Brevet

I have read that this “two week wait” from the time that you find you “could” be pregnant until the time you can actually test it is the hardest part of the process.  I think people go a little crazy being trapped in their own minds with no new data to process.  They want it so badly, but there is nothing left that they can actually “do” so they just spin around agonizing about what might or might not be.

However, anyone who knows me knows that I have spent my life agonizing about minutia, living in my head working out every possible pathway from where I am now to where I would like to be.  There’s just something about being caught unprepared for any eventuality that makes me sick with worry.  I’m not bragging…I know this is a tragic flaw in my makeup.  I envy those carefree souls that don’t worry quite like I do.

Anyway, I say all of that to say that this whole “2 week wait” thing is very old hat for me.  I am a seasoned veteran at worrying about things like this and have already turned the corner and achieved peace with where we are in the process.  I have rationalized how this is actually easier than watching my wife suffer through the drugs of the previous few weeks and much less complicated.  We’re down to just one shot a day that I have responsibility for giving and Amy just has to take a pill or two.  See how at peace I am?  I’m not even positive what pill she’s taking or how often. 

It was so very hectic and difficult as the egg retrieval day approached and then the transfer day was such an emotional culmination to everything that, again, this feels almost like a calm time.  The storm has passed and Amy is doing great.  Our fifth wedding anniversary is tomorrow and I feel like we have a pretty good shot that this will work out.  At the very least, I get to spend all of the time up until the pregnancy test believing that we “might” already be pregnant and I like that feeling too much to start worrying about what I can not control.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // 3 Comments »

Amy did an excellent write-up of her day already so if you have read her account then this may not add much, but I didn’t want to skip such an important day just because it had already been recounted.  Here is the Partners Perspective, for what that is worth.

It had been getting increasingly tough for Amy last week. It seems like the drugs were having an increasingly deleterious effect on her as the days wore on with her being increasingly fatigued and crampy. She had also started having some unrelated back problems that made everything worse.

By Thursday mid-day, they finally gave the word to do the trigger shot that night at 7:30 p.m., with the retrieval scheduled for Saturday at 7:30 a.m.  I have a Stats class I have been taking on Tuesday and Thursday nights and I’m usually home by 7:30 p.m., but it ran a little long this time and I didn’t get home until 7:40 p.m. Unfortunately, I had brought her instructional paperwork with me to work that day so I had it in my backpack at the time she had to do the shot. She was understandably upset about it, but her experience from doing the other shots put her in good stead and she was able to do it without the “manual.”  We talked about it and I acknowledged my clear error and the fact that if I was in her shoes, I would have been beside myself with both fear and annoyance. I understood her feelings and she saw that I understood and so it passed. Still, though, I don’t know how I could have lived with being the reason why this didn’t happen if she hadn’t been able to figure out the trigger shot on her own. She’s very resourceful.

By Friday, Amy was…how do I characterize this?……really, really having a hard time of it.   Really.  She was exhausted, and her back kept her in constant pain, and she had cramping that she couldn’t relieve.  She had to go to the bathroom frequently.   She seemed a tiny bit ”out” of it and the spot where she had injected herself with the HCG was red and inflamed.  By Friday afternoon, I was offering to come pick her up from work just to get her home. She ended up taking BART into North Berkeley and I picked her up from there around 3:30. 

She pretty much went to bed at 5 and slept more or less through the night.  I watched some Friday Night Lights (I’ve been watchng season 1 on dvd since I missed it the first time through. Great show.) and then read a little before going to sleep. Or at least I tried to. I kept waking up, fully awake at 11:30, 1, 1:30, 3:30, 4:15.  I finally just got up and made coffee.   I don’t know why I was so antsy – it’s not like I was the one having surgery. 

We had an uneventful drive into the city since it was the crack of dawn on a Saturday.  We arrived at UCSF at about 6:45 a.m. and our normal parking garage was closed so we parked on the street. I had some quarters in the car, but not nearly enough for what we would need. I started pumping what I had into the meter before I noticed that there’s nothing on the meter display. Amy reads that it’s only enforced from 9 to 6 so apparently it’s not even “on” yet. I made a note that I would have to get back out there by 9 to feed the rest of my quarters in, and probably get change somewhere to get more quarters.

