Mitchell's Family's Life with Two Cats- Looks Like We Will Never Have Human Children!!!

Friday, March 19, 2010

Let the injections begin!



What a busy week!!!! Where do I even begin! Don and I attended our mandatory “IVF” seminar last Thursday night. WOW! I thought I knew a lot, but there was so much information that I was not aware of. The whole session was about 3 hours. There were about 15 other couples there with us, which puts them all on the same cycle as me. It was strange to walk in this room and feel a bond with all these women that I don’t even know! The definite highlight of the seminar was the embryologist. It is the embryologist that technically creates our baby. They have 3 of them in our office. She showed how she caches a single sperm and nicks it’s tail so it can’t swim away. The sperm is then drawn up into a needle and injected into an egg. How cool! Just watching the video made me cry! That is what will happen to make our babies next month!!!!

At the egg harvest my doctor is hoping to collect about 20 eggs. Even though I am young, 25% of them will probably be bad eggs. Of the good ones all will be injected and allowed to grow to day 5. Each day the eggs are moved into a new petri dish that better represents the natural environments they would be in the fallopian tube on that particular day. The whole process is fascinating!

I also have started lots of new drugs! We are both taking Doxcycline for any “low lying” infections we could have. Additionally I am taking aspirin, steroids, thyroid hormones, multivitamins, vitamin D and Lupron. The Lupron is the only injection that I am currently taking. The fertility treatment center has mandatory injection courses Don and I were supposed to take, but sense we are RNs we didn’t have to. Well, I wish I would have!

Let me start out with a little nursing 101 on the topic of conversions…. So, lets say I have two apple pies. One is cut into 12 slices, the other 6 slices. I could trade 2 slices from the 12 sliced pie for 1 slice on the six slice pie. They are the same, they are interchangeable. Now instead of pie lets look at fruit. Pretend I have 8 mango's and 12 pineapples. A mango will never equal a pineapple, they are different fruits. I hope you see where I am going with this rant….
On my calendar it is written “Lupron 10 units every evening.” So, being an RN I grabbed my calculator to see who much of the drug I need to draw up. I looked at the vile and it states “1mg/0.2ml” Just like a mango is not a pineapple a milligram is not a unit! I double checked that directions, looked at Freedom pharmacy’s website, ect…. In the end I had to call the doctor’s office at 7pm and request someone to call me. Of course a MD called me back and gave me the low down. Some of the syringes in my big box of drugs do have unit markings on them. Really they are just traditional insulin syringes because insulin is the main that that comes in unit form. The bottom line was the doc wanted me to utilize an insulin syringe to draw up “10 units.” In effect, it turns out that they order the Lupron in “units” to make life easier! I know anyone else probably would have fingered this out, but as an RN I really thought it was a medication error and that they had sent me the wrong drug or mislabeled the specimen. What a headache!

On an exciting note we are signing with a realtor! If we sell the house around what we are asking we will walk out of here debt free and I will be able to drop down to part time work! People keep telling us to borrow from our 401Ks instead of selling the house, but that just puts us in further debt. One of the main issue is I don’t want to be working full time when I have kids. When I leave my current job to go to part time I will loose ½ my income! There is no way we would ever be able to crawl out of debt with that little income. Also working full time and going to school full time right now is killing me! I hate to talk about finances so much on this blog. I know it is tacky and a little weird, but anyone that tells you that going through IVF does not affect their finances are lying. I am just grateful Don and I work in a profession where we can pay for this. I don't know how it would be possible to do this without having a great career. Also we have equity in a great home! We are extremely fortunate and really see how God has provided for us financially with our jobs and our home!!! We are in no way bitter about the debt. We can see how God has providing a way where in the end we will be ever better off finacially, and have a baby!

Other people have told us to hold off on IVF for another 6 months or a year. NO WAY!!! We planned this IVF cycle a year ago specifically because it starts on my spring break from school and is followed by two weeks off work. Granted I will still have school those days, but if I miss a day time will go on. Also, if this cycle works the baby or babies will be due in December. If that happens I can take 4 month maternity leave and finish school. The time line works out perfectly!

Next week Don and I are going to the coast for a night to just get away and have a romantic evening. I will post lots of pictures from our trip. The Oregon coast is breathtaking!!!!

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