Today I have been clearing up the visual reminders of IVF. Seems every time we do a cycle the house becomes littered with paper work, FSH boxes, medical swab wrappers and the boxes that the FSH pen needles are packaged in. Perhaps if we could learn to become tidier we could make this stuff work for us? So far IVF hasn’t worked for us. Not physically, Not emotionally. After four cycles we have probably achieved our worst (or second worst) result. It doesn’t look like it will ever work for us.
Still, something makes me want to keep some sentimental souvenirs of this time; the bright red allergy alert bracelets placed on my wrist during egg pick up. It seems strange. The only really worthwhile result of all of this would be a baby. Yet, I am reconciled to paper and plastic reminders of I time I am sure only serious brainwashing could manage to erase from my mind.
Cycle Four is over. It has been for over 30 hours now. Perhaps transfer would have taken place today. My body is still stitched, bruised and sore. The clinics never really explain about the sudden end to a cycle. Everything stops, yet our bodies are primed; filled with hormones, artificially tricked into being receptive of all sorts of surgical invasion.
Back in January during our first cycle, we went for coffee and a minor celebration after the pre-egg pick up ultra sound. After months of waiting and avoidable delays, we would finally be on our way. Later, back at Camp Wobbles we received that fateful phone call. A stressed to the point of rudeness clinic nurse phoned to say our cycle would be cancelled. There was an over-sized follicle (a cyst, I was later to learn) and two lesser follicles. This was not enough to continue with. We could go to egg pick up if we insisted, but it was unlikely to work. They wanted an immediate answer. It took the best of my very poor negotiation skills to grab Wobbles and me 5 minutes to discuss our decision before phoning back.
No one, but no one had warned us that cycles could be cancelled. We didn’t understand enough, and were completely unaware of the possibility. Although we understood that not all follicles contain eggs, we had not made the link to the need to meet a minimum requirement of follicles. The promise that we could immediately continue on with a second cycle was just the right bait to convince us to cancel the egg pick up. Of course, there would be many months to follow when we would regret that decision greatly. The cyst would mean my period would go missing. We were slow to realise that our country clinic had limited time frames for cycles, and that all procedures needed to fall into the same week. After being told to hurry, we lost months. Our specialist saw no reason to treat the cyst. We needed to move clinics and specialists to get things going again.
The day that cycle was cancelled, confused I asked the nurse what I should do regarding the medications. “Stop taking them!” I felt like I had just been fired from my job and asked to hand in my key. My body was all hormonal with no where to go. I had just been rudely sacked from my first IVF cycle.
After the initial elation of finding a second specialist and clinic, who demanded my cyst be assessed, we were straight into another cycle, all the horrors of that first cycle far behind us. For the first time in months I was free of the ovarian soreness of carrying around a large cyst. Getting to egg pick up for the first time saw us feeling like triumphant world-beaters. Of our three eggs, two looked to be fertilizing. One was a definite, the other a maybe. Keen to be on time and stress free before our embryo transfer we travelled down the night before and stayed in a nearby motel. We had heard enough nightmare tales of last minute cancellations of transfer to be cautious. The phone call, if there was to be one would come very early, we were reliably informed.
That morning as we approached the clinic, I asked Wobbles to remind me later of how wonderful I felt at that moment. The world was a beautiful place and we finally had a chance to become parents. We were dizzy with excitement, as we laughed and joked in the waiting room.
Then my mobile rang.
It seemed ludicrous. On the phone was a clinic staffer phoning to ask if we were coming in that morning. What? Of course, our admission time had passed and we were currently in the waiting room. The voice on the other end of the phone grumbled something before “I will come down and see you…..” I felt instantaneously ill and shocked. Ever optimistic Wobbles started saying that it didn’t have to mean anything bad.
As the clinic staff member relayed the news that our sole embryo had “arrested” overnight, I found myself distracted by the fact that this information was being shared in a waiting room with strangers watching and listening to our sad little scene.
For the second time in our IVF history, I was left with a body that was left primed up for all sorts of things to happen. On the long drive home that day someone went over the speed limit. Two weeks later, on that day that should have been our blood test, we received the speed camera fine in the mail.
So here I am the day after Cycle Four has come to a whimpering end. My body is bloated. My body is confused, along with my mind.
Am I kidding myself? Will throwing away packaging cartons of antagonist injections, Clomid tablets, FSH pen needles, FSH cartridges, and medical swabs really change anything? Just how long does the body and mind need to recover from IVF? Is it possible to ever forget the intrusion IVF makes in our lives?
