Can I trouble you with details?

Well!

This is the story of my ovaries, my heart and my brain over the last 5 days with a late but showstopping entrance by my uterus.

My Trojan ovaries really did a stellar job this cycle. Although my meds had only increased a bit, my egg numbers skyrocketed. In total 29 were collected. A gruelling procedure when you think about that meaning my ovaries were punctured 29 times - plus a few extra in and outs with that mofo needle in order to use a catheter to drain the bladder, etc. Even my Dr (who I am very fond of and trust immensely) was surprised. As I was looking at the screen, watching the needle travel further and further to reach the next egg (I swear it was up under my navel). My Dr's head surfaced above gown level and he said "of course they won't all be mature, otherwise your hormone levels would be through the roof". People. Let me fill you in for a moment on the most important lesson you can learn as a special ed teacher. You should always tell someone what to do, rather than what not to do. Because when you say "Don't climb out the window" what you are reinforcing for the person is the words "climb out the window". "Feet on floor" is a much better option. So, when I heard the Dr. say "otherwise your hormone levels would be through the roof" what I heard was "hormone levels through the roof" which was then reinforced when he poked his head round the curtain in recovery to let me know that actually 26 of the eggs were mature. Which then translated as "your hormone levels must surely be about to go through the roof, if they aren't already".

enter (or was it exit) heart and brain, stage left
Zen master Barbie (and I had been so Zen and chilled until this point) flipped. Although excited by the increased chances that 26 mature eggs might offer, I convinced myself that I was about to get OHSS. Which is weird cause although I have done 3 cycles previously this has never even crossed my mind. I've always thought my Dr was so conservative and safety conscious that none of his patients ever got OHSS.

If the static energy being radiated from my head was visible it would have looked like a giant plasma ball. I am sure if harnessed and used as an energy source I would have saved tons of emissions.

Let's just say I ended up on the doorstep of my shiatsu therapist two days later and burst into tears when he opened the door and went "Barbara?"

And I left school feeling rotten on Monday because I mistook a little panic attack as OHSS symptoms (well how would I know? I've never had either.)

Weirdly though, I was fine on Tuesday. I went back to school, having figured out the my body was doing just fine, and my head, considering the pressure it was under, wasn't really that crazy.
I got a call in the morning (in between chatting to parents at the gate) to say that 5 embryos were ready for biopsy. (For those techy people interested in why I'm doing PGD on day 5 instead of day 3 look here). I got a call to say what time I would get the results while trying to herd my little autie kids off the bus and towards the pool entrance. (I'm great at using all limbs to help shepherd kids in the right direction). And then..... the call with the results.

When they do day 5 tests they like to put the healthy embryos back ASAP. What normally happens is that they get you to loiter around town near the clinic at the time the results are expected back. The clinic loiter rates highly as a Bad Wait in a run of bad waits. You've come into the city (on Melbourne Cup day no less - it's all about office workers having boozy lunches, feathers in the hair, wearing pretty or laddish outfits, and betting too much on horses you know nothing about), found a park (and lady luck was on my side - not in the sweep I had entered, but as my personal parking assistant. I got one directly in front of the doors of the clinic), then you get out of your car and a) loiter, b)sit in a cafe drinking decaf c) sit all tight arsed on the edge of the very stylish lounges in the foyer of a ritzy city building. And WAIT. FOR. THE. PHONE. TO. RING. Then, as soon as the scientists have done their thing, and talked to the nurses, the nurse calls the doctor and the patient to let us know IF IT'S ON. Which it was yesterday. Apparently lady luck was in the petri dish as well.

We met the Doc in the lobby - he'd been running. He was sweat soaked with a singlet and running shorts and sneakers. Out of professional politeness we took a different lift to him although when we met again on level 4 he'd pretty much just washed his hands and chucked a surgery gown over his exercise gear, which I kind of liked.

And well - you know how the rest goes. A blood test. A wrist band. A talk from the scientist, the embryologist, the nurse and the doc (whose Scottish accent is rather like Shrek's) "Leit's doo it".
enter the diva lady uterus, shining in her sparkly progesterone supplements
And then it was done. Or in.

S/he was a good looking hatching blastocyst when shown to us on the screen.

And no doubt s/he'll be a good looking teenager one day too.

We hope.

My two week wait has been shortened from 11 to 10 days for the convenience of the clinic (which makes me why it isn't always 10 days). I'm sure there is reasons.

So, hopefully the last of the waits for a very very long time.

Oh - and for the rest of the techy details. 3 that were biopsied were "unbalanced" which means that if they continued to develop into babies they would die (like Maya), and 1 they were unable to get a result for so are testing the cells again today. They also tested more in the evening and more today so my nurse will ring me this afternoon with all the results and maybe we will even have one or two healthy embryos to freeze.