Our FET (frozen embryo transfer) cycle has officially begun. Not that I think this post will be any entertaining reading, but here's what we've done so far.
I had to start birth control on day three of my period in June, so I've been on that for the past three and a half weeks and have experienced, much to my chagrin, "breakthrough bleeding" for the last two weeks or more. So out of the last four weeks I've basically been bleeding for three of them, which is super annoying.
A few weeks ago I had a blood test to check my thyroid levels, which turned out just fine. That marked the first needle of many I'm to encounter this go around -- but it definitely won't be as many as last time!
A little over a week ago I had a sonohysterogram and a trial transfer, basically to determine what my uterus looks like and make sure the catheter has a clear pathway to transfer the embryos when the time comes. Before they could do the procedure, they had me take a pregnancy test. Wouldn't that have been a shock if it came back positive, especially after being on birth control! But, to no one's surprise, it was negative. The RE said everything looks great and we can proceed as scheduled.
Now this is the part where I was getting all sorts of angsty. We had our initial consultation with our doctor in February, but since we were planning having the transfer in August, it was too far away to get scheduled on the calendar. One of the nurses contacted me in April so we could get the calendar hashed out, and she mentioned that she sent my prescription over to the pharmacy. I wasn't worried about getting the medications right then, since I knew we wouldn't need them until the summer. Right around this time, my phone broke, and I didn't bother getting a replacement until two months later, along with a new phone number.
At that point, I started wondering if the pharmacy had tried calling me on my old number, so I called to check the status of my prescriptions -- only to find out that they hadn't had anything on my file since the first time we did IVF.
So I sent a message to my nurse, asking if we had to pay for the cycle before we could get the prescription filled, since we hadn't done that yet. She didn't respond, but I had to call and schedule my sonohysterogram anyway, and I was able to get transferred to her afterward. She said that she wouldn't be able to send the prescription over until after my appointment.
We paid for the cycle at my appointment on the 24th (side note: it was so much cheaper this time -- it cost a little over $3,000 opposed to close to $20,000), and afterward the nurse then said that she couldn't send the prescription over until the following Wednesday, citing some reason that that was the day my doctor held appointments at the hospital and could therefore review the medications. She said she'd schedule me for an "appointment" Wednesday morning that I didn't have to attend, so that my doctor could sign off on the medications and send the prescription to the pharmacy. She assured me that they would be ready to pick up on Thursday, three days before we were to begin injections.
Thursday rolled around, and I still hadn't received a phone call from the pharmacy (I did update my phone number on file when I called the first time), so I called again to check the status. Again -- they hadn't received anything! Argh! So I had to call the doctor's office AGAIN to ask them to send my prescription information over. They did and said it would be ready to pick up on Friday.
I was starting to fret that we wouldn't actually get our medications in time to start the injections when we were supposed to. Also, have I mentioned in the past how much I hate talking on the phone? This was involving way too much phone communication for my likes! Friday I called the pharmacy for the third time, and much to my relief, they said that my medications were ready for me to pick them up.
When I did pick them up, I asked the pharmacist if the prescriptions came with a sharps container, alcohol swabs, and gauze. He checked in the bag and saw the sharps container, then grabbed a box of alcohol swabs, but when I got home -- no gauze. Alas. Also, it turned out we still had two boxes of alcohol swabs from the last cycle, plus one of the medications came with alcohol swabs in the box, so basically we have enough to disinfect all the things for the rest of time. But I digress.
A different man rang up my medications at the counter, and when he checked them out, he said something to the effect of, "I'm so happy for you! This is so exciting!" It was kind of bubbly and it made me smile. Thanks for the positive vibes, random pharmacist!
Anyways, I had my first injection this morning. Happily enough, I only need one shot a day instead of three. Also happily, this medication (Lupron) doesn't require us to mix the powder with the diluent -- it's all ready to go in the vial. And I feel like we're almost pros at this by now. I pulled up the injection training video to show to Jacob (I watched it myself yesterday) while I drew up the medication in the syringe. Like a boss, I might even say. Three years ago it took us about half an hour to watch the video, pause, follow the directions, watch some more, etc. It was much more efficient this time. But since I'm still squeamish about watching needles go into my skin -- or anyone else's -- I had Jacob give it to me. (In theory, I could give them to myself, since this medication is subcutaneous and goes in my stomach.) It didn't hurt too badly at the time of the injection, but it did give me a little lump or bubble under my skin and it turned the area around the injection site red and painful for a couple hours afterward.
On a side note, I'm going to have to be careful about not letting Marie jump on me -- sometimes she likes to stand on me while I'm laying down, and I can foresee painful things happening if she jumps on my stomach. Also, I was a little worried that she would want to watch what Jacob and I were doing and that she'd get freaked out by the needle, but we just set her in front of Youtube and she didn't even notice. Oh, technology.
Well, I suppose this has gone on long enough. Until next time.
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