A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

I really enjoyed reading this new novel by Anthony Marra.

I can identify well with the PTSD that the character Natasha suffers from.  My PTSD is from being raped, abused and of late I'll add in infertility.

Just like Natasha, I'm good with needles.  Oh I did relate to her well.  I was doing drugs but not the kind that made you hallucinate.  No the drugs I was self injecting made my head spin, want to puke, cry, and rage.

Family is everything.  Without family you have nothing.  But what happens when it is your family or the creating of your family that causes you to have PTSD?

My infertility is scarring me more than my rape and abuse.  I recently underwent another round of treatments to start a family.  This time I decided to ditch my own DNA in favor of doing donor eggs.

Every day I would take the birth control as instructed during that portion of the long cycle.  Next came adding in a daily injection of Lupron, using a insulin needle, with the birth control pills as a chaser the final week of birth control.

Soon I was instructed to stop the birth control and start adding in estrogen patches.  I would at one point be applying up to four estrogen patches every other day to my pelvic region.  Mind you each patch is 2 by 3 inches in size.

As the time came near for the first ultrasound I got anxious.  What if this didn't work.  What if my ovaries refused to be suppressed?

The first ultrasound was a fail.  I would have to stay on the Lupron for a few more days and the higher number of estrogen patches until the next ultrasound.  Thankfully the second ultrasound went well.  My ovaries were suppressed.  While many of you might not think about any of that when trying to start a family I have to.  While on the birth control my body decided to ovulate.  Oh and not just with one egg.  I'm far from normal.  I ovulated six.  No other drug but birth control was in my body at that time.

By the time I had completed the birth control section of my long protocol I had in storage two beautiful 4AA blastocysts.  They don't get any better.  They would be my husband's genetic children.  I had a chance at motherhood.  My happiness was soaring, I could finally achieve this long awaited goal.

Third ultrasound while still on the estrogen patches and Lupron and my uterine lining was ready.  Ovaries were nice and quite too.  In just a few days I would be able to do a frozen embryo transfer.  The following day would be my last shot of Lupron.  Two days after the third ultrasound I would begin giving myself the progesterone in oil injections.

I'm really good at sticking a 22 gauge 1.5 inch needle into my butt muscle.  Progesterone in oil, also called PIO injections, have to have a large gauge needle in order to get the oil out of the bottle and into the muscle.  I start with an 18 gauge 1.5 inch needle to draw up the PIO but luckily I get to use the 22 gauge to inject myself.

I'm in what is now called the TWW, or two week wait.  Unfortunately I have had a lot of pelvic pain and have had to go to the ER.  They did a beta, or as some call it a blood HCG (human chorionic gonatrophin) test to see if I might be pregnant.  Anything over a value of five is good.  Mine was less than one.  Not good.

I have to stay on the estrogen patches and PIO shots until the tenth week of pregnancy or a negative beta.
I have another beta scheduled for Monday.  My hopes are dashed as far as I'm concerned.  I doubt I'm still pregnant.  I don't want to even think about the money my husband and I have paid out for two IVF (invitrofertilizations) and now a donor egg cycle only to have them fail.  I can only sit here and hope that come Monday morning one embryo is still in me holding on for dear life as I pray fervently to God that it is still there.

Let there be some light in my life.  Let my womb bear life.  My mind switches gears from anger to tears to wanting to blame anyone for how unfair my life has been.  I'm trying to rationalize that sometimes, just like Natasha's life, bad things happen to good people.

This post was inspired by the novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. In a war torn Chechnya, a young fatherless girl, a family friend, and a hardened doctor struggle with love and loss. Join From Left to Write on May 20 as we discuss Anthony Marra's debut novel. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

Try Try Again

Though J and I know that this cycle is almost surely a bust we talked, I cried, he consoled me yesterday.  Today we talked some more.  Because he knows that now he was most likely at fault with the morphology of his sperm being only 2% he is willing to try again.

We are going for broke.

