I had my follow-up appt with Dr. Boob this morning and all went well. It's two weeks after my surgery, so they needed to remove the sutures and listen to me whimper about the allergic reaction I've been having to the surgical tape. There's not alot they can do for the rash, it's all gross and dry now, so it's a matter of letting it flake off. But it's such an itchy mofo, it's driving me bananas. The doctor said I could try benadryl but was not all that concerned. And I guess when you spend all day with cancer patients, an "itchy" nipple is pretty low on your list of priorities.
She again went over the biopsy results, that they found absolutely nothing bad this time (yippee!) but said that my risk of developing breast cancer one day has double/tripled over the rate of the general Caucasian female public. I say Caucasian, because there are pretty drastic differences in rates amongst races, so I was judged against my peer group. Over the next 5 years, my risk (at my age) is 1.5% to another's .5%. Still a 98.5% chance of NOT developing it, and I'll definitely take those odds. Then, my risk of developing BC by the time I'm 90 (if I should be so lucky) is 24% to others 12%. I don't LOVE those odds, but it's still saying I have a 75% chance of not developing it, ever. Dr. Boob is great, we both lean on the aggressive side for treatment, so she thinks with good monitoring, even if I did develop anything eventually, we'd catch it early. The plan is to do a follow up ultrasound on this issue in six months and then move to the usual annual mammograms. She said I could have the option of also staggering in annual MRIs. I'll have to research this, especially the risk of repeated MRIs. I know they have a risk false positives, so it's mostly a choice of potential needless surgical biopsies for the peace of mind that you're catching anything early. My gut says that I would opt to do the MRIs -- I'd rather be safe than sorry, but I'll need to ponder.
I was also going to write about the chromosomal karyotype results that I FINALLY got on Peanut today, after repeated hounding of the OBGYN's office. But, alas, I need to do some work, will post on that tomorrow...
Showing posts with label biopsy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biopsy. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
GOOD news for once!!!
I was not expecting to hear back from my breast surgeon so soon - I only had the surgery last Thursday so I figured the pathology from the excisional breast biopsy would take a least a week. When the phone rang just 5 minutes ago and I saw the hospital on the Caller ID, I knew it was her and I was scared. I was not mentally prepared for this yet.
I answered the phone and immediately my beloved, no-B.S. doctor just got right to the point. They saw nothing bad, not even the atypical hyperplastic cells that were seen on the less-invasive biopsy in July! Yay, yay, yay! This is the best news possible, I hadn't even been hoping for this much, I thought the best case scenario would be that they saw nothing worse than before. It didn't even enter my brain to possibly entertain the idea that they'd see NOTHING bad.
The doctor said there was the slightest chance that they excised the wrong area as the first biopsy should have left a clip in my breast to pinpoint the exact spot. However, the first biopsy radiologist didn't leave a clip because the nodule appeared to somewhat collapse as she biopsied it, which made her confident that it was only a (fluid-filled) cyst. We were both surprised to see an abnormal pathology on that one. They're 99% confident they got the right spot, and so am I, being the one poked and prodded. They did a pretty thorough ultrasound in the area before skewering me with that wire last Thursday, and this was the only obvious nodule, so - again - confident we got the right spot. The doctor also said this latest pathology also showed microscopic earlier trauma to the area, meaning it was almost definitely the area biopsied in the past.
I have a follow-up appointment with this doctor next week, to check on my incision and we'll talk about follow-up care to make sure I'm good going forward, probably another ultrasound and mammo in six months. I warned her that I was going to be asking her opinion on whether continuing fertility stims would be a bad idea for me and she launched right into it. She said if all she cared about for her patients was as a breast, she would advise them never to do fertility meds, never smoke, never drink, never do anything that could put the breast at risk. And she acknowledged that playing with your female hormones is not a great thing for any of our reproductive organs. But, she was so cool and adamant that she cares about her patients as a whole person and wants them to be happy and healthy as complete people and clearly having children is a big part of what will make me fulfilled and because of that, it's worth the risk. I told her my plan to do stims for maybe six more off-and-on months (IVF, break, IVF, break, etc.) and by then I'd be ready to move on to donor eggs anyway and she said six months in the scheme of things won't make a difference anyway.
