Day 4 - Scan Day

Today's entry is in two parts.  First, the scan. 

Today I had my first scan after 3 days of injections.  I could see the screen as he looked at my ovary and measured the little follicles that were there.  I counted about 7 or so.  Two were clearly bigger, which I assume is a good thing.  I will never get used to the UK doctor approach which is basically not very talkative.  I prefer the continual information dump and running commentary approach.  I suppose it's in part what I'm used to, but you know, I like to be included in my medical health discussion.  Not that I have any complaints at all about the clinic- or the doctor for that matter.  As when I ask him stuff, he is happy to answer and discuss with me.  It's just that I need to ask, it doesn't happen automatically, and I find it a little bit weird.

So as I say, I saw him measuring all the little follicles.  I sort of lost count, I swear he measured some of the same ones twice.  But he was also very quick.  It was definitely more than 5 although some were small.  So he said I should stay on the same dose of the Gonal-F (225) and tonight I also add the Cetrotide.  My next scan is Friday morning.  He didn't see any cysts (which is good).  He said it all looked like what he'd like to see so far (without being particularly descriptive about what it is he likes to see).  He said that the trick is that they wouldn't want to overstimulate the ovary- you don't want 20 follicles on one ovary.  But that a good response would hopefully see me get 10.  If I actually got 10 eggs (and if those could all be frozen) that would be superb, because two cycles would give me the magic number of 20.  I'm not sure I'll actually get 10 freezable eggs, but the closer I can get to that number the better.

It's kind of crazy to think I'm just back there in less than 2 days, but the more scans, the more information, the more care and looking at I'm getting, then the better as far as I can tell.  So like I said, I'm very pleased with the clinic so far really.  Oh, they said that my unused needles should all go in the sharps bin and that any unused medicine or medicine containers I can bring in and they can dispose of.  So that was good to know.  Although today they took the unused needles in the Gonal-F box, even though they say on their handout that they don't take unused needles not in a sharps bin.  I don't think it was a big deal really.

I'm writing this in a cafe just now.  I'll return to it later tonight when I discuss my shots.  The regular Gonal-F and the new part of the regimen, mixing my own Cetrotide.

Okay, I wrote that part before and I'm picking up this post where I left off.  My intention had been to take pictures and post about the mixing but I got home late so I just wanted to get the shots done to stay close to my schedule.  I took the Gonal-F about 45 minutes after my 24 hour time and the Cetrotide about 15 minutes after that.  All within reason to be fair, but I was just conscious about getting it done.

And what an annoyance last night was!  First, I did the Gonal-F.  I figured I had it down, I understood what I was doing, and it's easy.  So I prep, I measure, I inject, I wait ten seconds, take the pen out.... and it says 25 left in the black window.  Crap!  If it has a number left it means you didn't take the full injection.  But I did depress the plunger all the way (or so I thought).  So I was first annoyed, then worried, then I just decided to give myself the 25 with a new needle.  So I did that and it definitely went to 0.  But it was an extra little bit of bother when I was already just trying to get it done!  Ugh!  Also, two pin pricks.  Double ugh!

Or, make that three pin pricks.  Because I had to mix up the Cetrotide.  This was more complicated than I thought it was going to be.  I will take a picture of the box set up hopefully for day 5 and post more about the mixing.  Needless to say, there were a number of steps, it didn't all dissolve straight away so I kept trying to mix it without shaking it (as that adds air bubbles).  Getting it back into the syringe was also not 'obvious' and I got a bit of air in there and I'm not convinced I got 100% of the drug back in the needle (although I did get most of it) and then I had to do yet another injection although that went fine when I finally got to that point, I was just glad to get it done!

Now my next scan is first thing Friday morning.  I look forward to getting more information on how this is all going.  It would be good to have an idea of what day collection might be for- as I need to figure out who I know that can come with me.  If it's Thursday or Friday I have someone but if it's Wednesday, I might be on my own.  I think that's the only shitty thing about this whole exercise- is really being on your own.  It's part of the reason I don't find as much help from the IVF blogs- they're all with partners, they have different objectives, it's really a different sort of procedure and expectation.  Egg freezing is similar, but it's different.  I wish more women were sharing their stories!!