Thursday when I got the results of the early beta and they were less than 1 I started to research.  I went deep.  Today I called SRM.  I've used SRM before and even though I didn't have luck, I used my own eggs back then, I'm willing to give it a shot again.  Why?

Well they offer two donor egg programs.  We could well afford the first one that has absolutely no guarantee of a take home baby and gives us only 6 mature eggs.  Or, and I'm choosing the or mind you, we could go with the guaranteed plan where they have to give you a take home baby or you get your money back at the end of 5 attempts.  If we withdraw early from the plan before we get the take home child then we get 80% back.  I'm sure the cost is going to make us scream because right now I have only just enough saved up for the single shot.  But we are going to go for this.

J feels like he owes me this.

So I told him I need him to get his sperm in shape.  He can improve his morphology and has done so in the past.  When he got back from Korea in 2008 he was borderline on the morphology and he improved with proper eating and taking his vitamins.  He has really slipped up with drinking way too much caffeinated beverages, mostly coffee, eating hormone rich red meats, cold cuts, and so on.  Since he is willing to try I'm happy.  We both like the idea of a guarantee.  Who wouldn't?

Without further ado here is the link to what we are now looking at.  Since I'm a former patient of SRM who is affiliated with this place it shouldn't be that hard to get in to see them.

J will have to tell his parents when we get the beta results about donor eggs so that his parents don't decide to place blame where it isn't due.  I tried and I won't be anyone's scapegoat.  I lost weight, exercised, refrained from any sort of sex, gave up exercise when told to and so on.  You all know the game; especially those of you that have done donor eggs.

Now to any of my readers, if you have used the place I linked to, let me know your experience with their guarantee program.  I'm interested.

I'm thinking that I had glazed eyes when working with PNW.  Their promised success rates were much higher they told me than the advertised 70%.  The other place is 66% but like I said a guarantee this time too.  Plus why the hell didn't PNW tell me my husband's sperm was so horrible before using it to make the embryos?  You bet I'm pissed.  I'm still trying to get information out of them and have been since before I started the Lupron on how many eggs they had to go through to make those two embryos.  They aren't being forthcoming with the information.

You can bet that when I do the WTF appointment I'm going to be asking a lot of questions!

Trying to Not Think About It

Yesterday I was in contact with both clinics.

PNW, at first, thought that less than a 1 on my early beta didn't bode well.  But later in the afternoon they called me back and thought it was just fine.  Really?  If there were two put back I doubt either are there now. 

I'm on such a roller coaster of emotion right now.

POAS both negative.  Wondfo and FRER.

Today was 8dp5dt.

I've prayed to God.  I've begged him.  I promised to still be a good girl even if it is negative.  I just can't figure out why me?

Yeah, this is a pity party.  You might want to turn away now.


I was told with my endometriosis that using my own eggs wouldn't work.  Not because of my age because we all know Halley Strawberry got pregnant at 46.

I know for a fact that women with endometriosis, even stage 4, can get pregnant with their own eggs through IVF.  And yes have a successful pregnancy.

I ovulated from 6 follicles while on the pill this FET.  Talk about a tease.  I should have gone for it and ditched the condoms I was instructed to use as a precaution.

The donor I used is only 22.  No genetic markers for any known blah, blah, blah.  Perfect donor. 

J's sperm count sucked this past cycle.  2% morphology.  But still we ended up with two 5AA Blasts.

So what went wrong?  I was checked out with ultrasounds and blood work.  Nothing wrong with me and I had a 90% chance of success. 

My beta was supposed to be on Sunday but got bumped to Monday because the Army lab is closed for walk-in, except ER cases, on weekends.

Oh and my symptoms as of this morning...gone all gone.  Even my breasts are back to normal.

Any clue?  I have no idea what went wrong.

I'm Okay

Don't worry.

I'm going to be just fine. 

No ultrasound.  Doctor thought it best not to poke and prod inside me and I agree.  Besides other than seeing a cyst the babies wouldn't be visible as of yet.