The whole Women’s Health wing of the hospital is apparently shut down, too. Even the security guard isn’t at his little desk down the hall. He is an absolutely gigantic man, so perhaps he just makes the desk look little.  I’m 6′4″, 240 and he dwarfs me, which makes me feel uncomfortably since I am so rarely dwarfed. Anyway, after we have stared into the automatic doors for a minute (10 minutes before our appointment!) someone comes by and opens the door for us. It’s clearly not his job and we didn’t even do that “tapping on the glass with your keys” thing to get his attention but he came by and figured out how to get the door opened. We thanked him and hustled upstairs like we’re running late only to find the floor pretty much deserted.

The nurse showed up a few minutes after us, but still before 7. She was very helpful with Amy getting her set up in the gown, and IV dripping. She has a real career ahead of her in the service industry if she ever wants to forego this whole nursing thing. She did the warm blanket trick with Amy that Linda had done with me back on my big day. Amy seemed to appreciate it as much as I did, too. The Anesthesiologist came by to ask the usual questions regarding past times that Amy had been put under and whether she had had any problems. He explained how she wouldn’t be put “all the way” under unless it became necessary to do so – like if there was excessive bleeding or something like that. It hadn’t happened yet to him, but wanted to let her know the deal in case she woke up with a breathing tube down her throat.

He then gave her a shot of something like valium and then a shot of something like morphine, and told me to kiss my wife.  This confused me until I realized that they were taking her immediately in to the Operating Room, so I did as I was told and went to take a seat in the waiting room. After I had been there for a few minutes another lady came by to ask if I was going to be producing a sample. I knew the deal so I said yes and she escorted me down a hall and into a small, well-appointed closet, approximately 4×10.

I took a quick look around, saw that they had a small leather loveseat along the 4 foot section on the left with a towel down and a couple of Playboys on it. I kind of pointed at the Playboys and gave a “I guess that figures” laugh.  The lady said something to me like, “I don’t know what those are doing here” (Really?) and then quickly explains the procedure. Here’s the cup. Here’s your label for the cup. Hit the blue button when you’re done. Ugggh.

Anyway, I hadn’t seen a Playboy in years so I thumbed through it. It’s definitely not quite the same as when I was younger. The women are all girls now, and all look too much the same. It’s not unlike on E! when you find that Hef has 7 girlfriends that all look pretty much the same as the girls in the magazine – very blond and very thin.  I bet they were already pretty before they had been told to change how they look to be a star.  It made me kind of sad.  Anyway….there was also a baseball preview which I was sorely tempted to read but I didn’t want to take too long and this wasn’t very productive so far…

Skipping ahead ten minutes or so, I pushed the button and waited patiently to give the lady my labelled cup. She showed up very quickly (I hope she wasn’t waiting right outside the door) and I tried to hand it to her. She pointed to the counter telling me to just leave it there.  I guess there are special gloves that she puts on before she pick it up?  Anyway, I imagine it’s her job to sanitize the room between “uses.” Just another in a long line of jobs I’m glad I don’t have. A little perspective for when I get down about being a middle-manager.

I went and sat down and read for just a few minutes when the anesthesiologist stopped by to tell me that it was over already. She did good, had woken up and, outside of a few hickups (literal, not figurative) she was doing fine. The first nurse popped out a few minutes after that and I got to see her. She was already doing fine. Seemed really alert and was enjoying apple juice and graham crackers. Apple juice must be the universal drink for nurses to give post-op patients.

Not much to report after that. We waited until our Nurse (I really should have written a few names down so I wouldn’t have to reference all of these people by their title) was satisfied that she could get up and around. It was very quiet in that pre/post- op room – Amy was the only IVF procedure of the day, though they had beds to have three “Pre” and three “post” and one in each of the attached OR’s. The OR’s are special ones that attach directly the the fertility lab where the embryologist works and the whole thing is temperature and germ controlled, which I remember from our original orientation.