I'm practically crying as I write this. Both from relief but also because I have been starved for good news over the past year. Two miscarriages, a practically zero response to three IUIs and IVF and four surgical procedures always had me looking around the bend, waiting for the next slap in the face. It's been such a long time since I hung up the phone after speaking with a doctor or nurse and had a smile on my face and it feels great.
NoodleGuy just got home and we're off for some celebration sushi and maybe even a scorpion bowl! Yippee!
I answered the phone and immediately my beloved, no-B.S. doctor just got right to the point. They saw nothing bad, not even the atypical hyperplastic cells that were seen on the less-invasive biopsy in July! Yay, yay, yay! This is the best news possible, I hadn't even been hoping for this much, I thought the best case scenario would be that they saw nothing worse than before. It didn't even enter my brain to possibly entertain the idea that they'd see NOTHING bad.
The doctor said there was the slightest chance that they excised the wrong area as the first biopsy should have left a clip in my breast to pinpoint the exact spot. However, the first biopsy radiologist didn't leave a clip because the nodule appeared to somewhat collapse as she biopsied it, which made her confident that it was only a (fluid-filled) cyst. We were both surprised to see an abnormal pathology on that one. They're 99% confident they got the right spot, and so am I, being the one poked and prodded. They did a pretty thorough ultrasound in the area before skewering me with that wire last Thursday, and this was the only obvious nodule, so - again - confident we got the right spot. The doctor also said this latest pathology also showed microscopic earlier trauma to the area, meaning it was almost definitely the area biopsied in the past.
I have a follow-up appointment with this doctor next week, to check on my incision and we'll talk about follow-up care to make sure I'm good going forward, probably another ultrasound and mammo in six months. I warned her that I was going to be asking her opinion on whether continuing fertility stims would be a bad idea for me and she launched right into it. She said if all she cared about for her patients was as a breast, she would advise them never to do fertility meds, never smoke, never drink, never do anything that could put the breast at risk. And she acknowledged that playing with your female hormones is not a great thing for any of our reproductive organs. But, she was so cool and adamant that she cares about her patients as a whole person and wants them to be happy and healthy as complete people and clearly having children is a big part of what will make me fulfilled and because of that, it's worth the risk. I told her my plan to do stims for maybe six more off-and-on months (IVF, break, IVF, break, etc.) and by then I'd be ready to move on to donor eggs anyway and she said six months in the scheme of things won't make a difference anyway.
I'm practically crying as I write this. Both from relief but also because I have been starved for good news over the past year. Two miscarriages, a practically zero response to three IUIs and IVF and four surgical procedures always had me looking around the bend, waiting for the next slap in the face. It's been such a long time since I hung up the phone after speaking with a doctor or nurse and had a smile on my face and it feels great.
NoodleGuy just got home and we're off for some celebration sushi and maybe even a scorpion bowl! Yippee!
Friday, September 25, 2009
Now we wait on the results
First of all, thank you all for your comments to yesterday's post. I was actually able to go online between procedures and it made me feel really good to know that I have buddies out there in cyberspace cheering me on. You guys rock!
Yesterday went pretty well, my biggest fear was that I'd be uncomfortable with the wire in my boob during the long wait between procedures, and that actually was a non-issue. The wire is so fine, I barely felt it there. The point of the wire is to make the surgery as quick and easy as possible by pinpointing the location of the nodule in question before the surgery even starts. An ultrasound (yes, yet more ultrasounds!) is done and a radiologist will guide a very fine wire through your breast tissue so that the tip rests in the nodule. Very accurate, and I definitely appreciate the reduction in surgical time and potential slicing that eliminating this part of the procedure would cause.
