August 2007

Of twenty-two eggs retrieved, seventeen fertilized without ICSI. We have seventeen zygotes bobbing in their culture medium in a laboratory across the river. Oddly, my first thought after I got the fertilization call this morning was that everything has gone so perfectly—too perfectly—that this cycle cannot possibly end well. I assume this thinking is yet [...]

At 8:30 this evening, Scott gave me the trigger shot. There was a brief panic when we realized we weren’t exactly sure where the shot was supposed to go. “Upper outer quadrant” seems suddenly vague when you are about to plunge an inch and a half long needle into it. And then I couldn’t draw [...]

Today after the ultrasound I did a happy little Charleston before donning my underwear: Right Ovary: 13.5, 12.5, 12, 11, 11, 10.5, 10 (plus 5 follicles@ 9 and 1@ 8mm) Left Ovary: 15, 15, 11, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 (plus 2@ 9.5 and 2@ 8mm) Lining: 7.8 (I know nothing about linings, but this [...]

I first noticed it yesterday—sharp pinches coming from my ovaries. After the call with my low E2 number, I decided it must be my imagination. Today, though, there is no doubt: I am bloated, and my ovaries ache. In bed this morning I could feel them resting in my abdomen, particularly on my right side, [...]

The series of events that led to me administering my first stim injection alone in a hotel room twenty stories above downtown Minneapolis involved lightning, a pubic hair, a housekeeper in a Hijab, and 100,000 homes left without power. That description makes it sound rather more interesting than it was—you will have to trust me [...]

Predictably, the headaches and night sweats started as soon as I hit “publish” on my last entry, the one that asserted that I “haven’t noticed much in the way of Lupron side effects.” Hubris, you bastard. Also, the period I mentioned? Sometime that night it disappeared, replaced by spotting. Now, I am grateful not to [...]

IVF is like tax law in that it is generally only interesting to and understood by a small, obsessive coterie of practitioners. Unfortunately for my non-infertile readers, it will be the main topic of conversation here for the next several weeks. Believe it or not, an IVF cycle can be quite thrilling, but only if [...]