We were out of there by 9:30 a.m. and headed home. There was no traffic in the city or very much on the freeways. Amy was pretty tired all day and the rest of the day was uneventful. The next day the nurse called in the morning with the news. They had been able to extract 16 eggs from the follicles. Of those, 9 had been mature enough to be fertilized (by ICSI), and 6 of those had divided after 24 hours and were now embryos. She scheduled us for the transfer on Tuesday, May 6th at 11:45.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // Add Comment »

I was listening to the Bob Edwards (radio) show yesterday on the way home from work.  He has an hour long interview program on XM’s pseudo NPR channel (channel 133).  Bob Edwards lends credibility to the NPR concept on XM because he was the voice of NPR’s Morning Edition or All Things Considered for almost 25 years before being forced out a few years back).

I’m lucky enough that they play the same interview from both 7am – 8am and 5pm – 6pm so I can usually catch most of it between the two legs of my commute if it’s a good one.  Yesterday, he interviewed David Mamet (most memorably to me from writing Glengarry Glen Ross) and I tuned in just as he was talking about America’s love affair with “Vacuous Summer Movies.”  He talked about how no one really mistakes them for high art, but that we love them because it’s like going to the County Fair, perhaps when you’re a kid.  You get to see the shiny-coated animals (the stars), and ride the rides (the action), and eat the cotton candy (which does not provide sustenance, but we still really like the way it tastes). 

Anyway, while I love artfully made movies (enjoyed “There will be Blood,” “Atonement,” and “No Country for Old Men” each recently), each spring I get Excited about the not necessarily artful “Summer Movies” as they approach –  just as if the fair was coming to town - and I get to be a kid again.  Since I have been so busy with school these past four months, I am considering it my mission this Summer to force feed myself the entertainment that only Summer Movies can provide - all of it. 

I also plan to see each of these as close to the Premiere Date as possible.  I have a freakish idiosyncracy that denies me enjoyment of a movie commensurate with the amount that I know about it in advance….and it is really hard not to know something about big movies once they’re released.  So here they are in order:

5/2 –  Iron Man – based on a comic, which often (X-Men, Spiderman), but not always (Fantastic Four), translates well to Summer movies.

5/9 – Speed Racer – Wachowksi Brothers first movie since Matrix trilogy.

5/22 –  Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was 13 without having any idea what it was about before I saw it is still my all-time favorite movie experience.  If it is even as good as Temple of Doom, I’ll be ecstatic

6/13 – The Incredible Hulk – Comic connection again, plus it has Ed Norton, even if he won’t promote it.  I may be the only person I know that enjoyed the Ang Lee “Hulk”

6/13 – The Happening – I haven’t given up on M. Night Shyamalan even if others have.

6/20 – Get Smart/The Love Guru – Honestly, I’m skeptical about each of these.  Get Smart was wonderful when I was a kid and I love Steve Carrell in The Office…but the director is Peter Segal of Nutty Professor 2, Anger Management, The Longest Yard (the bad one with Adam Sandler) “fame” and Steve Carrell couldn’t save Evan Almighty from last summer.  I’m more hopeful about “Love Guru” in that I read that Michael Myers has been working on this character for a while, much as he did for Austin Powers in getting ready for that film.  Mike Myers tragic flaw is that he doesn’t know when to let a franchise go before he kills it (Wayne’s World3, Shrek3, Austin Powers3), but I am cautiously optimistic about his chances at fresh comedy for this one.

6/27 – Wall-E – Pixar has earned our respect

6/27 – Wanted – comic connection, plus Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman.  How much do you want to bet that Morgan Freeman plays an authority figure?

7/2 – Hancock – Will Smith as some kind of Superhero with issues.  Will Smith is usually a pretty good script picker (a skill that they don’t seem to teach in acting school, apparently)

7/11 – Hellboy 2 – comic connection, plus it’s directed by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labryinth, Devil’s Backbone, Blade 2, plus the original Hellboy which I didn’t love, but liked quite a bit)

7/18 – The Dark Knight – comic connection, plus sequel of the wonderful Batman Begins, plus it was Heath Ledger’s last movie and he’s supposed to be out of this world as the Joker, PLUS it was directed by Christopher Nolan of Memento fame (as well as the aforementioned Batman Begins)

7/25 – X-Files – I didn’t even realize they were making another one.  I was a huge fan of the series – TEN YEARS AGO.  I hope they took this long because they were working on a great script.

8/1 – Mummy 3 – I had no idea they were making another one of these either.  I love, love, loved the Original – I must have seen it a hundred times by now.

