Thursday, 21 April, 2022

I’m in the middle of my IVF cycle and I’ve so far done eight days of stimulation with my ninth set of injections tonight. Things are… going slow. I was started off on a very low dose because they didn’t want to overstimulate me but as the days progressed, they upped the dose of my medication and here I am on day nine of stims with follicles that are nowhere near ready to be harvested.

I’ve been pretty apathetic throughout it all. But yesterday’s blood draw pushed me over the edge and actually reduced me to tears. The woman taking my blood messed up twice, didn’t get any blood and then, upon removing the needle, my vein literally exploded and blood gushed out everywhere. It was a fucking nightmare. And my jeans got stained – again! First they dripped blood on me on Friday and then they broke my fucking vein and dripped blood on me again – and that – that – was my finally straw.

But I’m over that now and we keep on moving.

I currently only have three follicles over 10mm in size and egg retrieval typically takes place at 17mm+. My biggest is at 15mm so even that isn’t ready. I’m just ready to be done. But if I can get a good number of follicles, avoid OHSS and do a fresh transfer then I guess slow and steady is the preferred trajectory of progress.

The injections have been chill, except the Cetrotide. Telis and I fucked that up the first time. Well, mostly Telis did. Cetrotide requires you to add a liquid solution that’s inside a syringe to a powder and when trying to get the needle onto the syringe, Telis managed to squeeze out some of the liquid so we had to start again with a new pack – what a waste. Luckily we’re not the ones paying for it.

I have my next scan and blood draw tomorrow. I’m predicting another three or four follicles making it over the 10mm threshold and instructions to keep stimming over the weekend. The doctor said egg collection is looking like it’ll be on Monday, but I think it’ll be on Wednesday, with how slow everything is moving.

But we keep pushing!