Beta on Monday.

Blood work last night of course was really low as in less than 1.  We knew it would be as it is way too soon for me, a fairly normal chic, to have anything show up this early in my blood.

Doctor is confident enough to think that the potential for pregnancy is still high as the transfer was only done just last week Thursday.

He feels the pain is related most likely to the endometriosis and adenomyosis and if that is true it will most likely continue to afflict itself upon me throughout this pregnancy....bring it on!  I want a long healthy pregnancy!

So I Ended Up Going To The ER Last Night

I'm okay.

Just having pelvic pain that radiates down my left leg to the knee area.  Not fun.

The doctor before palpating my pelvic region decided I probably do have an ovarian cyst.  After palpating he said he wouldn't rule out ectopic pregnancy.

However OB said no to doing an ultrasound or pelvic exam when he called them.

Urine was almost clear last night so the urine HCG test they did showed negative as I figured it would since I was only 6 days past the 5 day transfer.  HCG will barely be hitting my system in the next few days.  They decided to draw a vial of blood even though they said it would probably be a grey area if it did show anything.

I'm to call my local RE clinic today and get a same day appointment for ultrasound and exam.

Still trying to get a real person on the phone at my clinic that opened up about a half hour ago.  I should probably just have J give me a lift and sit in their office until they realize that yeah answering their phones would be a good thing.

I'll update with more when I have more to tell.

If I don't respond much...

it is because I'm taking an online college class. 

Going to be busy for a while.

I'll try to catch up on all your blogs asap.

Hey You

Knock it off.  You are really getting on my nerves.  No not my readers but the embryoes inside of me. 

Mutt and Jeff if you are still inside of my uterus will try to be more consistent?

This on and off again symptoms is really driving me batty.  One minute I know for sure you are still in there and the next time I think about you and what I should hopefully be feeling you aren't doing anything to my body.

I'm hoping that you decided to stick around but you are causing me to have big doubts.

When I got up to feed you your PIO shot I knew for a fact you were there with the twinges of pain.

Now when I got up at 10 am, not even my breasts hurt.

Readers, I know it is too soon to test.  I'm only 5 days past a 5 day transfer.  The only way I could possibly show positive on a hpt is if there were three embryoes in there or I had residual from the HCG shot or in the case of some women if I  had free flowing HCG in my system more than the average female and yes there are some out there like that.  But I'm being realistic guys, even with my two IVF my beta showed less than a 1 each time.  I normally have very little HCG in me.  When I test it will most likely be blank for a while to come.  Why do I say this?

Well with good reason.  My new RE clinic, the one in Seattle knows my body well enough through all the testing I went through to know that I'm more likely to get a FALSE NEGATIVE before the Beta on Monday.    I was even told by the doctor just after transfer was completed to not test because he said was more afraid of me getting a FALSE NEGATIVE.

How could they possibly know this?  Well I've been pregnant with twins before and back then the hpts were Negative and my Beta was positive and I carried to 10 weeks 6 days.  It is all in my records.

Here is a good LINK to show you when I should test at the earliest.  Any testing before that date will yield for ME a negative.  Tomorrow I'll test and I just might get a faint line, MIGHT mind you.

Here is the chart for the 5 day transfer but there is also on the link above a chart for the 3 day transfer.

5-Day Transfer

Days Past Transfer (DPT)	Embryo Development
One	The blastocyst begins to hatch out of its shell
Two	The blastocyst continues to hatch out of its shell and begins to attach itself to the uterus
Three	The blastocyst attaches deeper into the uterine lining, beginning implantation
Four	Implantation continues
Five	Implantation is complete, cells that will eventually become the placenta and fetus have begun to develop
Six	Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) starts to enter the blood stream
Seven	Fetal development continues and hCG continues to be secreted
Eight	Fetal development continues and hCG continues to be secreted
Nine	Levels of hCG are now high enough to detect a pregnancy