8/8 – Pineapple Express – Seth Rogan stars in and wrote it. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt right now because he was so good in Knocked Up and Superbad (which he also wrote). 

8/15 – Tropic Thunder – Ben Stiller wrote and directed it, plus it has Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr., Nick Nolte, Tom Cruise, Tobey Maguire.  It’s supposed to be some kind of genre bending action/comedy.  I don’t expect much, but if it works it could be cool.

All I’m hoping is that some small percentage of them enter the Pantheon of great summer movies that will remain emminently re-watchable for years to come like these past exemplar movies/franchises:

Star Wars
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Terminator
Ghostbusters
Back to the Future
Mission Impossible
Men in Black
Austin Powers
The Matrix
The Mummy
X-Men
Spiderman
The Bourne movies
Pirates of the Carribean
Batman
Superman

Tags: Media, Movies // Add Comment »

Good news today from the Doctors today.  Her follicles have progressed to the point where they’re ready to do the egg retrieval, so we “trigger” tonight at 7:30 pm with the HcG.  Thirty-six hours later the eggs will be harvested (Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m.) and they will attempt to fertilize as many good ones as possible.

For record-keeping purposes, the sizes and number of her ovarian follicles is:

20mm – 1
19mm – 1
17mm – 3
15mm – 1
14mm – 5
13mm – 1
12mm – 1
11mm – 2
10mm – 1
9 mm – 5

The threshold under which there is likely to be a mature egg in the follicle is apparently 14mm, so we would currently have the potential for about 11 eggs and perhaps as many as 15 depending upon how much the smaller ones grow before Saturday.

My posts haven’t been very introspective lately as I feel a duty to chronicle this without much of the “how does that make me feel?” stuff necessary for my usual 10,000 words diatribes on Mistakes I Made in My 20’s or Why Chili’s is Better than Applebees.  Anyway, though, this is all good stuff and the extra drama of wondering if this cycle was going to work at all has made making it to this point feel like a victory of sorts.  The reality, of course, is that odds of our success are only marginally better than rolling a hard six, but at least we’re going to get the dice.  Shooter coming out!

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // Add Comment »

Amy just called me from the doctor’s office for her latest ultrasound appointment.  Looks like we’re not quite “there” yet and the doctor is saying it will probably be two more days of meds and monitoring. 

Since she was in stirrups she didn’t take very good notes on how the follicles were coming, but she did remember that the lead was 17mm this time and she remembered 13’s, 14’s and a bunch of 10’s.  The lead on Sunday was 14.5, so it seems like we’re getting pretty close, but we’re not at 18 yet, so I can see how it will likely be another day or two to get in range.  Amy has another appointment tomorrow morning and possibly still another on Thursday morning. 

At either of those appointments they may tell her to do the trigger shot that night, so new estimated retrieval day is either Friday or Saturday.  Transfer day (putting the fertilized embryo(s) in her uterus) would then be Monday or Tuesday.

Since we had ran out of Bravelle on Sunday and it turns out that most pharmacies don’t have a supply just laying around, we had to call around for a while before we found The Medicine Shoppe in San Ramon that had it.  I drove out there yesterday to get one day’s supply and now we know that I’m heading out there again today to get another day’s dose.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // Add Comment »

I’m not sure how to properly encapsulate the feelings I had as we waited for Sunday to roll around. We had talked ourselved into believing the worst based upon very little information and we were well prepared for that.

“Scrubbed!” was the working title of the inevitable post I would have to write once we were to find out that they wanted to cancel the cycle. “How long will we have to wait until we can try again,” was the most important question I wanted to make sure I asked Dr. Rosen once we got confirmation of the bad news.

A funny thing happened on the way to our letdown, though. We got good news! Amy’s follicles kicked into overdrive after a slow start (not unlike our lawnmower). The ultrasound showed 15 follicles that were well on the road to maturity, with the lead follicle at around 14.5 mm. There was also a 13.5, 3×12’s, 11.5, 11, 10.5, 9, 8.5, and 5×8’s.  

I asked Dr. Rosen what the goal was and he said that he’s looking for a good pattern with a lead of around 18 mm.  I don’t know how many of Amy’s will end up making a good pattern, but I like the chances of the ones in double digits so far.

