Skip to the end for the very very good article. I’m so excited I’m practically bouncing. Is it possible that I found some research my RE doesn’t know about? I guess I will find out.<\/p>\n
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I’m reading the case report published by my IVF clinic about the woman who had low oocyte maturity and was subsequently diagnosed with turners mosaic. A couple of points:<\/p>\n
* She had a much higher oocyte maturity rate as compared to me (32% to 8%, respectively) (average maturity rate at my clinic, btw, is listed in the article as 82% with a standard deviation of 15%), yet never got pregnant after 4 IVF cycles which, combined, yeilded a reported 7 transferred embryos, 5 of which were labelled as “high quality.” I got pregnant within 2 cycles, with 3 transferred embryos. (I honestly don’t know if either of the embryos from my first IVF were considered high-quality, but I want to find out.)<\/p>\n
* She did the usual preview to IVF: 5 clomid\/IUI, 3 inject\/IUI. The RE, when I was talking to him, at one point asked me to clarify how I got to IVF. As in, he was confused as to why we had done only 2 clomid\/IUIs, then jumped to IVF. I explained insurance, but I kind of wanted to say that we had pushed for it, suspecting that whatever was wrong was not going to be fixed with clomid or injects. We happened to be right.<\/p>\n
* The patient then underwent three IVF cycles with ICSI (due to low sperm count), all with low oocyte maturity. Now, granted, she didn’t have as many immature eggs as I did. But it still disturbs me that they did THREE cycles before deciding to investigate it and discovering the turners mosiac syndrome. Maybe they thought the maturity rate wasn’t low enough to warrant investigation, maybe they thought she should still get pregnant with what they had. But still.<\/p>\n
* The article does not specify what protocol they used on this woman or whether or not they modified that protocol for the second and third (and, later, fourth) attempts. This would be very interesting to me.<\/p>\n
I’ve said before, I am not going to be a typical patient (is there such thing as a typical infertility patient?). I will be going in with data in hand, with a pretty good idea about what I<\/i> want them to try next, as they have never seemed very proactive on their own. I don’t know if I can blame them for that – I think most IVF clinics will typically proscribe the “standard” treatment ladder steps for unexplained infertility patients. And I guess that’s the smart thing to do, in many cases. But something in my gut told me to skip to IVF. And I was right. Whether that is hindsight, I don’t know. But I trust my gut when it comes to this.<\/p>\n
I assure everyone that if I do not get satisfactory answers I will seek a second opinion, though really we don’t have a lot of options around here; the clinic I was going<\/i> to switch to after my second “failed” IVF may be too far away to really be possible with my new job. But right now I am just waiting to see what the RE comes back with and how willing he is to work with me. And, really, even if we do the exact same thing as last time… that worked, right? That wouldn’t be too horrible. I just wish we could raise our odds a little, that’s all. Maybe make some progress on figuring out oocyte maturation arrest… give others a tiny bit of hope.<\/p>\n
So we shall see. We have a ways to wait. The appointment isn’t until Sept 15, which irritates me. I hate waiting. Granted it irritates me less now that I know we won’t be doing injects or anything in between now and IVF. I mean, I guess we could try it, but it doesn’t sound like it’s really worth our time or effort… or mental capacity. Do I really want to do monitoring and injections and trigger and required actually thinking about my cycle and timed intercourse… all knowing it’s not going to work? My idea of ignoring my cycles until IVF sounds more and more tempting every day.<\/p>\n
But then I think about how the next three months are going to be three months of learning a new job (always stressful, being new) and then I want to start thinking about something else, like babies……<\/p>\n
It’s a vicious cycle. No wonder TV is so popular. Mindless entertainment and time wasting. Do I really want to just skip over the next three months? ….. Maybe I shouldn’t answer that.<\/p>\n
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