Today was a pretty hairy day as far as my concentration level goes. I don’t think I’ve ever had to error correct that many things at the bank!

I felt a little bloated and tender, same as yesterday. Which is to say, not much. Monday was worse.

But then I came home… and I ate dinner. And for whatever stupid ass reason, I decided to have brie cheese on crackers, with milk, and then follow that up with a lovely desert of gummie bears. Let me tell you, NOT A GREAT COMBO. Especially when you’re stuck burping it up for the next several hours.

I’m starting to think it’s the milk. I’ve felt pretty good since I stopped drinking straight milk, instead choosing to drink only water. And when I drink alchohol (and thereby get sick) it’s always a mix with milk or cream. So I’m wondering…

Other than the stomachache that has me burping and my intestines gurgling nastily, I feel fine. Ovaries tender? Sure. Swollen? Sure, I look a little pregnant – can’t suck it in anymore. I’d say that’s pretty normal… or maybe quite mild considering how swollen with follicles my ovaries are.

I’m excited for tomorrow, but at the same time I’m not really wracked with nerves. And I don’t know why. Shouldn’t I feel giddy? Anxious? Anything? I guess I just know exactly what to expect from the procedure. What I remember of my past retrievals are the following: painful IV tries; warm blankets; comfy bed; excitement; oxygen mask; being pleasantly loopy for hours; waking up to the news of a good number of eggs. Other than the IV it’s all pretty positive.

The part that I’m very unsure about is fertilization. I just don’t know what to expect. It could just as easily be zero embryos or 4. I just don’t know. Friday will probably be a very nervy day, waiting for the phone call. And yes, I’m going to be at work. That will be fun.

I’ll have my phone with me tomorrow to update when I can… or when I get home, though I do intend to pass out cold when I crawl into bed. (I’m always very sleepy after anesthesia.)

I actually feel better today than I did yesterday. I slept just fine last night (whereas the night before I was tossing and turning quite a bit due to the pressure every time I tried rolling onto my stomach – which is usually quite frequent).

It felt so monumental to be sitting there with my ovidrel tonight. I stared at the clear liquid contained within the syringe, wondering how such a small amount of something can be so hugely pivotal for so many things. Is the timing going to be the key? Is using the ovidrel rather than the hcg going to prevent OHSS for me? Such a big moment, but such a non-moment – it felt like any other daily injection, yet it wasn’t. We both stared at my belly for a moment afterwards. “So that’s it, huh?” I lay here, concious of – yet seemingly unconnected to – the processes that have been started within me.

We’re committed now. I know things can change, and change drastically in a short period of time, but once I got the go-ahead for the trigger shot the retrieval was set in stone. Tomorrow should be an easier day for me to get through than the last two, simply because I have a timeline now, I know what the next step is. It’s a relief.

Like KC reminded me, this whole cycle has been one huge hurdle after another: the insurance approval, the tight timing, and then overstimming and just trying to get to retrieval. The next big hurdle is THE big one: egg maturity and fertilization. The one I’m most worried about.

My E2 did not go down. (However, it was not as high as I thought it was – apparently yesterday it was only at 6050, not 6500 – that is a good thing.) Today it’s… 6051.

However, the head doctor – the one in charge of my case – has decided that I should trigger anyways. Retrieval is set for Thursday morning, 9am. I take my trigger at 7pm tonight, giving me that 38 hour interval that has the potential to make all the difference.

Now I’m not really sure why he decided to trigger me today and not yesterday. I don’t think the nurses do either. Maybe he’s worried that waiting longer will hurt my eggs, maybe he just thinks that waiting longer won’t help the E2. I’m really not sure why yesterday we waited and today we don’t, but there’s obviously some reasoning behind it.

My levels are not at a crazy level – but they’re certainly within the risk range. However I just looked at my first cycle levels, and on trigger day they were 5500, so not that much lower… and if I got any OHSS that cycle it was supremely mild.

But more than my health I am worried about my poor little eggs. How many there ends up being retrieved is not nearly so important to me as how many – if any – are mature enough. Will the early trigger be enough? Did my eggs get a slow enough start to be good quality? Friday is going to be the worst wait yet.

Onward to retrieval.

Surprizingly I still don’t feel all that uncomfortable. I mean, yes I’m bloated, and yes I’m a little tender around my midsection, but I still don’t say it’s that bad. I get the feeling that people kind of expect me to be curled up in the fetal position, moaning. Other than being a little more deliberate when I sit down and stand up, I don’t notice much difference. (Though I will say I’m not too fond of the cat standing on my belly right now. Especially the fat one.)