He scheduled Amy for another ultrasound appointment on Tuesday and prescribed her another day of drugs (maybe 2 depending on the Tuesday appointment).  Monday will be cycle day 11, Tuesday cycle day 12 and if the appointment is good, then we’ll be doing the HCG trigger shot on Tuesday night with a Thursday egg retrieval day.  Hope springs eternal!

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // 2 Comments »

A couple of years back, Amy and I went white water rafting on the south fork of the American River:

I’ve never really been much of an adrenaline junky…I didn’t like roller coasters when I was a kid or wanted to race motocross.  I never wanted to wrestle a crocodile or hang glide.  

However, I got an opportunity to go rafting with work a few years ago, though, and taking a fresh look at it, I realized that it didn’t really seem that dangerous.  I swim well and the worst thing that could happen (as my internal monologue played on) would be that I would get dumped out of the boat and would have to swim a bit.  With a life jacket.  What was there to really worry about?

Anyway, I’m not trying to tease a story where it turned out someone hit their head and drowned and my fear of the unknown was justified.  Quite the opposite really.  I was certainly worried a bit as we approached some of the more treacherous “named” rapids (Satan’s Cesspool, Meatgrinder, Troublemaker, etc.), but the guide I had always seemed to know the tricks of navigating the particular rapid in an orderly manner.  By the lunch break I was relaxing and having a good time of it – even actually feeling the “rush” of the adrenaline as we went through one rapid backwards and enjoying that feeling.

When I got home, I convinced Amy that it wasn’t “sky diving”.  It was fun and she would like it.  Honestly, I wasn’t sure, but she’s more like me than she’s different than me, so I figured it was even money that she would end up digging it as well.  We planned a two day trip and used White Water Connection.  They have the best reputation on the river and they treated us great. 

We went down the same stretch of the river I had been down on the last trip, stopping for lunch half way down at a site they have decked out as a make-your-own-sandwich place under a canopy.   After lunch, one of the other guides “made a mistake” and his boat took too high of a path into one of the rapids and wrapped his boat (quite literally) around a boulder spilling the occupants into the rapids.   The boat remained stuck there, bottom side flat against the boulder as the force of the river kept it pressed there. The fun was over in an instant - all of the guides got very serious, very quickly and got us and our rafts in position to pull the floaters out of the water before one of them hit their head on a rock and drowned…which we did.  

Eventually they got that raft off of the boulder and got it down river enough to transfer the people back to their own boat.  It was a healthy reminder that while what we were doing wasn’t inherently dangerous, that’s not to say there aren’t dangers and you had to be prepared for them.  It spiced up the afternoon, regardless.

As we got close to the end it was around 5:00 and the river abruptly stopped “rushing” and started just kind of “flowing.”  We found out that there is a dam upriver that lets out water during the day for people like us, but shuts it down at 5:00 each day.  For some reason, I thought this kind of took away from the feeling of being “in the wild” ala Chris McCandless.  We had to paddle much harder the last mile or two to get to the place where Whitewater Connection was there to pick us up and take us back to the campsite.

We cleaned up a little when we got back while our river guides made a dinner of steak and lobster.   They had a campfire going and showed slides of the rafts on the river that day doing very exciting things.  There were smores involved.  The next day they took us upriver and we did another half day of more technical rapids, but it didn’t seem all that difficult.  I think we were feeling like seasoned pros at that point. 

So I ended up betting right - Amy had as good a time as I did (as you can see from some of the pictures above) and I got to enjoy feeling like the adventurous type for a weekend. 

The next thing I want to try is spelunking.

Tags: Life, Oh the Places I've Gone! // 2 Comments »

Today was Amy’s first ultrasound after the baseline one done last week.  She had to get up at 5 something (I was still sleeping) to get out of the house by 6:15 am to make the 6:30 am ferry into San Francisco.  From there she had to take a bus from the wharf across town to get to UCSF by the 8:15 appointment.  We made the decision that there was no way to be sure of what time we would have to leave to drive into San Francisco from Vallejo because traffic is so variable and we didn’t want to run any risk of missing the appointments. 

There wasn’t really a way for me to accompany her for these ones as I can’t take the ferry with her and then still find my way to work from SF to Berkeley with no car…but she knows I’m anxious for information so she called me on Monday at 8:30 a.m. to let me know that it was just a blood test – no ultrasound.  Next monitoring appointment was scheduled for this morning and she called me like clockwork at 9 (so longer appointment this time, I realize immediately).

