Holy follicles batman

After 12 days of shots, a couple of blood draws and trips to Iowa City, I had my last ultrasound yesterday and found out that these follicles are ready for retrieval. Woot! Woot! Only slightly alarming to me is the number of follicles that have taken up residence in my ovaries. To be exact, we are at 62. Thankfully only about 20 of them meet the ideal size (18) cut off so the rest are smaller and just along for the ride. We head to Iowa City tomorrow morning around 6:30. We'll meet with an anesthesiologist, I'll get some happy drugs through an IV and then I'll drift off to sleep while the Doctors take each follicle out one by one. I'll then wake up, spend about 1.5 hours in recovery and then head home for 24 hours of bed rest. The embryologists will work their magic with the eggs by introducting them to the swimmers and hopefully a match will be made and we'll go back down to Iowa City on Monday or Wednesday so they can be taken from their little petri dish and placed back inside my uterus. I'm sure there's a more scientific way to explain it but that's pretty much it in a nutshell.
People ask often how I am feeling these days........excited, scared, excited, nervous, ANXIOUS. Oh and that's all just in my head. My body is tired, bruised, sore (I would equate it to playing in a rugby game every day for the past 12 days), and my ovaries, now 5 times the size they are supposed to be, are sending me regular messages that they are not happy about the abuse. What I'm most anxious about is 1) that there are good quality eggs inside these follicles and 2) that I will hyperstimulate. #2 has been on my brain constantly and I keep trying to forget about it and then it pops back in. Hyperstimulation can be very serious and critical and fluid builds in your abdomen and can cause all kinds of problems. One of the main risk factors for hyperstimulation: PCOS. If you recall, PCOS is the reason we are at Iowa City in the first place. The Dr's have already told me that I will hyperstimulate because of the # of follicles I have and the PCOS. What they don't know is how severe it will be. Hmmmm....can you understand why I might be nervous? Severe abdominal pain, difficulty breathing, etc. Not something I'd like to experience anytime soon. I do remind myself daily though that Iowa City has it under control and we will know it's happening as it's happening so hopefully we can keep it under control. Oh and the other crappy part about it is that if it does happen, and dependent on the degree, they would not be able to put the embryos back in. They would need to freeze them and then once my body has recovered, they could do a frozen transfer.
So, on to happier details.....I've been thinking about the funny/strange parts of this experience so far and thought I'd share a few:
During my last ultrasound, there was a person being trained by our favorite ultrasound tech, Sarah. Imagine having Ellen Degeneres as your ultrasound tech. She's hysterical. Witty and totally personable. So as Sarah is probing around measuring all of the follicles, I say to the trainee: "You know, you are being trained by the best. Sarah is a rock star". Sarah without hesitation responds with "Oh she's just saying that because I have a probe in her vagina". Needless to say, all three of us were laughing so hard that I honestly thought I was going to pee on Sarah. No worries though, I held it in. :-)
Last night, I needed to get the trigger shot. This med helps the eggs release from the follicles and it's no where fun, my ass. So Deb is at a conference in Minneapolis and my mom insists on giving it to me. We wait for the alarm to go off at 10:45pm and I start mixing up the med. My mom is resting in my bed as I do this and I call for her to help me with it. Well, apparently she had been in my room psyching herself up to give me the shot as I was reading and re-reading the instructions 100 times as to not screw it up. Nice. Thankfully she informed me of that this morning or I would have drove myself out to Epworth to have our wonderful nurse friend, Sue give me the shot. We then go in and she gets set to give me the shot, she pulls off the cap, looks at the size of the needle and looks like she is going to throw up. Awesome. I lay on my side, close my eyes and tell her to go ahead. I wait. I wait. I look up and see her pull the shot back in a dart like motion, take a deep breath, puff out her cheeks, look again like she's totally uncertain and then stick.....she puts the needle in. This is not shot giving 101 people. My mom gives shots all the time in peoples mouths in her job. Apparently the size of the needles and the fact it was going in her daughter who was doing everything she could to not cry made her a little unsure about this. Thankfully she pulled through, the meds went in, she massaged my ass and we both laughed. The things you do for your kids! Thanks mom!

I'll end this by sharing two pics of my lovely ovaries. The circles you see are the follicles that hopefully have rock star eggs in them. The one on top is my right that has most of the follicles and they've become oblong because they are running out of space. Keep your fingers crossed and throw some prayers out there tomorrow around 9:30am for an easy embryo retrieval and recovery.

Cheers,
Mic