Now, what I did not appreciate was how hard it was to get the wire to the right point in my boob. I felt like I was jumped by a very polite and professional girl gang. The u/s tech was friendly and very nice and the two radiologists performed the wire localization, one a little more senior to the other, were both lovely, tiny Indian women with delightful British accents. Any unlikely gang, but performed a pretty kick-ass smackdown nonetheless.
After the tech had located the nodule -- which had shrunk from both the earlier biopsy in July and probably from the progesterone during my 9.5 weeks of pregnancy -- the more senior doctor, I'll call her Gang Leader, injected Lido.caine to numb the area. The injection into the boob doesn't feel great, but not too bad. Then the more junior doctor, I'll call her The Protege, took the wire, which has a little handle on the end, and started threading it through the tissue toward the nodule; we all were watching the progress on the u/s screen. It wasn't so bad until she got about an inch away and then she just couldn't go any further. She kept pushing and pushing, to the point that the tech was basically sit on my chest from my left side and The Protege was sitting on me from the right, and pushing and squashing the tissue to try to get a way in.
I wasn't completely surprised, as I have been told ad nauseum by boob professionals over the years that I have incredibly dense breast tissue. They showed me on the screen a line of thick tissue that was just completely blocking their path. I was being a pretty good trooper but after about 10 minutes they could tell it was hurting me alot more than it should have and I think the Lido.caine was starting to wear off. So, Gang Leader took over and decided to try to come in from a different direction. They showed me the first wire, which they had to discard, because my fiesty breast tissue had completely bent it out of proportion. She gave me another shot of Lido.caine and was able to get to the area, though it didn't feel great. It turned out that the nodule was not only very deep but was basically resting on the muscles of my chest cavity, which is why they think the tissue was tougher. When Gang Leader got the tip in the nodule, I actually had some pain radiate up toward my neck. Not bad pain, just surprising, and she pulled back a little because she said that sounded like she had tapped my muscle a little.
After that was done - and again, the doctors were so nice and caring, they kept asking me through the whole thing if I was OK and immediately stopped if I said anything -- I had to go in for a mammogram. Gang Leader told me that was one of the hardest wire localizations they had to do in quite a while (Yay, me!) and that the tech should go easy on me for the mammogram. For those of you who have not had mammos, they really like to squish your boobs in the machine to spread out the tissue. With my dense boobs, you can imagine how squished they usually need to do mine, like pancakes basically. But it would have been cruel to do much more to me after they all just gave me a beat down, so it was a pretty gentle, quick mammo.
Then I was brought down to the waiting area, where I reclined in a bed along with all the other ambulatory surgery patients -- each in our own beds, obviously ;). NoodleGuy was able to keep me company and we chatted, read and surfed the interwebs. I was able to get some laughs and good sympathy for my beat down by the radiologists. The wait actually turned out not to be too bad -- by the time I was back after the wire localization, it was about noon and they started prepping me for surgery around 2:30. The surgery itself was no big deal (yay for deep sedation!), took about 45 minutes and then I was in recovery for about an hour where they gave me the best tasting graham crackers ever. We got Mickey D's on the way home -- oh the guilty pleasure on salty french fries! Watched some TV (catching up on season 3 of Dex.ter) and we both conked out by 10pm.
I have a big bandage, about 6" x 2" on the outer side of my right boob. I wasn't allowed to shower today, but I am allowed to take the bandage off, leaving the steri-strips on until they fall off on their own. I'm waiting until the afternoon to remove it, at around the 24 hour mark. I'm curious to see the incision -- the surgeon told me I'd have a scar, but it shouldn't be too bad. I have to admit that I'm a little vain when it comes to my boobs, they're by far my favorite body feature. Just big enough without being too big, yet still perky. My friends always used to tell me they hated me because I could wear tank tops bra-less or with those little built-in bra shelves and not have any sagginess. Little did I know that this very perkiness was due to dense tissue which would be an albatross at a later point. Anyway, I'm hoping the scar isn't too disfiguring, though NoodleGuy said he'll keep me regardless. ;)
Mentally, I'm OK today. Relieved that this part is done. Next week will be nerve-wracking, waiting on the results for Peanut (even though I am sure it's chromosomal) and especially for the biopsy results. I took the day off from work today, which I almost never do after all these surgeries lately, I usually go back to work the next day. Since I work from home, it seems like I don't need to bother with skipping work. But this time, I'm so glad I'm not working today -- I'm going to do something fun (maybe get my eyebrows shaped using a spa gift certificate NGuy gave me) and just not deal with the emails and annoying folks at the office. The owe me buckets of comp time anyway, so I may as well take it.