She leads with, “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news…”  which filled me with dread, but I don’t think I tipped my hand.  I listened patiently to the good news, which is as follows:  Dr. Rosen saw more follicles this time in the ultrasound than in the baseline ultrasound.  Last time they only saw 6, I think, which was a tough break.  Just the time before that it had been closer to a dozen follicles and so we we had reason to hope for something similar. 

Although this is an extraordinarily small sample size, my theory is that it varies by month – that one of her ovaries is producing more effectively than the other and if the more effective one just ovulated last month, then the next month the other ovary is not going to have as much to offer, and that it’s just bad luck that we’re on the wrong month when we’re trying to do this.   I know.  I’m not a doctor, and even if I was then this theory is based on insufficient data so it’s probably not worth a thing – so of course it my working hypothesis. 

Anyway, so the “good news” was that in the ultrasound this morning they saw more follicles again.  We’re back up to around 12.  By the way, in case it’s not obvious to you, the reason we, or anyone, would want as many as possible (don’t you only need one?) is because they are not all going to be of the same caliber.  Some will be great, some will be not.  The great ones (”Grade A”) are more likely to get fertilized, and start growing into embryos.  The less great ones (B’s and C’s) probably won’t.  If we are lucky enough to have enough real embryos that we might be able to freeze one or more, then if it doesn’t work the first time (remember only about a 1/3 of the cycles turn into babies each time) then we can try again without having to go through all of the drugs and egg extraction again. 

So, 6 follicles probably means maybe 3 good eggs and only 1 or 2 embryos with a fighting chance.  12 is practically twice as good   So this good news really is good news.

Ahh, but the bad news remains…..  The bad news is that the follicles are not growing, according to Dr. Rosen.  They’ve had 5 days of FSH to be stimulated so they should be growing, but they’re not.  I’ve tried to think of a way that they could be mistaken, or what this might mean, but I don’t think we know.  Dr. Rosen told her to skip the next monitoring appointment and scheduled us to come in on Sunday for another one – I’m guessing that best case scenario is that they are growing, but just very slowly so he wants to give them a full five more days before checking again.  I guess we’ll know a lot more on Sunday which way this cycle is going to go. 

I think I’m going to stay with “cautiously optimistic” that at least some of the follicles will end up growing to where we want them to be by Sunday but then I was never shy about forming theories based upon insufficient data.  We’ll see.

UPDATE:  After reading this post, Amy thought I seemed really pessimistic, so I pumped her for some more information and she did reveal that Dr. Rosen said that he thought we would be pleased with where we were on Sunday.  So perhaps there is reason for optimism.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // 1 Comment »

I’ve mostly stayed off of the IVF process in writing here for the last month for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason was probably because my wife was doing such a good job in detailing the process that I didn’t want to be duplicative and didn’t think that my particular perspective on it was adding anything to the conversation.  What I’m going through is just not that hard compared to what she’s dealing with and I can only make so many ironic jokes about how this is affecting me (rather than Amy) before even I don’t think it’s funny anymore (and I am very indulgent about my own humor). So she’s talked about it and I’ve helped live it and decided to talk about other things a bit.

Also, as we have worked through the process, and gotten the first of the two calendars detailing everything we need to do each day (meds, appointments, etc.) leading out into the future you can look ahead and see that’s it’s all happening pretty quickly…

Which kind of made me question at what point I should stop writing about this.  I have attempted to deal with this as transparently as possible, but what if it doesn’t work?  It’s going to be tough to deal with and not sure how we are going to feel about writing THAT post. 

Or what if it does?  They always say not to tell anyone for the first trimester because of the possibility of miscarriage, etc., but how do I write about every detail of the process and then not do the money-shot?  Anyway, I started tying myself up in knots trying to figure out what I could or couldn’t, should or shouldn’t say once we get down to it and it had a bit of a chilling effect on my ability to write about it.

So, past the hand-wringing, this is where we are as concisely as I know how to write it (not very): Amy’s been on Lupron for about a week and a half.  We went to an injection class to learn how to do all of these shots that she was going to need.  We each had to give ourselves a shot (subcutaneously, with a small thin needle) of salt water at the class as well.  I turns out, that it is not that difficult to do and it doesn’t really hurt. 