My belly itches from where I got my last few shots.

My body apparently craves the appropriate things. The other day I wanted chicken noodle soup. Today I wanted peanut butter. I just kind of go with whatever it wants. (Unless it wants chocolate. Because it is a TRICK!! Okay, okay, I still eat it. But it’s with the full knowledge that it is a trick. I swear.)

Today was a stressful day, me getting more jittery by the hour as time stretched on and no phonecall came. Tomorrow doesn’t look to be any better.

I believe that this is one of those cases where ignorance is bliss. I feel like if I had just taken the nurses optimism at face value I would just happily be puttering around coasting, waiting for retrieval. I just happen to know just how bad a high E2 level is, how overstimmed cycles get cancelled and overstimmed bodies get OHSS. I know too much to pretend that it’s all going to magically be okay.

Finally got the call from the nurse – presumably after a significant amount of conferencing between doctors and nurses about this sticky situation. Some of the typical options in this situation – the half-dose trigger, or retrieving and freezing – aren’t very good options for me with my severe egg maturity problem. But damn was I worried, sitting here all day waiting for someone to call me.

My E2 levels are as I expected, at 6500. So they’re not going to trigger me tonight. I coast tonight (just lupron, no stims or menopur) and go back in tomorrow to check my E2 levels again. If they’re around 5000 then we trigger. If not, we wait another day. She said they really want to transfer me this cycle (ie, not have to freeze and wait because of OHSS) so they’re just going to let me coast until things come back under control and then trigger and retrieve.

Hell, maybe my eggs will appreciate the extra day to grow up. They had better frickin take advantage of this, you hear me eggs?! You think REALLY HARD about how you can use this extra time. I suggest reading some books. Get in a college education. Learn all about spermies and embryos and how you can contribute to the greater good.

So I wait another day. Perhaps it’s just not possible for me to have a cycle without some kind of unexpected disaster to strike. Maybe this will get it over with so we can be pleasantly surprized at fertilization. (Ahahaha. Yeah, that’s the sound of me laughing hysterically.)

I am apparently ready to trigger. Wait… what?? I go in today not even sure what to expect. My ovaries still look like party central. (One nurse said to the other, “I haven’t seen ovaries like this in a long time!”) In fact, where before I had roughly 10 follicles total that were in the lead group, it appears that a good number of the small follicles have caught up. My right side has 22 mature sized follicles now, the rest being small, with a total of 30 (yesterday was 33, but that’s a normal variation between techs). My left side has the same total as yesterday (18-ish), with 10 mature and 8 below 10mm. So that’s… hmmm, 32 mature sized follicles. Oi.

I say WTF? How do you go from “a bunch of small” to “looks like mature follicles” in a matter of 24 hours of coasting? Oh who knows, my body is doing weird shit. But there you have it. They will probably get a TON of eggs from me – I wouldn’t be surprized with over 30.

But the question is how many of them will be GOOD eggs. I can pretty much write off all those smaller ones – they won’t be good enough, not after a rapid growth like that. All they did for me was increase my odds of OHSS, the little bastards. But that still leaves us with the original 10, and we know they got at least 5 days of FSH all to themselves. I like that. There might be potential in those 10. Especially when we trigger 2 hours earlier than normal.

My very first cycle I did slightly overstim (started at too high of a dose), and they didn’t know about my egg maturity problem, so to cut down on the risk of OHSS they did the standard procedure of giving me only 5,000iu of hCG trigger instead of the full 10,000iu. With normal people that works just fine – no OHSS and you still get good eggs. With me… not so much. I’ve been wondering for the past year if that half dose is what contributed to the poor quality embryos we had. So this time they’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. What they seem to be leaning towards is giving me a different type of hCG than what I have from the pharmacy – apparently ovidrel has a shorter half-life and less risk of OHSS than whatever it is I already had, allowing them to still give me the full dose. Yay!

Of course we’re still waiting on the blood test results… if my E2 has skyrocketed some more there’s a chance things will change, but as of right now I’m on course for a Wednesday morning retrieval. I do feel like some of the burden has left my shoulders… but not all of it, not by a long shot. This whole cycle has me on pins and needles, and I’m not going to be able to relax in the slightest until they actually transfer a good embryo into me. That’s my goal.

