The end of the beginning Part 5

Fertility Center 2 was a much smaller practice. There were only two doctors and a small staff. I was assigned to Dr. J. He sat with me for two hours listening to my medical history and my fertility treatments so far. After looking over my records he felt that my initial fertility treatments may have been mishandled and wanted to jump into a fresh round of IVF. The overall experience was much better. I knew the names of the nurses and the ultrasound tech. It was nice that I knew the names of everyone who worked during my egg retrieval and embryo transfer. The anesthesiologist promised that I would not throw up at all after the retrieval and he was right and although I still experienced the same horrible pain after the procedure it was not quite so bad, or maybe I was just more prepared to deal with it the second time around. They attribute the pain to the fact that I’m “tiny” (which I must admit I like hearing) and my ovaries just get so huge. It really messes things up inside.

Of course I still got the call that the cycle did not work and since we only ended up with two transferable embryos there was no prospect of a frozen transfer. I did appreciate that only a few days after the phone call I was sitting in the office of the very sympathetic and apologetic Dr. J. He actually seemed more upset than I was that things had not worked. He also studied everything that had been done at great length and felt that he could greatly improve on the next round. So now I wait to begin IVF cycle 3.

They have decided to switch me to what is known as the antagonist protocol (or as I like to call it, the protocol for lost causes). Dr. J is thinking that the Lupron (medication) used during the Lupron protocol may have been over suppressing my system causing me to produce low quality eggs. The antagonist protocol eliminates the Lupron. They also want to add a procedure known as ICSI (ick-see). It’s pretty much like giving the sperm and eggs some dancing instructions instead of leaving them to tango on their own. It will make IVF 3 an interesting adventure.