So the dynamic shifted in that Amy decided she could give herself the subcutaneous shots, much to my relief.  She started the Lupron and I think we agree that there has been little or no side effects for her.  She had one night of night sweats that may or may not have been coincidental – too hard to say – but otherwise no real problems.  She got allergies about this time that I think affected her way more than the hot flashes and headaches and joint pain or all of the other “possible” side effects. So….good start.

Emotionally, I think starting it was a little bit of a relief to her, as well.  The shots weren’t as bad as she thought they would be and the side effects didn’t have that big of an impact on her, so she got quite a bit calmer after she started than I think she felt before she started.

Last Friday, she started what I think is the main part of the drug regimen: Bravelle and Menopur. These are both follicle stimulating hormones (”FSH”), designed to stimulate the follicles in her ovaries that grow the eggs, while the lupron keeps her from ovulating them. These shots are a little more complicated in that you have to mix 6 vials of powder with one vial of salt water to make the dose that you’re going to inject. The mixing is kind of tedious, but not complicated once you have done it once. There is always a sneaking suspicion that you’re not getting every micro-drop out of each vial, and it’s two shots a night now, so it’s getting increasingly more intensive, but it’s all feeling just part of the daily schedule now.  At least for me.

There has been slightly more side effects with the new drugs as well, mostly in the form of headaches for Amy.  There’s a lot of new hormones in her system now so it’s hard to judge the impact in these short snapshots of time, but however she is being impacted, she is holding up really, really well.

Starting late last week, then yesterday, tomorrow, Thursday, Friday, and maybe Saturday, she is going through a whole series of “monitoring” appointments to track the progress of estrudiol in her bloodwork and the size of the follicles via ultrasound.  They’re looking for her follicles to grow (but not too fast) until they reach around 1.6 cm to 2.2 cm each. They are also looking for her estrudiol levels to grow from her current baseline level of “99.”  I have read that it’s supposed to double every 48 hours or so if the FSH is working the way it’s supposed to.

If all goes well, at one of those appointments they are going to give us the word that she is where they want her to be and they will set her appointment for the egg retrieval and give us the instruction to give her a shot of HCG exactly 36 hours before the procedure. This prompts the body to release the eggs for retrieval. A few days after that will be the implantation.

So…it’s basically on top of us, here. I’m guessing we’ll get the word to do the HCG sometime between Saturday and Monday so anyway you slice it this is all going down next week.  I’m not sure at what point I’ll bail out of talking about the process, but I guess I’ll stay with it a while longer.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // 1 Comment »

I don’t see that I have really written much about what I’ve been spending all of my time doing lately – I mean aside from all of the appointments getting to where we are with the IVF process and surviving a layoff.

As 40 came and went I thought it was a good time to take a look at my career. If you look at a career length from, say ages 20-60, then 40 is about your half-way point. In that first half of my work life I had spent most of it in 3 different law firms. The first one was a part time job that paid for many of my college expenses. At each of the next two I was hired as either a paralegal or quasi-paralegal that worked on cases of various kinds. In each of those jobs I was in the right place at a time when the firms expanded fairly rapidly. I like to think that, for my part, I took advantage of the opportunities presented to me – but luck clearly played a factor as well.

Regardless, within about a year at each job I was running a small department that grew to a bigger department or departments. I liked that my bosses valued and trusted me enough to give me real responsibility. I liked getting enough control over the things that my fate was mostly in my own hands – the decisions I made were always easier to live with than following a plan set down by someone who I knew hadn’t thought through all of the ramifications of their “plan.” I both liked and disliked how people (staff) treated you differently. You no longer are one of the group going out for a drink or lunch or whatever where you get to complain about the unfairness or idiocy of the boss. It would be awkward for them, since that’s me. I have to admit that being treated with respect, though, was something I really craved and enjoyed. I was 25 and people were calling me “boss” or “chief” and it was nice. I didn’t think I had earned it but I did like it.

