Oops!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I have (fingers crossed and yay!!) had nothing going on!! I drop my lupron dose in half tomorrow (double yay!) and start taking follistim and "solution X" lol which is actually a dilute HCG I guess. I feel like this process has been going on forevvvvverrrrr. 

I went to for a baseline scan and bloodwork on tuesday. My doctor had a resident with him. He showed her my ovaries and said they were nice and big, which i guess is good because then he told me i have beautiful ovaries!! Great to know...so why cant I get pregnant right now? LOL. 

So anyway  things should start getting interesting soon! I'll keep ya posted :-) 

Btw I write a lot of posts using my iPhone so I hope you will ignore the occasional error that I don't catch!! Sometimes autocorrect isn't so great lol. 

Lupron is a drug forged from the depths of hell by satan and his minions...

...not that I believe in that stuff. So if you've been following my posts recently you'll have noticed my rants about headaches and the like. Well I landed myself in an urgent care center again today, narrowly escaping a middle of the night trip to the ER. I have been having headaches varying from pain in the ass to migraine strength since 8/1 now. Yesterday I developed yet another on my trip to Saratoga Springs, NY but alas, I ran out of immitrex so I started poppin Excedrine Migraine. It took the edge off but after 5 pills in 5 hours I still felt pretty awful. I did get to go to the rodeo though!!! It was so much fun:

My favorite is the bull riding and bareback horse riding. 

Afterwards I took my shot 'o  Lupron, birth control pill, 2 metformin, and a couple of excedrine. I woke up around 3am in excruciating pain!!!! I almost asked my husband to take me to the ER-which is bad for me. Finally around 6am I was able to fall asleep for a few hours. Definitely did not really improve. I was crying pretty much all day (so unlike me) so finally we decided to try out the Saratoga hospital urgent care center. I have to give a shout out because they were SO nice!!! Some shots from my "stay":

I still am at a 4 or 5 but definitely feel better. I also got my fertility doc to prescribe a steroid pack and allow me to stop taking my birth control (after he consulted with a neuro dr). So now I'm just relaxing and hoping to get rid of this once and for all!!  I asked a friend who did IVF if she got sick on Lupron and she said oh yes!! Terrible headaches. I know this is all for a good cause but c'mon man!! I can't live like this. I just keep telling myself that hopefully I can get pregnant after all of this and it will be for a good reason. :-) 

Lupron and a trip to the beach!

Well that didn't take long! I took my first injection of Lupron last night. It's 2pm and I have already been dealing with a rather annoying headache and some nausea. I don't know if this headache is related to the migraine I had yesterday or not but oh well. I am thankful that I have an appointment with the neurologist in exactly one week and I start taking the stims the same day. Fingers crossed!!

Anyhoo...yesterday Chad and I finally made it to the beach!! We have been going to Crystal Beach every year for the last 7 years but this is the first we didn't get a beach house and stay. We thought we were going to have a baby but alas, we didn't. My friend Kelly got her's this year so we visited for the day. While there we made a pact to call and book the same place (right on the beach!!) within the next few weeks. Basically this time we don't care if we have an infant or not-going to the beach for a week in the summer is just what we do,it's who we are!! We had such a fabulous time. Here are some pictures...

Getting closer to starting the meds

Today I started googling the side effects of Lupron, one of the meds I will be on for about 2-3 weeks. It's job is to suppress the reproductive system so that  I don't accidentally ovulate early. I don't know why I do this to myself but now I'm worried!! The biggest complaints from women undergoing IVF and taking lupron were hot flashes, severe irritability, and HEADACHES!! I seriously might need to just go live at urgent care if I keep having to get headaches (3rd migraine this month today). 

Apparently the symptoms ease some once I add the follistim in to grow my eggs. I have an appointment at the neurologist on the 27th so fingers crossed hopefully I can keep the headaches under control with OTCs until then. I don't actually know if I should be taking them but I assume at least until I get my period it should be OK...which is when my last MEGA migraine hit. This time I will be prepared and start taking action nightly to hopefully prevent an onslaught of pain. 

In other news I went to school to work more on my classroom. It's t-minus 2 weeks until school starts and I still don't know exactly what I'm going to be teaching (hmm maybe that's my headache!!). I meant to take pictures today to post of my work in progress and all the fun things I've bought and done but alas, I forgot. Maybe next week I will remember and post some pics!! 

Things just got real

There's definitely a difference between saying "oh I will just have to take a few shots a night to prepare for this" and getting a huge box full of medication and needles in the mail.  Today I got home from a wonderful lunch with some friends, newly engaged (congrats!), and found a box full of a bottle of medication, alcohol wipes, syringes, a sharps container, a whole folder on directions for giving yourself injections, and it was all stored in a fancy ice pack.  I luckily don't have to start these medications until the 19th.  Reading through the side effects was kind of scary.  This medication is used to suppress reproductive hormones.  Fatigue, breast size changes, dizziness, nausea, lack of appetite, etc.  FUN!!! Can't wait...  Here's what I received:

I am just happy I will be dealing with the majority of this before school starts and within the first weeks of the school year.  We had our school remodeled over the last two years and are in the process of moving back in right now.  I feel like it's more work than my own house sometimes!  As a science teacher I have tons of boxes of lab equipment, models, books, etc to unload.  I also hope to be at this site for quite some time so I want to find the perfect way to store it!!  I'm kind of an "out of sight out of mind" kind of girl, so I have to make sure I label everything and make it accessible.  We also will have a new principal and a lot of things will be changing (hopefully for the better) because of that - so all in all between IVF preparations and "back to school" preparations (which I am also doing in between paragraphs here - my ADD is kicking in) it will be a busy end of August/September! 

