IVF 5: Day 9

Monitoring went surprisingly well this morning. There's usually a long wait time at weekend appointments since this is the clinic for the other branches that are closed over the weekend. I was prepared to hunker down for the long haul, but this morning they had adequate staff for the overflow of patients and things were moving smoothly.

My 7:45 AM appointment got called back for blood after a few minutes wait - only one stick. She was weekend staff and didn't know me but followed directions to the one vein and got it working immediately. I was back in the waiting room at 7:55 AM to wait for the ultrasound. I got called back and at 8:10 AM the ultrasound tech came in, followed a few min by the doctor in charge. There was a little hiccup when the inexperienced tech pushed a little too hard, and then again when switching from right to left ovary. I jumped at the pain and she apologized, but overall it was fine.

They measured the lining at 10.3 which is great but we're not doing a transfer so a little pointless. They counted the largest follicle at 13.5 so we're moving along, with 14 follicles counted. I've already learned that just because they retrieve a lot of eggs doesn't mean they're all going to become embryos. In the past I've had 11-12 mature eggs regardless of how many eggs were retrieved (max was 27 in cycle 4).

More importantly, I've been trying to figure out when trigger will be in case we have another Saturday retrieval. Based on info from the past cycles, retrieval will be either on day 13 or day 14 (I've had two of each), which puts retrieval at Saturday or Sunday.

I have enough Menopur to last through Monday. Even though I have refills at Freedom, I asked my nurse to call in the prescription at the local specialty pharmacy. Freedom is annoying to deal with and you can't send back returns. Blood work results came in this afternoon and I need to start the third shot tonight, cetrotide. That one burns but at least that means progress.

My husband and I had a conversation about goals. Apparently, there's a statistic that if you write down your goals, there's an 80% chance that you'll accomplish them. Only about 2% of people actually write down their goals. I don't know the source for those stats, they were presented at a meeting last week and sounded true. So we decided to write down our goals for the week. He has his and I have mine. Mine is to research itinerary and fun things to do in Boston for a possible trip in March. It's no Israel or Miami, but hopefully it will still be fun. If nothing else it will be a nice change of scenery and a new place to explore.