Back then, though, I still cared about whether people liked me or not. All that “Boss” and “Chief” talk was a sort of respect given by some that naturally give it to authority figures (I do that, too). Others, though, naturally distrust or even dislike authority figures in the workplace and it was hard to deal with not being liked back when I wasn’t as secure with myself. Actually, I’m implying that some people might not have liked me just because it was their nature to distrust “the man” but they might also not have liked me because I was a new manager that probably sucked at the job for a while. Or they might not have liked me because I had to “counsel” them as we call it in the biz (talk to someone about something they did wrong that needs correction). Not everyone takes that kind of thing well, but if you don’t figure out where your “line” is and then enforce it when people cross it, then it’s just a title you have and you’re not doing the job.

It’s a tough one, though, because it’s kind of a lonely job. I have learned to live with the downsides in exchange for the relative success I have enjoyed, but I can’t say that I like or enjoy the work…which brings me back to looking at my career and seeing that I had spent about half of it doing this job that I have been successful at, but wondering if there might not be something else that I would both be successful with and enjoy…

I think I did mention before that I had taken career interest inventory with Princeton Review and my “interest color” was Yellow with this description:

People with yellow Interests like job responsibilities that include organizing and systematizing, and professions that are detail-oriented, predictable, and objective. People with yellow Interests enjoy activities that include: ordering, numbering, scheduling, systematizing, preserving, maintaining, measuring, specifying details, and archiving, which often lead to work in research, banking, accounting, systems analysis, tax law, finance, government work, and engineering.

And this is about as true of me as you can get, so I would be likely to trust any actual career suggestions this little quiz could produce for me. Here they are:

Accountant/Auditor
Actuary
Astronomer
Bookkeeper
Court Reporter
Dental Lab Technician
Economist
Financial Aid Officer
Financial Analyst
Foreign Exchange Trader
Health Care Administrator
Office Manager
Sommelier
Surveyor
Corporate Lawyer
Business Valuator
Financial Planner
Internet/Intranet Technologies Manager
Geneticist
Hospital Administrator
Quality Assurance Engineer
Research Technician
Small Business Owner
Systems Administrator
Systems Analyst
Venture Capitalist/ Investor
Auditor
Consultant
Food Service Manager

Some of these kind of remind me how most of my skills don’t really translate well to a solid career.  For example, I am an excellent “packer” of things. I see things spatially better than most and I have natural organization skills and so I can assemble a group of objects into a space (a box, the back of the car, a moving truck) very, very efficiently.   Unfortunately, I don’t really want to be a “mover” (which I would probably be very good at) any more than I would like to be a sommelier from the list above (though I do like wine).

At the moment I’m operating under the assumption that accounting would be a good thing to do for the next 20 years, though I hope I just didn’t just stop really looking at them after I hit the first one on the list.  However, I do like the idea of getting a professional license (CPA) that is widely respected (still important to me) and it be something I could do into my 60’s if I wanted to. I like the idea of transitioning to the point where I could have my own clients that come to me in my small office.

I started the pursuit of this goal by signing for some classes to get a bachelor in accounting from Cal State East Bay. I signed up for Accounting 1, Econonomics, Statistics, and an environmental science class that I have been taking at night from Solano County College. I have been doing well, even if it has taken up virtually every waking hour outside of work, minus a few hours here or there (never enough) in my attempt to feed my marriage. It’s definitely been difficult, but I have genuinely enjoyed learning again, too.  As I told Amy, I think that it is equal parts good and bad.

I have since come to the conclusion that if accounting is for me, then it would be smarter to pursue a masters (MBA, with a concentration in accounting) as the classes actually are much more accelerated and I could get through them more quickly.  Plus, much cooler to have a masters degree.

I’m trying to time it out, though, so I’m not hip deep into school at the time we should have a newborn in the house. So my current plan would be to study for the GMAT over the summer, take the test in August, apply for B school in September for admittance next fall (09). I’ll take another accounting and economics class in the fall locally to keep my head in the game and then block out winter 08/spring 09 as the time for assembling the family. I think in the event we “hit” on the first cycle of IVF Amy would be due in late January. If it’s a miss, then it will probably be a cycle off before trying again, so due date might be March….then maybe May? Anyway, three chances to get a child before next summer with me not overcommitting elsewhere until September 09.

I should know better than to try to plan this far in advance, but I have to have some kind of framework to work within. For now, I just have to finish the classed I am in and start studying for the GMAT and then let the rest happen when it happens.

Tags: Life // 6 Comments »