So, part 1 done -- more to come on the question of when and whether I can get back on the fertility merry-go-round....
Yesterday went pretty well, my biggest fear was that I'd be uncomfortable with the wire in my boob during the long wait between procedures, and that actually was a non-issue. The wire is so fine, I barely felt it there. The point of the wire is to make the surgery as quick and easy as possible by pinpointing the location of the nodule in question before the surgery even starts. An ultrasound (yes, yet more ultrasounds!) is done and a radiologist will guide a very fine wire through your breast tissue so that the tip rests in the nodule. Very accurate, and I definitely appreciate the reduction in surgical time and potential slicing that eliminating this part of the procedure would cause.
Now, what I did not appreciate was how hard it was to get the wire to the right point in my boob. I felt like I was jumped by a very polite and professional girl gang. The u/s tech was friendly and very nice and the two radiologists performed the wire localization, one a little more senior to the other, were both lovely, tiny Indian women with delightful British accents. Any unlikely gang, but performed a pretty kick-ass smackdown nonetheless.
After the tech had located the nodule -- which had shrunk from both the earlier biopsy in July and probably from the progesterone during my 9.5 weeks of pregnancy -- the more senior doctor, I'll call her Gang Leader, injected Lido.caine to numb the area. The injection into the boob doesn't feel great, but not too bad. Then the more junior doctor, I'll call her The Protege, took the wire, which has a little handle on the end, and started threading it through the tissue toward the nodule; we all were watching the progress on the u/s screen. It wasn't so bad until she got about an inch away and then she just couldn't go any further. She kept pushing and pushing, to the point that the tech was basically sit on my chest from my left side and The Protege was sitting on me from the right, and pushing and squashing the tissue to try to get a way in.
I wasn't completely surprised, as I have been told ad nauseum by boob professionals over the years that I have incredibly dense breast tissue. They showed me on the screen a line of thick tissue that was just completely blocking their path. I was being a pretty good trooper but after about 10 minutes they could tell it was hurting me alot more than it should have and I think the Lido.caine was starting to wear off. So, Gang Leader took over and decided to try to come in from a different direction. They showed me the first wire, which they had to discard, because my fiesty breast tissue had completely bent it out of proportion. She gave me another shot of Lido.caine and was able to get to the area, though it didn't feel great. It turned out that the nodule was not only very deep but was basically resting on the muscles of my chest cavity, which is why they think the tissue was tougher. When Gang Leader got the tip in the nodule, I actually had some pain radiate up toward my neck. Not bad pain, just surprising, and she pulled back a little because she said that sounded like she had tapped my muscle a little.
After that was done - and again, the doctors were so nice and caring, they kept asking me through the whole thing if I was OK and immediately stopped if I said anything -- I had to go in for a mammogram. Gang Leader told me that was one of the hardest wire localizations they had to do in quite a while (Yay, me!) and that the tech should go easy on me for the mammogram. For those of you who have not had mammos, they really like to squish your boobs in the machine to spread out the tissue. With my dense boobs, you can imagine how squished they usually need to do mine, like pancakes basically. But it would have been cruel to do much more to me after they all just gave me a beat down, so it was a pretty gentle, quick mammo.
