HO.LY. CRAP.

Holy crap, guys.  Just, holy crap.

Remember how a couple of days ago, I was all disappointed because things were moving frustratingly slow?  Well, apparently someone up there was paying attention because my little follicles had QUITE the growth spurt over the last couple of days.

Let me back up.

I started the day sort of annoyed.  See, last night, I went through all my meds and figured out how many doses I had left.  I saw that if I stayed on the same dosage, I was good until Wednesday.  If I was going to have increased doses or go any later, I’d have to get some refills.

All good, until we went to mix the Menopur.  My dose is a vial and a half of Menopur.  The way you make this is to mix 2 mL of water with one vial of Menopur powder, take out 1 mL of the liquid, mix that 1 mL with a second vial, and voila! You have one mL of water with a vial and a half of Menopur dissolved in it.  Then, the next night, you take the vial that still has a mL of liquid, take out that mL, mix it with a new vial, and you’ve done it again.  That way, you are using three vials to get two doses. Easy!

So last night, we take the half vial of Menopur leftover from the night before out of the fridge and mix the liquid with a new vial of powder.  We withdraw it to get ready to inject it, but then realize that there is well under a mL of water in there.  At some point, we lost some liquid, and we have no idea if what is in our syringe is the right dose or not.  We stared at it for a few minutes, but then reached the only logical conclusion: we’d have to toss this dose and use our last two virgin vials of Menopur to mix a vial and a half.

In other words, we started with three and a half vials, and ended with a half vial.  I unexpectedly needed a refill, and was going to have to go out of my way to get to the fertility pharmacy to pick it up before tonight’s dose.  And should I call in refills for everything else while I was there?  If I stimmed past Wednesday it would save me another trip, but if I finished stimming Wednesday or sooner it would be a waste of money. Not the end of the world, but an unexpected hassle of the kind that I was starting to expect as stimming dragged out longer and longer.  I figured I’d ask my nurse’s advice on whether to refill everything, or just the Menopur.

So this morning I show up at my doctor’s office, and everyone is really nice as usual.  I got my blood taken (it only took one try!  Whopee!) and then was sent back for my ultrasound.  I strip, get on the table, and in walks my nurse, my doctor, and a medical student.  They start the exam.  My doctor, once again, can’t find my left ovary (even with the abdominal ultrasound), and eventually gives up and starts measuring the follicles on my right.

He measures one, and the nurse goes, “Well that’s interesting.”  Exactly what you want to hear from someone with an unobstructed view of your vagina!

Me: “Interesting good or interesting bad?”

Nurse: “You grew a LOT! He’s only measured one, and it was over 19!”

Ok, this is cool and all, but whatever – I’m not triggering for a few days yet.  So I decide to address the thing that’s really on my mind. “I’m going to the pharmacy today because of a Menopur incident last night.  Should I call anything else in while I’m stopping by?”

This whole time the doctor is click-click-clicking measurements on the ultrasound screen.

Nurse: “Wait a minute… you might not need to….”

Doctor: “Yup, you’ll trigger today!”

Of the six follicles my doctor measured, five were over 18!  I was ready to go!  I was so shocked I could have fallen off the table. I said, “But I thought it wans’t going to be until Thursday!” And the doctor replied, “It’s still Thursday – just the retrieval instead of the trigger.”

So, I get my trigger tonight at 10 p.m., and my retrieval will be Thursday at 9 a.m.  I’m so excited!!

P.S.  My estrogen was at, I think, 1120, which indicates about 5-6 mature eggs.  I’m hoping that a couple extra will catch up by Thursday (the doctor on Sunday did see nine…), but I’d be happy with five good ones!

P.P.S.  The location for the trigger shot is rather precise, so the nurse did Henry a favor and drew a little target on my butt.  There are a lot of weird things about IVF, but pulling down my pants and leaning over a table so that the nurse could draw on my ass with a Sharpie is pretty high up there.