Sunday, November 30, 2008

That just made me more confused

I went to the RE. When we had the mother of all BFNs in August, she told me that I could come in for a followup appointment to learn what happened with our cycle. I delayed and delayed and even canceled one appointment. I didn't want to go back but I did want to know what happened with our cycle.

I mean, for $30,000 down the drain, I think I should know what they think went wrong.

Here's what I heard:
-the sperm looked good
-my uterus looked good
-my lining was excellent
-the embryos looked great on date 3, pretty good on day 5 (when we did the transfer), and horrible on day 6 (which left none to freeze).
-they have not let the egg donor donate again.

She thought I would be pregnant when I walked out of the transfer since things looked pretty good. They were all disappointed on my behalf.

She acknowledged that it was probably hard for me to walk in the door and I said yes, it was. It was horrible to be there. I think over the past 2 years, I have been there about 70 times. That's a boatload of visits. So we commiserated for a while and then she went over my options:
- do nothing and live childfree
- adopt
- do egg donor again though if we did it again, she would only let us use a proven egg donor and she recommends that we consider using donor sperm on a portion (.25) of the eggs to see if there is a difference with the embryos. If there is, we will at least have something to work with. Not a bad idea.
- split a donor cycle with someone to save money. We'll have less to work with but it will be somewhat less expensive.
- get on their embryo donation list. They do have folks who donate their leftover embryos and they keep of list of those interested in receiving them. It would cost between $3 - 5,000 to do a transfer of donated embryos.
- do two more IUIs. I have already done six, which I thought was her limit, but the first two were on clomid. So she said it would be ok to do two more. My insurance does cover IUIs minus about $500. She said my last IUI was my best response - that was when I used the maximum dosage of gonal f. My chances aren't great but it could be worth a try if I could handle it emotionally.

Whew. I left confused.

I was not expecting options. I was just expecting information. I had told myself we were done with the IF business and on to adoption.

We won't do donor egg again - there is no way to justify the expense. DH wants to get on the embryo donation list. I don't have any problem with that. The doc said she has no way of knowing how long it would take to get a call since not everyone agrees to donate their extra embryos.

I am interested in trying IUI again because, well, what the heck. DH is worried about the impact of those max level drugs on me plus the chance of down syndrome,etc, if we use my eggs. Plus he doesn't want the likely disappointment.

I want to keep moving forward with the adoption plan no matter what. The IUI has a low chance and who knows if/when we would be called for a donor embryo.

Argh. Back to decision making again. I am sick of making decisions that go nowhere.

5 comments:

Christy said...

It is always so hard and so frustrating to come away from a RE visit with more questions than answers. I've been there too, so you aren't alone. If you are looking for advice, all I can offer is to let your options sit with you for a while and eventually your heart will tell you what to do. Good luck.

Phoebe said...

Sounds like the typical response to a visit with the RE. That's pretty much how my last response went. These are not easy choices at all, but I'm glad you have options.

Anonymous said...

It is good that you have some different options to think about. At least they didn't just throw their arms up and say that is it.

I know how hard it is to make these kinds of decisions but we are here to support you in whatever you decide. Good luck at let us know if we can help.

Rebeccah said...

Oh my, that's a lot of choices. My RE didn't give us that many, and in some ways I'm glad, but in other ways I wonder why he didn't? Donated embryos, for instance, is a really interesting option that was never given to us. I wonder if I would have considered it ... Anyway, this is just to say that I understand how difficult this is and wish you well in deciding which road to travel.

Unknown said...

We also had to go for DE IVF abroad. Prices for this procedure here in my country are pretty high. I have PCOS and unfortunately all our attempts to conceive a baby gave no result. We spent so much money for treatment and medicines. We even thought to forget about kids and live as it is. But damn, it was just impossible for us! We wanted to have children, to create big and happy family. So we decided not to put up with the situation. We started our search for a clinic in Europe. We’ve found a couple of good ones, 'explored’ each review and each website, where those clinics were mentioned. And of course official websites were learned by heart. So after the discussions, thinking through all pros and cons, we chose a perfect clinic. So, we came to the clinic and our doctor told us everything about donation. In the case of 5 failures, the clinic promised to refund us our money. I’ve got pregnant from the first attempt! I gave birth to two beautiful kids, Daniel and Denis. The clinic has warm atmosphere and positive influence. The service was pretty good. They gave us guarantees on success. Be careful and pay attention to all details during your search! I hope you'll find all needed answers.