Then I was brought down to the waiting area, where I reclined in a bed along with all the other ambulatory surgery patients -- each in our own beds, obviously ;). NoodleGuy was able to keep me company and we chatted, read and surfed the interwebs. I was able to get some laughs and good sympathy for my beat down by the radiologists. The wait actually turned out not to be too bad -- by the time I was back after the wire localization, it was about noon and they started prepping me for surgery around 2:30. The surgery itself was no big deal (yay for deep sedation!), took about 45 minutes and then I was in recovery for about an hour where they gave me the best tasting graham crackers ever. We got Mickey D's on the way home -- oh the guilty pleasure on salty french fries! Watched some TV (catching up on season 3 of Dex.ter) and we both conked out by 10pm.
I have a big bandage, about 6" x 2" on the outer side of my right boob. I wasn't allowed to shower today, but I am allowed to take the bandage off, leaving the steri-strips on until they fall off on their own. I'm waiting until the afternoon to remove it, at around the 24 hour mark. I'm curious to see the incision -- the surgeon told me I'd have a scar, but it shouldn't be too bad. I have to admit that I'm a little vain when it comes to my boobs, they're by far my favorite body feature. Just big enough without being too big, yet still perky. My friends always used to tell me they hated me because I could wear tank tops bra-less or with those little built-in bra shelves and not have any sagginess. Little did I know that this very perkiness was due to dense tissue which would be an albatross at a later point. Anyway, I'm hoping the scar isn't too disfiguring, though NoodleGuy said he'll keep me regardless. ;)
Mentally, I'm OK today. Relieved that this part is done. Next week will be nerve-wracking, waiting on the results for Peanut (even though I am sure it's chromosomal) and especially for the biopsy results. I took the day off from work today, which I almost never do after all these surgeries lately, I usually go back to work the next day. Since I work from home, it seems like I don't need to bother with skipping work. But this time, I'm so glad I'm not working today -- I'm going to do something fun (maybe get my eyebrows shaped using a spa gift certificate NGuy gave me) and just not deal with the emails and annoying folks at the office. The owe me buckets of comp time anyway, so I may as well take it.
So, part 1 done -- more to come on the question of when and whether I can get back on the fertility merry-go-round....
Monday, September 21, 2009
NoodleGirl's Choice
We had a nice weekend, beautiful weather up here in New England. I love these warm, waning-summer September days. On Saturday we went to a neighborhood block party and then to a benefit for a friend who got into a motorcyle accident without medical insurance.
The block party was predictably torturous for me, little tykes running around having fun, NoodleGuy and I trying to make conversation with perfectly nice people who talk about their kids 80% of the time. Luckily no one point blank asked me when we'd be having kids, but since they've been asking us that for the two years since we moved here, I think we may have officially entered the pity don't-ask-them-anymore phase, which is a relief. The benefit was fun, hopefully they earned a good chunk of change for our friend -- he needed to be Medi.vac'ed to the hospital and that alone cost $25k. Ouch. He's doing extremely well considering -- he had a broken pelvis, but was up and around at the party, quite remarkable as the accident was only 6 weeks ago.
Then on Sunday we went out for dim sum, which we love love love. There's a great spot about half an hour away from us, which we try to get to at least once a month. Plus, the closest Tra.der J.oe's is right near the restaurant, so we get to kill two birds with one stone. Then the rest of the day yesterday we just chilled out, watched the movie "The B.ank J.ob" (we're both big Ja.son Sta.tham fans) and went for a bike ride. A nice, normal weekend before the chillier weather sets in.
This morning, I spoke with a nurse at the surgery center handling my excisional breast biopsy on Thursday. We did the pre-interview, designed to speed through check in. Though Lord knows why we're trying to speed through since I have a 5 hour wait between the prep-procedure and the surgery itself, but whatevs. When we got to the question about "Any previous surgeries?", I had to say "OK, this is quite a list, are a ready?". Since they consider any procedure using anesthesia as a "surgery", here's my list:
Seven surgeries?? This has NOT been a great year and a half. Bah. And to think that I used to be terrified of surgery, thinking I was one of those people who would look asleep and sedated but actually be awake behind my closed eyelids and feeling every slice. Now surgery is a walk in the park, sadly. I'm like a little kid who will do anything for a treat because NoodleGuy always takes me out for some horrible-for-me, guilty pleasure food after a surgery. Taco Bell, here I come!
