd rather be shot in the head than have to go.

Ok, it was fairly clear how Will felt about it...

I, on the other hand, surprised myself by wanting to make an appearance and show our love and support. This woman is my closest friend from my PhD program. I wanted her to know we are happy for her, even as we ache for ourselves. And actually I thought a bris might be a fairly protected way to do this. There would be the buffer of a lot of people so I wouldn't have to interact too much if I couldn't handle it. If I started to cry during it, people would just think I was being sensitive to the pain of their little boy.

Also, on a level not about my friend, I thought it was important to go. As our infertility journey has gone on and on, we have shrunk away from so many friends who we used to enjoy seeing, stopped going to events that we used to participate in. As all of our friends have gone on to have children, we have become increasingly withdrawn, and increasingly sad. I wanted to try to go to this event, because it is the first of many milestone events for my friend with her son. And if I skipped this one, it would be easy to skip the next one, and then the next one, and then...before I know it, it will be much harder to break the pattern of avoidance and see this friend, keep her in our lives, not conflate my pain with her joy but rather try to let both exist - one not spoiling the other.

We ended up deciding to go, and I'm glad we did, even though it was super hard for Will. We made a weekend of it, finding a boxer-friendly hotel and staying overnight in this other city. For Will, though, seeing the grandparents there, and hearing the special prayers said at the bris for them, nearly brought him to his knees with the grief that his father will never meet our children, that he will not have his father's presence and support. This first holiday season is a difficult one without Will's father. Compounded too by our seeming inability to move forward toward building our family.

We both feel it was the right thing to go, but there is so much sadness and longing over here in the Mo and Will household. We can only hope for happier days ahead.

Mo

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Pondering

From Firefall Vision's Etsy Page

So my sister needs to go back to the lab to get the AMH test redone, because somehow the lab messed up the sample. And she didn't feel that she could do that until the weekend because she already was late to work once due to getting the baseline ultrasound and antral follicle count done.

In response, I wondered wryly (but refrained from asking) how in the world she could do a whole IVF cycle for us, which would require daily bloodwork and almost-daily ultrasounds and would surely make her risk lateness to work if her boss is already raising objections.

But why say this? Because really, it looks like we may not get to the place of her doing an IVF cycle for us.

We aren't ruling it out, either. Will and I are waiting on the AMH results and then will have a regroup with Dr. Schl. in Denver and get his thoughts. But I have to say, things don't seem overly promising.

Not dismal, maybe either, but not overly promising.

In the meantime, we're taking a few steps back and reconsidering our options.

Could we take the donor we already fell in love with, the one with the rare chromosomal abnormality, to another clinic, do CCS testing on her embryos, and use her despite the inversion on chromosome 9? Would we want to? Would any clinic let us? (Interestingly, the agency is still listing her as available to donate... now also saying she has "proven" fertility and has been a "prior donor." Seems a bit disingenuous to me). She is perfect in every way but for the slight chromosomal issue, so mildly thinking about it.

Do we want to just proceed with a transfer of our embryos into my body and hope for the best? Leaning toward this at the moment. This is a surprise, as I thought we would never do this. However, originally, our NYC RE and Dr. Schl. suggested that trying another transfer of our embryos in my body was the most reasonable option. It's just that we didn't think we could take another loss - and what if those are the last chromosomally normal embryos that I could ever make? Can we survive another loss now? Maybe. Can we tolerate it if we try this and fail and then have nothing left for a gestational carrier? Thinking on this.

I'm in month two of Depot Lupron. It would feel good not to "waste" these two months of Lupron I've been on. It has not been easy, and I hope it hasn't been for nothing.

Perhaps if transferring our embryos into my body didn't work, we could throw a huge IVF stimulation party, cycle my sister, the donor, and me all at the same time and see just how many embryos we could make.

I'm kidding.

Mostly.

These are the fertility-related things rattling around in our brains. Today, at least. Tomorrow brings another AMH test for my sister. We've requested the results stat. Not sure how fast that will bring them, but we are hoping for quickly.

We're tired of waiting in limbo.

Mo

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Not looking so good

We have a few more of my sister's lab results back:
FSH: 9.78
Estradiol: 38.7
LH: 8.18


Apparently, the lab messed up the sample for the AMH test, so she will have to have this redrawn (Aargh! Bang head on desk)

The Denver clinic has a cut-off for FSH for donors at 10, which is awfully close to what my sister has.

For comparison, at age 38 (seven years older than her, and after cancer), my Day 3 FSH was 5.5, my Estradiol was 33.2, and my AMH was 1.4.

I'm starting to feel like the infertility grim reaper, spreading terrible news about others fertility status far and wide. We haven't talked to my sister about what any of these numbers mean and won't until we speak with Dr. Schl. But it seems not so long ago, that our genetic inquiries wreaked havoc on the anonymous egg donor's happy thoughts of future reproduction with the news that she had a rare abnormality. Ugh.

Once we get the AMH results back, we will schedule a regroup with Dr. Schl. to discuss, but I'm thinking this isn't looking like a very good idea. Seems like if this was my body, I'd of course proceed with IVF, but don't know that it makes sense to try to use my sister as a donor when her fertility doesn't seem so promising. 

If we hadn't had such a long road already, maybe we'd want to gamble on it and hope that we'd be lucky (ha! Us lucky?!), but geez, folks, what we really want is to get out the other side with a child in our arms, and I'm not sure that this is looking like a smart way to get there anytime soon. But maybe I'm misinterpreting things?

Any thoughts? Am I reading this right? What would you do in a situation like this?

Hard to believe we may be back to square one again.

Mo

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