Everything will now come your way

I just took a break from blogging to eat lunch: leftover Chinese food from last night, some delicious homestyle tofu to be exact.  I treated myself to a fortune cookie with my meal, and the fortune I received is pictured above.


"Everything will now come your way."  This is could be taken several ways.  Maybe it means that today's appointment was productive and we will be getting pregnant and having a baby soon.  Or, maybe, it means everything bad will come tumbling down upon us.  They always say, "When it rains, it pours."


So this morning B and I got up early and went to the RE's office.  We had seen a picture online of a sign that one fertility clinic had posted in their room where men "collect their samples."  The sign that apologized if some clients were uncomfortable or offended by the pornographic videos in the cupboard next to the TV & DVD player, but that some men produced better "samples" if sexually aroused, and that they [the clinic] were willing to help them do what ever that took [including providing porn].  So, this time, instead of sending B to awkwardly go into the clinic to do his business by himself in a little room off of a busy hallway where he could hear everyone talking right outside the door...I went along to make him feel more comfortable in effort to maximize our chances of success.  Sorry if that's TMI.


We thought we'd be in and out of there within 15-20 minutes, half an hour max.  While we were there, I mentioned my concerns about the results of the OPK testing yesterday.  The nurse ushered us into a consultation room to talk about what our options were.


It was so funny, as we tried to explain what was going on and what our concerns were, nurses, receptionists, assistants, students, and the doctor himself kept revolving in and out of that consultation room to talk to us.  It was like a clown car in that tiny room!


The issue is this: if we got a false positive, then it might be too early to do the IUI today. Today is only cycle day 12.  I usually get the positive with the OPK between days 14-16.  So this is early.  But on our first IUI, I got the positive result on day 12 too.  However, last time, we had paid for the package that included ultrasounds (u/s).  That package is $1300.


When I met with my RE last month to talk about our action plan for this IUI, he had said that everything went so well last time with the u/s monitoring, that we wouldn't need to do it this time.  Doing an IUI cycle without u/s is only $800.  So that's what we planned to do.  Since we'd be saving $500, we would be able afford to do another IUI later this year if we needed to, and would only need to come up with an extra $300.  You see, we'd put $1300 into our flex spending account for the year (originally thinking we'd need that much just for one IUI), so we have to spend that much on medical expenses anyway. Why not spend a little bit more and take two good cracks at making a baby this year instead of just one?


So now that we are wondering if the OPK positive was accurate, the best way to solve that mystery was to do an ultrasound.  I mentioned earlier that I got the postive LH surge on the OPK on cycle day 12 with the IUI last time, just like I did this time.  However, last time, I went in for an u/s the next day and my RE decided that my follicles were to small, so we waited another two days before doing a second u/s.  That's when he decided they were big enough and we did the IUI.  If we would have done it when I first got the positive OPK results, it would have been way to early.  This is why we were so torn about whether it would be better to trust the OPK this time around, or to do an ultrasound and get more detailed information about how close my body is to ovulating.


If we do an u/s now, we'd have to pay for the more expensive package ($1300), and then we couldn't afford to do a second IUI later this year if we need to.  But if we don't do the u/s, and we blindly go ahead with the IUI today, trusting the OPK results from yesterday, then we might be doing it too early and the sperm wouldn't survive in my body long enough to meet my egg(s) when I ovulate.  We'd be wasting $800.


Finally, the RE came in and flat out recommended that we do the u/s because he too was concerned about the results of my OPK.  So that settled it.


By this time it was nearly 9:30am.  We'd been there over an hour, and B had to get to work for a meeting he couldn't miss.  I told him to go, and I'd stay to get the u/s and then catch a cab home.


As they guided me into the exam room, one of the nurses said that they were going to try to move up my IUI from 2:15pm to earlier this morning, as soon as B's sample was done being processed (about another hour)!  That was a huge relief because last night I was so nervous about B's swimmers surviving for almost 6 hours before they performed the procedure on me!


The u/s went well.  On my left side I had a large follicle which was almost ready to release.  On the right, there was a second smaller one that needed a few more days.  Last time I'd had two on the same side, so this was different, and for whatever reason I was feeling kind of good about that.


My RE decided that he was still uneasy about my OPK results, even after the u/s, and wanted to test my progesterone and FSH levels in a blood test.  So they drew some blood and told me as soon as we had the labwork back and got the results of B's post-wash counts, we could do the IUI & I could go home.


I went and got some breakfast in the cafeteria while I was waiting for all these results.  I selected a hard-boiled egg (not vegan, but I wanted protein), a whole grain scone, and a small fruit cup.  I got a soy chai too, but only took a few sips because I decided I didn't want to drink caffeine before the IUI.


When I finished my little breakfast, I walked back over to the reproductive medicine clinic to check on the results of my pending tests.  They led me into a consultation room before they'd say anything... "this can't be good," I thought to myself.


The bloodwork wasn't back yet, but it didn't even matter.  B's post wash count was even lower than last time.

I was shocked.


We had done everything we could think of the last four months to improve our chances.  When they analyzed this "sample" before the wash his numbers were good.  Only 11 million total, but they had still said that was a decent volume for this procedure. So what happened?


Again, this post is getting too long and the next segment of the saga is pretty detailed too so I'll save it for yet another separate post.  Stay tuned for more!


To be continued... again