Plans Usually Make Me Feel Better

We had our follow-up conference call with the doctor this morning. Aside from barely being able to hear him, I think it went okay. Sometimes technology is so not your friend.

The doc isn't ready to give up on me yet. No mention of donor eggs. He does think I have dimished ovarian function - which translates to - not many good eggs left. Which I suspected given my response in these last 2 IVF cycles. Anyway, the basic upshot is that my first IVF cycle looked better, so we are going back to a version of that protocol. They'll tweak the meds to get my ovaries to respond better. For those of you "lucky" enough to be in the know about all this - they think I was oversuppressed last time, so they won't put me on birth control, but will put me on a higher dose of Lupron and then a higher dose of stims to counteract the suppression for a longer period of time.

He did give me stats (you know I'm a total geek for data). He said that looking at my situation and the data, there's a roughly 40% chance the 3rd IVF will work. (Michael - did I hear that percentage right? I just realized that "forty" sounds a lot like "fourteen"...) He also said based on how many embryos we wound up with, we would need to have a discussion about putting back more than 2 embryos. I'm still in disbelief that he thinks we'll seriously have more than 2 embryos period, so I haven't let my mind go in the triplets direction. Gulp.

Moving on - I asked about what I could do to improve my egg quality. His response was quite telling. He said something along the lines of - I know you'd like for this to be in your control, but it really isn't. Hello? How have I not learned that lesson yet. Someone smack me. He said we're already doing the things that could impact egg quality - prenatals, well-balanced diet, exercise.

So there we are. I'm not sure that we learned anything new. Michael pointed out that we did learn that the doc has a game plan. I don't know why that didn't make me feel better. Plans usually make me feel better. The 40% also should have made me feel better, but it didn't. I feel like if we have to go back to the first cycle protocol and that didn't work, why will this? But that's just cynical me talking.

I guess I'm glad that the doc still has faith in my ovaries. If he does, I guess I should too. I think I was just so surprised - as I had already decided we were having the donor egg discussion today. I think there is some other testing I want him to run, but I need to do some more research on it. I mentioned the test for autoimmune antibodies (which could cause my body to reject the embryos) and he said he'd run it if I insisted, but he thought karyotyping was more important if we wanted to do more testing. (Karyotyping is where they look for genetic abnormalities and they usually only do it after recurrent losses.) I think he'll order whatever tests I want, so I just need to figure it out and do due dilligence on the research.