I cannot wait for Thursday's surgery to be over. Besides the fact that checking in and spending all day in a hospital only a week and a half after this latest D&E is kind of brutal, the surgery isn't until 3:45. And I can't eat past midnight the night before. Doesn't it seem like they shouldn't schedule surgeries so late in the day? It's mean. But obviously the hunger part is minimal. What I'm really nervous about what these cells are and how it'll impact my life and my continued fertility treatment. I'll find out in about a week after the surgery what the results are -- even if they're confident they removed all the cells and that it's just something to be watched but not a major concern, I'm still very nervous about continuing to pump hormones into my body. It's yet another pro in favor of donor eggs (see previous post for more pros). But I'm trying to take this one step at a time. Surgery first, then I'll obsess about the results phone call. After that I'll start obsessing about the STBY appts with both the breast surgeon and RE to grill them for their opinion on whether fertility meds will continue to be a safe option for me.
There were so many reasons we were grateful for the natural miracle of Peanut, not the least of which was that I'd be able to leave ART behind. I know every IF lady yearns for the day to never have to jump up on that u/s table again, or try to track down their nurses for results or have to schedule a vacation around TTC. But for me, it also would have meant I could have stopped taking these stims that may or may not be causing health problems for me. Now I'm back with my own version of Sophie's Choice -- do I stop trying to conceive a biological child or do I take a chance on my own health? Both choices kind of suck.
The block party was predictably torturous for me, little tykes running around having fun, NoodleGuy and I trying to make conversation with perfectly nice people who talk about their kids 80% of the time. Luckily no one point blank asked me when we'd be having kids, but since they've been asking us that for the two years since we moved here, I think we may have officially entered the pity don't-ask-them-anymore phase, which is a relief. The benefit was fun, hopefully they earned a good chunk of change for our friend -- he needed to be Medi.vac'ed to the hospital and that alone cost $25k. Ouch. He's doing extremely well considering -- he had a broken pelvis, but was up and around at the party, quite remarkable as the accident was only 6 weeks ago.
Then on Sunday we went out for dim sum, which we love love love. There's a great spot about half an hour away from us, which we try to get to at least once a month. Plus, the closest Tra.der J.oe's is right near the restaurant, so we get to kill two birds with one stone. Then the rest of the day yesterday we just chilled out, watched the movie "The B.ank J.ob" (we're both big Ja.son Sta.tham fans) and went for a bike ride. A nice, normal weekend before the chillier weather sets in.
This morning, I spoke with a nurse at the surgery center handling my excisional breast biopsy on Thursday. We did the pre-interview, designed to speed through check in. Though Lord knows why we're trying to speed through since I have a 5 hour wait between the prep-procedure and the surgery itself, but whatevs. When we got to the question about "Any previous surgeries?", I had to say "OK, this is quite a list, are a ready?". Since they consider any procedure using anesthesia as a "surgery", here's my list:
- January 2008 - Voluntary foot surgery
- February 2008 - Laprascopy (found Stage IV endo, a 5cm cyst on each ovary, lesions "all over the place")
- December 2008 - D&E (m/c #1)
- February 2009 - Hysteroscopy (10 polyps and an adhesion, caused by the D&E? Who knows?)
- June 2009 - egg retrieval (one freaking egg, but she was a good one! Became a HIP 8-cell, grade 1 embie, but no dice)
- September 2009 - D&E (m/c #2)
- September 2009 - Excisional breast biopsy to remove atypical cells. Which I'm convinced were caused by 5 straight months of fertility meds.
Seven surgeries?? This has NOT been a great year and a half. Bah. And to think that I used to be terrified of surgery, thinking I was one of those people who would look asleep and sedated but actually be awake behind my closed eyelids and feeling every slice. Now surgery is a walk in the park, sadly. I'm like a little kid who will do anything for a treat because NoodleGuy always takes me out for some horrible-for-me, guilty pleasure food after a surgery. Taco Bell, here I come!
