Not Quite AWOL

Sorry for the radio silence the last couple of days. I fully intended to post Pocket's introduction yesterday but I've felt totally drained and kind of emotionally fragile, so writing a blog post about anything just seemed like way more effort than I was able to put in.

Here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to:

Wednesday

• Trip to the hospital - I recorded the journey from the 5am start to our arrival at the hospital for a future vlog, I'm just a little behind on the editing of them.
• Scan revealed 10 follicles (plus littlies) on each ovary. They measured from 10-15mm and the nurse had barely got the ultrasound probe in before she said 'oh! You're a quick responder!'
• Was warned that they might want to make an adjustment to my Menopur or that I might be ready for egg retrieval as early as Sunday. We were given our Ovitrelle trigger injection to bring away with us to be on the safe side.
• Got a phone call when we were on the way home to say to carry on as we had been, but to come back on Friday and not to take the Menopur on Friday morning in case we were going to trigger.
• Found out afterwards that my E2 (estrogen levels) were 5,961 which is pretty damn high.

Thursday

• Went to work feeling pretty uncomfortable and really should have stayed home. I had to wear a dress and everything because my work trousers were too tight around the middle.
• Felt pretty miserable all day and had no energy to turn on my laptop, bullet journal or anything.
• Felt kind of anxious about the upcoming appointment on Friday so didn't sleep very well.

Friday

• My ovaries exploded! Not literally (thankfully) but it seemed like they were seriously considering it. I was feeling really bloated and the scan wasn't exactly fun.
• The scan took quite a while to do because there were so many follicles to count, this time twenty or more on each side, and all measuring between 10-20mm (plus the ever present littlies).
• It was at this point that a freeze-all cycle was mentioned as that's the standard policy if more than 25 eggs are retrieved. I took a while to process this because at first I couldn't figure out how they were expecting me to get so many eggs; then I realised that in total I had 40 follicles, not 20!
• My blood was drawn and I was advised I'd get a call about what would happen next when they had the results. In the meantime I was told to drink little and often, eat plenty of protein rich foods (chicken, eggs, milk, yoghurt), and take it easy. We toddled off to KFC where the chicken nuggets knew exactly how I felt (see photo above).
• We were only home for about 45 minutes when the hospital called and my immediate thought was that they were going to cancel us. I've been having flashbacks to our first cycle for the last couple of days, just little things which reminded me of it, so the 40+ follicles was an awful lot like the '30+ here and 35+ over there' appointment we had at the Nuffield.
• My E2 levels had risen to 13,182! I believe the correct medical term for this is 'Oh Crap!'
• We're not cancelling the cycle! We're doing a freeze-all!
• I can't trigger with an hCG based trigger as that will push me into hyperstimulation (and we know how that ended last time) so I'm using one called Buserelin which I've used in nasal spray format for down regulation on both my frozen cycles.
• And I was to do it on Saturday night ready for retrieval on Monday. The one flaw in this plan was that the injection in our fridge was an Ovitrelle (hCG-based) one.

Today

• So it was back to Glasgow today to go pick it up, run over the basics of using it and go over what I need to do for egg collection on Monday.
• The Suprecur injection seems straightforward (though, alas, it's not in a pen). I have a massive vial and a tiny syringe and I only need to use the .5 of the 5.5ml bottle.
• I do my last Cetrotide injection in about three hours and then at 9:30pm on the dot I give myself the final injection of this stage of the process.

What Next?

• Tara has been checked into the kennels and our hotel in Glasgow has been booked (we've got to be at the hospital before 8am on Monday so we're not willing to take a chance on the ferries).
• I'll get sedated and will have my follicles aspirated (via a very large needle shoved into a place where very few women want to have a very large needle shoved). Hopefully they will find a nice clutch of eggs (which haven't been harmed by the 'coasting' which means we've not fed the poor things for two days). Mr Click will do his thing and if all goes well they'll be forcibly introduced to one another some time afterwards.
• Hopefully we'll have lots of happy and healthy embryos who won't be too disgruntled at having to spend a few months chilling in the freezer before my ovaries resume their normal service, when we will wake them back up and put them back where they belong.

It's been a long old week here!