Ups and Downs

This week and last have been incredibly challenging for me and Joe. We have been on a roller coaster ride of emotions. We started back on infertility treatments and were planning to try another IUI. We ordered all the medication and started taking the shots and the medication. Everything was going well until an ultrasound revealed that I was responding very well to the medication. In fact, I was responding a little too well. My doctor won't go through with an IUI if there are too many follicles for fear of hyperstimulating the ovaries which could cause some severe health problems. So my choice at that point was to cancel the cycle or to convert to InVitro Fertilization (IVF).

The good thing about converting to IVF is that you skip a lot of the beginning stages of birth control pills and shots and other medications. I was already past that stage, they just needed to grow my follicles a little more and we could proceed. Another good thing is that converting to IVF half way through saves you about half the cost. This would be our opportunity to try IVF for the lowest possible price we'd be able to pay. The doctor thought I had great looking follicles and that I would be a perfect candidate to try.

We didn't really give it too much thought. Even though it was still going to cost about $4600 we wanted to try. We figure we've spent money on much less important things before so what's so wrong with going into a little debt so that we can try to have a child. So, we went for it. We increased the medication and starting taking other medications. I was back and forth to my doctor's office in Orlando three days this week for blood work and ultrasounds and all kinds of craziness. Things were going really well and the nurses kept telling me how great my follicles were doing and that at my age I would have around a 50% chance of getting pregnant.

Joe and I were so excited but also nervous and anxious. We're just so ready for this to happen that we were willing to put our hearts into this treatment 100%. Then Friday came. For some reason in two days I went from being "the perfect candidate" to having follicles that just stopped growing and some even started to collapse. My estrogen levels dropped even though I was pumping myself full of medication that should've done the exact opposite. The nurses don't know why it happened but said that it does happen sometimes. So, the only thing they could do for me was cancel my cycle.

Needless to say Joe and I are crushed. We went from being excited for another opportunity to try IUI to all of a sudden being thrust into IVF treatments and being overwhelmed with all the new information involved with that to being back to square one. Yesterday was a really hard day. I know it doesn't do me any good to say, "why me", but I can't help it. I just really don't understand why the world works the way it does. It's just not fair.

I read an article a couple of months ago called "Addicted to Hope". For me, hope is like a drug. With every new cycle there are grand fantasies of "what if". When those nurses were telling me that I was such a great candidate and everything looked good and that I had a 50% chance of getting pregnant I was thrilled. I was flying on cloud 9, imagining myself pregnant, trying to figure out my due date, looking at nursery decor and maternity clothes, planning for a future that I wasn't even certain was going to happen. I know it's not smart or healthy to do those things but I just get so hopeful that this one is going to be the one. Then comes the bad news and the crash of emotions that go along with it. It's like I go through a physical withdrawl of all those happy and hopeful feelings and I just want to jump off a bridge. I want to crawl under a rock and disappear until all the heartache and sadness go away. But I can't. I have to face the world and explain to people what happened even though I would rather walk over hot coals than have to tell people that it didn't work again.

Somehow I manage a brave face. I honestly don't know where it comes from. I swallow the lump in my throat and I fight back the tears and I pretend that everything is ok even though that is the farthest thing from the truth. When I'd rather be curled up in a ball crying on the floor I managed to talk to people and laugh just like any other normal day. Sometimes I really amaze myself. But once I get away from everyone and its just me and Joe its a terrible collapse into an emotional wreck. I stopped on the way home last night for a bottle of wine. Anything to numb the pain. Today we decided to treat ourselves to a little shopping spree. Ok, it wasn't so little but it felt really good. It probably isn't the most responsible thing we could've done but we figure that since we're not spending $4600 to try to get pregnant we could at least spend a couple hundred on ourselves.

So now its up to us what we want to do next. I think we decided last night to take another break. We're going to give it six months and see what happens and then decide what to do next. Hopefully we'll be able to squeeze a nice relaxing vacation in there too. We really deserve it.