I cannot wait for Thursday's surgery to be over. Besides the fact that checking in and spending all day in a hospital only a week and a half after this latest D&E is kind of brutal, the surgery isn't until 3:45. And I can't eat past midnight the night before. Doesn't it seem like they shouldn't schedule surgeries so late in the day? It's mean. But obviously the hunger part is minimal. What I'm really nervous about what these cells are and how it'll impact my life and my continued fertility treatment. I'll find out in about a week after the surgery what the results are -- even if they're confident they removed all the cells and that it's just something to be watched but not a major concern, I'm still very nervous about continuing to pump hormones into my body. It's yet another pro in favor of donor eggs (see previous post for more pros). But I'm trying to take this one step at a time. Surgery first, then I'll obsess about the results phone call. After that I'll start obsessing about the STBY appts with both the breast surgeon and RE to grill them for their opinion on whether fertility meds will continue to be a safe option for me.
There were so many reasons we were grateful for the natural miracle of Peanut, not the least of which was that I'd be able to leave ART behind. I know every IF lady yearns for the day to never have to jump up on that u/s table again, or try to track down their nurses for results or have to schedule a vacation around TTC. But for me, it also would have meant I could have stopped taking these stims that may or may not be causing health problems for me. Now I'm back with my own version of Sophie's Choice -- do I stop trying to conceive a biological child or do I take a chance on my own health? Both choices kind of suck.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Apologies
Oh, blogosphere, I owe you a big apology. I don't even know where to start. So many things have been happening, so I've been swamped. But it's mostly been that I have a few RL friends that read my old blog and I wasn't ready to share the news with RL people and was so incredibly slow about moving everything over to a new blog.
Anyhoo, the big news is... I'm pregnant!!!! On a break cycle! Me, the woman who only ever mustered one single follie on 15 days and hiroshima doses of stims for IVF. I got pregnant on the cycle AFTER by last IVF BFN. WTF?? We weren't even trying!! Sure, I was temping, but that was just to see what my cycles were doing leading into IVF#2 in September. But we drank like sailors and ate like crack addicts and though we BDed, it was the fun kind not the get-your-preseed, assume-the-most-penetrating-position-regardless-of-pleasure-or-comfort kind. Then, unbeknownst to me, on the day that my eggie was getting down with DH's swimmers, I had a minor surgical procedure. Finally I went mountain biking (and continued to drink like a sailor) over a long weeked when implantation was taking place. Go me! Do everything wrong and it worked!
My only ever other BFP was a bitterwsweet one. I never really gained steam and we knew from the betas that it was most likely doomed: 12.5 at 14dpo, 60 at 17dpo and 246 at 20dpo. So I went in with trepidation this time and the betas rocked. 299 at 15dpo and 2,087 at 20dpo. The 6-week u/s measured at 5w5d (not unusual for that weirdo LMP dating technique to be off by a couple of days for a natural pregnancy) and though I was warned that many people don't see a h/b until 6.5-7 weeks, there it was, going strong, at 117bpm! Oh, I forgot to mention that I've been spotting since week 4. Not the "safe" brown spotting, but the dreaded red spotting with little solid flecks. I was fairly calm when it first started leading up to a nervous breakdown the day before my u/s. I drove an hour to the clinic, determined to make them test me on the spot. And they would have, but my nurse convinced me that it was OK, the signs were not unusual. Plus, I would have have to go with Dr. Dirtbag instead of my beloved RE scheduled for the next day. So I waited and it was great.
So, now, of course, I'm panicking again. The spotting continued through earlier this week, until a lovely bout of diarrhea seemed to have traumatized nether regions enough to behave with the spotting for the past few days. Oh, and that unpleasant bathroom experience was not random, but from a cruise to the caribbean I'd been on for the past week. Never did I want to take a vacation less -- crazy IF lady must fly, drive 5 hours to a port, cruise to Swine Flu central for 7 days and then travel the reverse just as she finds out she's 6 weeks pg and spotting. Nice! The cruise was fun and blessedly relaxing (will post pix soon) but with the worries + the bathroom issues, I was never so happy to get home this Monday.
