Cancelled & Triggered

*** Warning: This post is full of TMI! ***

Today was a very stressful and emotional day. Based on the arrival of the HCG and time of injection, our IUI should've been scheduled for late Saturday evening or early Sunday morning. The first scheduling conflict arose when we were told the doctor-on-call would have to be the one doing the procedure and unanswered call after unanswered call left me not able to get in touch with his office to make sure he'd be prepared for us. Then, when I called the lab guy who would have to take care of washing and separating Gil's swimmers, he told me that he wouldn't be in this weekend and we'd have to take care of that today and freeze them to save for the procedure later in the weekend. First of all, seriously?! Is this the ONLY guy in the lab who can do this? And he doesn't work on the weekends? Secondly, freezing the sperm reduces the viability, and we're already only working with 5% so we'd be cutting that to maybe 2-3%. I don't think so. For the money we'd have to pay out, it's not worth it to us to purposefully reduce our chances so much.

So... after much discussion and prayer, Gil and I decided to cancel the IUI. We talked it over with our RE and he supported our decision saying - if we need to - we can try to plan better next cycle and try to get it to fall in the middle of a week rather than the weekend. The good thing about needing drugs to begin a cycle, you can choose what day to start taking them! We went ahead with the trigger shot tonight and will proceed with "natural" procedures throughout the weekend. We'll be dealing with unspun sperm that still have to deal with getting through the cervix (and mine is chronically inflamed), BUT due to the HCG trigger shot, I will probably ovulate for the first time in history!

Speaking of the HCG trigger shot...


HCG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin and these hormone injections are used to stimulate ovulation when there are mature follicles waiting to be released. Due to my disease, I have follicles but they typically don't release on their own, getting absorbed into the lining of my ovaries thereby producing the polycystic (many cysts) lumpy look rather than the smooth exterior appearance of a normal ovary. This shot is given intramuscularly, which means the needle must be at least 1-1/2 inches long to get down deep enough to hit muscle past the subcutaneous layer. If you know me, you know needles make me deathly ill. Want to know the real kicker to this situation? Gil has to administer the shot himself!

Yep, my husband got to stick a long, sharp needle into my hip/upper buttock area and I had to let him. I almost didn't. Seriously, I was laying somewhat on my side and he was getting ready to go for it when I sat up and said it's not worth it. Seriously? Because of my extreme sweat break-out and desire to throw up a day's worth of stomach contents, it's not worth a shot to try and ovulate to help conception?!?! I sucked it up and submitted, and I barely felt anything, even though he was shaking so hard he stuck me twice! Poor guy.

So there we are... I have 3 good follicles and have now been injected with drugs to hopefully make them release their eggs. Now we just wait for the fun stuff.