But first goal is getting to retrieval. And so far it still looks good… thank the light.

My viciously upset stomach faded away over the course of the day, leaving me to realize that, yeah, my ovaries are upset. I’m very tender. It’s the constant, physical reminder of everything that’s going on, even when I just want to forget about it.

The thing is, my body responds like a PCOS-er… but I have none of the other markers for it. I ovulate every month, I don’t have cysts, I’m not overweight, I don’t have insulin resistence, and my hormone levels are well within normal. But give my ovaries any FSH and they just balloon like you would expect of a PCOS body. On the good side this does give me somewhere to look for answers and solutions – since PCOS is so common there is a lot of literature about it. Unfortunatey it’s not that amazing. Stim low and steady. Wow, I never thought of that! *smacks forehead* I did find some reassuring articles about how coasting for several days can bring E2 down without compromising egg quality or pregancy rates.

That’s my main concern right now, and why I feel very little hope at this point. Even if they do manage to control my E2 and get me to a successful retrieval, the addition of all these small follicles make the likelihood of me getting some mature eggs out of me very slim. The more there are in total, the less care each one is getting. I saw that clearly with my first two cycles: more follicles in the first cycle led to a decrease in quality. Granted the second time we only had one mature one, but it was a very good quality. When you only get one mature egg, you need to make sure it’s been nursed very very carefully.

I’m still just at a loss to comprehend this, really. I went over all my records, and at no point did I have a million little follicles explode out of nowhere in the middle of my damn cycle. My first cycle I did overstim slightly, but right from the start. Each cycle the number of follicles stayed pretty much the same from my first monitoring appointment to trigger. So this is unprecidented with me.

I really hope I get some answers tomorrow, because I’m just struggling to understand. As much as I try to find something to blame for it, I just can’t. Unless dropping my FSH dose down could somehow be responsible, but that seems pretty far-fetched. It appears this was yet another one of those weird, unpredictable occurrences.

I’m just tired of this. I’m tired of being unusual, I’m tired of not knowing what to expect. I’m tired of being shit on.

I really was so hopeful this cycle. It was looking good, we were going to improve on our track record. I was so looking forward to retrieval. And now, if we get there, I still don’t feel much hope.

The doctor just called. Herself. My estrogen was at 4200… And my eggs are still days away from retrieval. This is bad, very bad. They’re having me do no follistim tonight and go back in tomorrow. They may have me totally coast.

I think I’m on the verge of having this entire fucking cycle cancelled on me for overstimming. How the HELL did this happen when I started on the same dose as last time?

I’m really afraid. Not just on this cycle either. What do you do when even IVF is a giant clusterfuck?

I didn’t think it was possible to hate my body more than I already did. Fuck.

Well I’m really not sure what to think about this monitoring appointment. My poor ovaries. My right has – wait for it – 33 total follicles. Yikes. I have a whole host of small ones that joined the rest. My left – the squished one – has 18 total. Of all of those in both there are 10 (6 right, 4 left) that measure between 13 and 15mm. So at least that is looking good.

I just feel too many similarities to my first cycle. In my mind lots of eggs equals bad eggs. How true that will end up being, I don’t know. They’ve dropped my dose again, and I’m wondering if next time they’ll go straight to a low low dose.

Oh, and with all those follicles I suspect my E2 will sky high. I’m probably going to get some mild OHSS again.

I guess I’m just not happy about how this is going. My fucking ovaries… Can’t mature the damn eggs, but hey, let’s explode with them so she can at least suffer. If they were all good I wouldn’t have an issue with this… But they won’t be. And my worry is that all the small ones will make it harder on the big ones to get what they need.

Lining looks great at 11mm. Nurse is thinking a thursday retrieval, but if they keep dropping me and maybe coasting me it might be later. I think by the time retrieval comes I am REALLY going to want all them out. I’m already feeling a little uncomfortable (though the drinks and food last night is making it much worse… I feel quite sick today.)

Today was our work christmas party. A fancy-ish thing, with me in a dress. Well I guess at some point today I just said to myself, “Fuck it.” I made a last-minute appointment, walked into a salon I’ve never been in before, and said, “Do something with this. It’s driving me CRAZY.”

So now I have this. (This is, of course, after a thorough blowdry by the stylist. My hair does not naturally fall straight!)

It’ll be interesting to see how it looks after a shower and self-styling.