Anyhoo, the big news is... I'm pregnant!!!! On a break cycle! Me, the woman who only ever mustered one single follie on 15 days and hiroshima doses of stims for IVF. I got pregnant on the cycle AFTER by last IVF BFN. WTF?? We weren't even trying!! Sure, I was temping, but that was just to see what my cycles were doing leading into IVF#2 in September. But we drank like sailors and ate like crack addicts and though we BDed, it was the fun kind not the get-your-preseed, assume-the-most-penetrating-position-regardless-of-pleasure-or-comfort kind. Then, unbeknownst to me, on the day that my eggie was getting down with DH's swimmers, I had a minor surgical procedure. Finally I went mountain biking (and continued to drink like a sailor) over a long weeked when implantation was taking place. Go me! Do everything wrong and it worked!
My only ever other BFP was a bitterwsweet one. I never really gained steam and we knew from the betas that it was most likely doomed: 12.5 at 14dpo, 60 at 17dpo and 246 at 20dpo. So I went in with trepidation this time and the betas rocked. 299 at 15dpo and 2,087 at 20dpo. The 6-week u/s measured at 5w5d (not unusual for that weirdo LMP dating technique to be off by a couple of days for a natural pregnancy) and though I was warned that many people don't see a h/b until 6.5-7 weeks, there it was, going strong, at 117bpm! Oh, I forgot to mention that I've been spotting since week 4. Not the "safe" brown spotting, but the dreaded red spotting with little solid flecks. I was fairly calm when it first started leading up to a nervous breakdown the day before my u/s. I drove an hour to the clinic, determined to make them test me on the spot. And they would have, but my nurse convinced me that it was OK, the signs were not unusual. Plus, I would have have to go with Dr. Dirtbag instead of my beloved RE scheduled for the next day. So I waited and it was great.
So, now, of course, I'm panicking again. The spotting continued through earlier this week, until a lovely bout of diarrhea seemed to have traumatized nether regions enough to behave with the spotting for the past few days. Oh, and that unpleasant bathroom experience was not random, but from a cruise to the caribbean I'd been on for the past week. Never did I want to take a vacation less -- crazy IF lady must fly, drive 5 hours to a port, cruise to Swine Flu central for 7 days and then travel the reverse just as she finds out she's 6 weeks pg and spotting. Nice! The cruise was fun and blessedly relaxing (will post pix soon) but with the worries + the bathroom issues, I was never so happy to get home this Monday.
Now for a little dose of reality...my happy news is somewhat off-set that on this very same day of hearing my only ever great beta, I finally tracked down my lame PCP to get the results of a breast biopsy I had a few weeks ago. I've been trying to get the results for a week. FINALLY they called me back (thanks for nothing) and said the results showed some atypical cells, stressed that they did NOT think it was cancer. Long story short, after pow-wowing with a breast surgeon and my RE several times, we've decided to go ahead and have the area removed (out-patient surgery) as soon as I enter the 2nd trimester. The area may very likely not progress any further or be offset by the increased progesterone now in my system -- I will post later on about my theories that the high fertility stims I've been on may have caused this problem. But anyway, though surgery while pregnant is not ideal, this isn't a major one. It'll be local anethesia + sedation instead of general anesthesia, which is good. And we all decided that getting the area out + allowing me not to worry about it for the next 14 months (pregnancy + nursing) was more important than the very small chance that something could go wrong. Not an easy decision, but once it was made, it felt like the right one.
So... whew!! That's my story. I have a 2nd u/s tomorrow morning (8w1d). It should have been at 7 weeks or so but I was on that poop-inducing cruise. So, it's been 2.5 weeks since my last u/s with continued spotting and I'm pretty nervous for tomorrow. But determined to think positively.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)