I'm back

Hi folks! I'm back. Thank you for all the prayers, love, and encouragement. Yesterday went very smoothly.

JB recapped from his perspective yesterday. Here's a brief recap from mine.

Even yesterday morning, I noticed a big difference from last harvest. By this point in the last cycle, I was unable to walk I hurt so badly. This time, I was uncomfortable and bloated but not hurting nearly as badly.

We checked in at 6:30 and by 7:15 they were wheeling me down to the pre-op area. I had been trying to keep my bladder semi-full, but by 8:15 was going crazy! Apparently Mondays get a late start because of morning conferences so there were a lot of people waiting around. I finally told a passing nurse that I had to use the bathroom. She made a phone call, and they agreed to let me empty my bladder. That may have meant they had to catheterize me, but you know what? I didn't care. I would be asleep when they did that so what did I care?

One of the residents, a very sweet new Doctor H., stopped by. She spoke with me briefly. Then, Dr. C. came by. He has been out of town, and I was thrilled he was doing my procedure. I really like him. He actually talked to me briefly about a new idea.

Doctors all over the world have been attempting to freeze eggs. It would solve a lot of problems. It would help deal with the ethical issues of freezing embryos. And it would help unmarried women and young girls battling cancer preserve their eggs until they met someone they wanted to use them with. However, the thaw rate for eggs has always been very bad (somewhere around 1-2%). When you consider that the thaw rate for embryos at Mayo is in the 90's or so, this rate is nearly unacceptable.

Dr. C told me that he has been working on a way to freeze eggs that is yielding a rate of more like 30%. It is my belief that in the next 10 years, this will be how IVF is done so couples don't have to battle ethical issues. This would be a great accomplishment and would eliminate all the unused embryos out there. He asked me if he could try to freeze any eggs that they got over the "magic number" 14. I of course agreed. He even said that I wouldn't have to pay for this. This would mean that we could "choose" to fertilize one of the eggs later if we wanted.

Unfortunately, they weren't able to get the necessary equipment together in time to pull this off (he had just come back from out of town). However, this is exciting for other women and even for myself if I were to ever do another harvest.

Anyways, from there I was wheeled into the operating room. I remember someone complimenting me on my glasses. They always love my glasses in the operating room. Then someone took my glasses from me. I remember trying to help the guy put the boots on my legs and him telling me that he could handle it. I remember having the IV started, the oxygen mask put over my face, and that cold sensation go up over my arm. I then remember telling someone that I was getting very sleepy.

The next thing I remember was being back in my room with JB and two nurses. I remember having to go to the bathroom very badly, but I have no recollection of crying or any of the other things JB told you. Apparently, we later learned that this particular anesthesiologist used a different drug combo which may have been the reason I was so drunk this time and not so drunk last time. Either way, I do remember wanting to communicate but feeling like I couldn't. It was quite strange.

Lesley picked us up close to noon, and we stopped for some gyros before heading home. JB got me settled and then headed into the clinic. I had the phone by me and Lesley upstairs for any emergencies, but when you fell asleep as hard as I did, there weren't really any emergencies.

Since then, I have been doing GREAT. Last cycle I had pretty terrible pain that first day and night -- to the point that I contemplated a trip to the ER to get more pain medicine. This time, however, my pain was very minimal. I did take two tylenol-3's, but otherwise, felt pretty good and was getting up and down without too much difficulty.

Now comes the wait until I find out today how many of my eggs successfully fertilized. As soon as I get this information, I will update it on the blog. We are blessed by every egg that fertilizes and I hesitate to say how many I hope for because I have many IVF friends who only had a few eggs to start with. Instead, I have to ask the Lord to pick the perfect number. I would hope, however, to have at least 4 more tries with this harvest.

JB mentioned something yesterday about fertilization. It is a good point to understand that Mayo actually freezes embryos before the point, that they believe, DNA transfer has occurred. This would mean, that, to put it bluntly, the sperm is hanging on outside the shell of the egg but not inside it yet. However, as soon as these are thawed, they begin to have genetic transfer occur. There is some "greyness" to whether we need to worry about "excess embryos" when they may not technically be "life" yet. For JB and I, we have just decided to assume that each embryo is fully life. By the time they are transferred back into me, they definitely have had this transfer occur. Either way, we have always said we will not compromise our values for something we want. We therefore feel that the only correct thing for us to do, is make sure we can go back for each and every embryo. We feel good about that decision.

Okay, stay tuned for fertilization report! I plan to work from home today so as soon as the call comes in, I'll share it with you.