Sissy is here!

My sister came to town last night, for the weekend. She was just here a week ago, but it is always nice when she is here. Its a built in best friend sleepover. She lives in Chicago. We are all happy because she just finally got a real lawyer job!!! Its funny because as educators we haven't really had much if a routine for the last month. I don't think I've even cooked dinner in weeks.  We basically spent 70$ on pop, water, chips & dip, and cookies. This will keep her happy. 

My parents are also in town so today we are all hanging out at my Aunt's pool. It's so nice!! It is one if my favorite things to do in the summer. I have been dragging my friends and their kids to the pool whenever I can too. 

My cousin's bridal shower is tomorrow. It's nice to have lots of things to do to take my mind off all the waiting-to-wait-till-IVF ridiculousness.  I ordered my first "I have to pay for this" medication. It was only (lol) $199. So now until the 19th I can just relax and enjoy!! 

Good thing I'm ok with needles!

Today I had my first in a series of visits to prep me for IVF. Of course, fml, I woke up in the middle of the night with another migraine and forgot to bring all the paperwork. Luckily my doctor and nurses are SO NICE they said bring it all next time. Whoops!!  

So I guess I kind of blocked out the reality of what they were going to do to me today, even though it wasn't that bad. I had the actual doctor examine my uterus (usually it's just a nurse). He first had to swab and clear my cervix, then insert a catheter into my uterus. He had said I would need an abdominal ultrasound to help guide the cath but it was so easy that he never needed to do it! Wonderful. So I have to say having catheters inserted into your uterus isn't pleasant. My uterus always cramps down trying to push it out. Luckily I'm used to it. Anyway so then he added the vaginal ultrasound wand and then filled up my uterus with water!! Weird!! It was to make sure everything was perfect in there...and it was. He said my uterus looks as perfect as if could. Woo hoo!! (However then wtf why is it so hard for me to get/stay pregnant? Oh well). 

So then I met one of the lovely IVF nurses, Kathy. She is seriously so nice. The whole staff there is so amazing that its hard to see other doctors now. Anyway she provided me with a custom calendar or events. I am going to end up taking three different medications throughout mid-late August and in to early September. Of course they aren't pills!!!  Oh no, they are all injections. So Kathy had to teach me how to use the needles and draw the proper amounts from the vials. Fun times ahead. At least I have about a week and a half before I have to start all this. In the meantime I really have to get rid of this cluster of migraines once and for all. Chad is being really nice about it all but I can tell his patience is waning. Going to start on a steroid pack tomorrow. Wish me luck! 

Really, more babies?

This is just getting ridiculous now. Today I went to work to start setting up my class room and to attend a "meet and eat" with the new principal. It was a lot of fun. I had an opportunity to vent with another friend/colleague about our fertility struggles and how frustrating it is that so many of our friends are on their second pregnancies while we are still hoping and trying for baby #1. She laughed and told me how she always looks at the support group poster at the doc's office but decides we have a support group right at work!! Anyway, point of the story is that two, yes two, people at work are now pregnant with their second babies. Obviously I'm super happy for them, I am very fond of both individuals, but SERIOUSLY?!?  Seriously.

Fingers crossed that this whole IVF thing works and I manage to actually stay pregnant for more than two months. Until then I can go buy cards and gifts for the 5 people I know who are having babies between December and February lol. WtF was going in last April?! Baby boom 

Oh well!!!  Rant over :-) 

On to IVF

Well I am definitely not pregnant and so we are definitely moving on to IVF.  First I have to go on birth control pills for three weeks to settle everything down.  It's nice to have a whole month of not having to worry about everything I eat, drink, lift, etc, but I hate being on birth control pills.  I hate how I feel on them and how they make me get headaches.  Speaking of which, when I got my period this past week I also got a lovely menstrual migraine...that lasted FOUR whole DAYS!  I basically couldn't function and barely got through each day's pre-planned activities.  I finally broke down on the fourth day and went to an Immediate Care center near me.  Normally with a headache this bad I'd go for an IV treatment at my neurologist but since I hadn't been to see him since 2011 they wouldn't take me, ugh!  So luckily the PA that I saw at the urgent care has a girlfriend with migraines and gave me an IV with a steroid, anti-nausea, and a pain killer.  Would you believe that I still left with a headache???!!!  However, I finally woke up feeling great today and *fingers crossed* I'll stay that way for a while now.  In the mean time I made an appointment for the end of August to see the neuro again and get an updated treatment plan... even though by the time I go I'll be very close to IVF time and probably won't be able to take any meds any more.  Ah c'est la vie!

Back to the IVF ridiculousness.  Wow I thought I had a lot of doctor's appointments when I was using follistim but now I'll have even more!!!  I have to go this week to get my uterus measured so that they can make a special catheter for me (for use when placing the blastocysts back in after fertilization).  After that I get a "teach" appointment where the nurse reviews all my dates and meds that I'll be taking.  Apparently I get to go home with a "calendar of events" woo hoo!  Well let me tell you this is a pain but if it results in a child then I'm happy to do it.  My question is...when do I have to pay?  I guess I'll find out on Thursday when I go.  Unfortunately C can't come with me this week but he is finally going to discuss the situation with his superintendent and principal at work so that he can take some days off for all of this and not have to hear about it.  I don't know why he hasn't mentioned it sooner...I mean he has had to take a half-day at least once a month or so for all of the IUIs we have done. 

In other news - where is summer?  It's been only in the 70s lately and we're lucky to see the sun for a whole day.  Today C and I were able to go to my aunt's pool for some serious R&R...very nice!!!