3 Day Countdown until we start IVF

Today is a lazy Sunday.  Things have not been lazy, so I will do a brief catch up.

After 9 days on the market we sold my husband’s house.  We got the best price for anything in the neighborhood and the buyer seems great thus far!  The next weekend we toured more homes and the following week we made an offer on our dream home.  It is a perfect home in so many ways and I am so excited to call it our home in one month….providing all of the financing goes through quickly.

So home stuff aside, work has been okay too.  I wrapped up my indoor season and really enjoyed celebrating with my teams.  Now comes the hot and all-over-the-place summer.  I fear it is due to be a really hot one.  Already I have slept on the couch for the past week as I just can’t get comfortable upstairs.  The couch isn’t bad, but I am not sleeping well.

Last week was a lot of running around and chasing down prescription issues with various pharmacies all over the place.  There is a nationwide shortage of Follistim.  The prescription was passed from place to place and in the process the original order was super messy and hard to read.  I spent most of Wednesday through Friday making calls and waiting patiently on hold for either my insurance company or a pharmacy.  Finally, Friday, the boxes started to arrive.

This is my first time doing IVF so I had no idea what to expect.  There is no way to capture how overwhelming seeing everything all at once is.  There is a lot!

There are needles, syringes, vials, and pens and more.  Some is cold packed, and now takes up a lot of space in the fridge.  So, I packed everything that arrived (except the cold things) and then took it to the “teaching” appointment we had Saturday morning.

First up, the husband had a blood draw.  That went ok.  Then we waited…they were backed up.  That is rare for the clinic.  We did more consent forms…there are things that we signed off on that we hadn’t considered.  Since we are freezing the embryos as we wait on genetic testing, we have to determine what would happen to the embryos if one or both of us should die.  We said that if one of us dies, the remaining spouse has the embryos.  If we both die, we donate to science.  We also had to say what to do with embryos that are determined unviable after the testing.  We said that they could be used for science as well. We signed off acknowledging the risks of IVF, egg retrieval, injections, medicine, and age/weight factors.  I’m sure there were more forms, but that is what I remember.  We also settled the genetic screening bill, which is not covered by insurance.  That was $2,400 and came with another consent form.  The screening will help to best identify the best possible embryo, so that we can do a single implant.  Supposedly that goes better.  I just hope that we get decent results.  I know we might not get anything at all too.

I have to admit that I am really worried about the shots.  I will do it, and I know so many women who have done it.  So I will make it through, and a lot of it will hopefully go okay.

I bought a pill dispenser for my purse.  Hopefully that will help me to keep up with the medicine.  I have been sloppy about that.  I need to get back on my water drinking mode too.  I was so self-indulgent following that second miscarriage.  Given what I am about to go through, there is no reason to be wussy now.

I am already starting mood swings.  I’m sure it is the birth control pill they had me taking. Those used to mess me up so much.  Now I find that I feel blue and worried out of nowhere.  That was why I didn’t take those in the past.  But, man if I’m not already a mess.  I am feeling very cut off from my husband.  We haven’t been intimate in forever.  Not good.  I know that he is supportive of the IVF, and I am grateful for that, but we aren’t sleeping together and I can tell he is overwhelmed by everything that is happening so fast too.  It is a time right now that will certainly challenge us both.

Anyway, I’m going to try and relax a little and see what tomorrow brings.  I find that I just feel dazed right now.  That is how to best sum it all up.