Home and recovering

Still a little out of it and nauseous so this is going to be short...

Surgery was today, I didn't get to a chance to talk to my doctor so all of this is coming from my husband. I have several unanswered questions especially about #3 and I will hopefully get to talk to both my ob and my RE in the next several days about everything.

1) Tied left tube - tried to remove it but it was too connected to the left ovary. Will probably have to have it removed when we are done TTC.

2) Right tube looked fine for now.

3) Found endo. They removed what they could but may need drug therapy for 3-6 months before we can continue.

Going back to bed now...

What happened??

Does anyone know what happened to the Cutest Blog on the block? I see a note that I am going to lose my background on Friday and noticed the same thing on several other sites I visited today.
This is the only background site I have used, does anyone have one they would recommend?

Welcome ICLW

Welcome ICLWers! This is my third time participating - I can't wait to meet new people and find some great new blogs to add to my list. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, you will find that I pretty much only write about our infertility. I have an IRL blog that talks about our life, our son, etc. and frankly I don't have time to write about it twice. This is an anonymous blog...that isn't becuase of you. I'm not worried about you finding out who I am, I am worried about people IRL finding out about the blog. I started this blog becuase I felt like most people IRL didn't want to hear what I really was thinking or feeling. If they hurt my feelings or make me mad, I want to be able to write about it without fearing they may find out.

If this is your first time here, my husband (W) and I are trying to get pregnant with our second child. We had our son (Jr.) in 2007 with the help of Clomid and began trying again in June of 2008. So far we have done 5 natural cycles with Clomid, 3 Clomid IUIs, 1 Clomid/Follistim IUI and 1 IVF. I did get pregnant from the IVF however we found out at 6 weeks that it was an ectopic pregnancy in my left tube. Becuase of the Methotrexate used for the ectopic...we had to take a 3 month break from TTC. We were supposed to do a FET last week but at one of my last ultrasounds before the transfer they found some problems with my left tube. My cycle was cancelled and I am having surgery on Friday. We are hoping to try the FET again in September or October.

I've reached it...

First, before I start, I KNOW that my current troubles in no way can come close to comparing to some of the things many of you have been through or are going through and I know that I still have several things going for me but that being said...after 2 years and 1 month of being reasonably positive...

I AM BITTER!!

I AM MAD!!

I am mad that instead of getting to enjoy my last pregnancy, to bring home a beautiful miracle baby, I instead spent several weeks trying to make it go away. And then once I finally was done with my break and ready to move on and try again, spent four weeks in Lupron induced screaming and crying fits, my cycle was cancelled and I found out that my pregnancy not only ended badly...it killed my fallopian tube.

I know part of this is just nervousness about the surgery. I am nervous about what they will find when they get in there. Am I only losing one tube...or both? What if the surgery finds other things wrong? What if the surgery causes more problems?

I'm looking forward to getting through this and being back on the TTC road again...hopefully sooner rather than later...

sorry i need to vent...

ok, I have ready several blogs over the past few years about how hard it is to read about pregnancies on facebook. For me, it depends on the person but in general I don't mind them too much. Afterall, I plaster my facebook page with my pictures and stories of Jr. I post about what is important to me and I think they should definitely post about their pregnancy. My view on this is changing with two of my facebook friends. They do nothing by COMPLAIN about their pregnancies. These are mutual friends so they feed on each other and just go on and on and on about how horrible it is. I as well as other people have tried to throw in positive things about being pregnant and we are basically told to "shut up." They have used words to describe their pregnancies as "tragic, huge sacrifice, miserable, etc." Both of these women planned their pregnancies and have older children so they can't say they didn't want to be pregnant or that they didn't know what they were getting into. I know pregnancy isn't easy...I was sick for 18 weeks and then ended up severly pre-eclampsic but I was never so happy to feel like crap. Why can't people appreciate their blessings and understand how lucky they are??

Cycle Cancelled :(

Well I had my ultrasound on Friday and got bad news. My fallopian tube is still "communicating" (not blocked) with my uterus. Since the fluid from the tube significantly reduces my chances of getting pregnant and if I were to get pregnant (even in IVF) my chances of a miscarriage significanly increases...my cycle was cancelled. Four weeks of Lupron induced tantrums for nothing...

My surgery is scheduled for Friday, July 23. Assuming everything goes well and the timeing of my period, our transfer got pushed back to September or October. The good news is that this is going to get taken care of and when we do get back on track we should have a better chance of this working!!

I have my pre-op appointment on Thursday and will know more about the surgery then and will post all about it :)

The best laid plans...

If you were to ask me what infertility has taught me, I would tell you that one thing is that I have learned that you can not "plan" your life. I have had to learn to take things as they come and figure it out as I go...However, if I had really learned this lesson, I would not have been surprised when we ran into a problem today.

Today's ultrasound was supposed to be pretty routine...I was just supposed to make sure the added estrogen was working and make sure I was set for Tuesday's transfer.
Well we did get that question answered and found other stuff as well...

Good News: Added Estrogen worked and my lining had increased from 5.6 to 7.2

Bad News: My left Fallopian tube is completely filled with fluid and "dead." the official term for this is Hydrosalpinx. It was most likely caused my my ectopic pregnancy. So...I have a saline ultrasound scheduled for Friday. If the saline, stays in my uterus and everything looks normal, I can proceed with Tuesday's transfer BUT if some of the saline goes into the tube then the transfer is cancelled and instead I will be having surgery to at the least "tie" the tube or depending on how it looks, possibly remove it. It is just a waiting game until Friday...

So...
1) Has anyone had this before?
2) Since there is a possibility that this condition "sucks" things from the Uterus, do you think this was caused by the ectopic or that the problem with my tube, caused the ectopic??

Just when you think you've done everything...

Hi everyone!!
Sorry it has been a week again since my last post. We are just having WAY too much fun this summer for me to spend time on the computer. When I do have time, I am trying to read your blogs instead of writing mine. I know I haven't made too many comments lately but I promise you I have been reading. I have a week of taking it easy next week after my transfer so I'm sure you will get sick or me then!!

Anyway...

This story may have a little TMI...but I'm sure you will get a laugh...

Last Friday, I had to go in for another ultrasound and bloodwork. It turns out my Estrogen was borderline low. My lining was 5.4 and they wanted it between 6 and 10 and my estrogen was 94 and they wanted it at least 100. The nurse said she and the doctor weren't too worried but just to be safe they wanted me to go on another form of estrogen. She said she was going to put me on Estrace. I told her I had done that before and then when she mentioned I was doing it vaginally I didn't think we needed to go into details that I had done it orally before. She told me to insert one in the morning and one in the evening. She called it in to the pharmacy and W picked it up. When W got it home and I looked at it...it was just a bottle of pills and instructions to insert one tablet vaginally twice a day....so of course my thought...

"AND JUST HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET IT UP THERE???"

This is when my I know everything about infertility and infertility meds attitude get a little reality check. After all, I have been taking meds "vaginally" for years...I couldn't imagine that this one would have been any different!! Since I really didn't want to call the pharmacist and ask the above question I decided to ask Dr. Google. I went through all the key words I could think of....estrogen, vaginal, tablet, estrace, etc. Everything that came involved rings or applicators...there were no instructions on putting a tablet of your hoo ha.

When Dr. Google didn't help, I called a good friend of mine who is a pharmacist. She happens to work for the same chain that I picked this up from so I figured she could help...but did she answer the phone...of course not!!

I was left with no choice but to call the pharmacist. As soon as I said my name, the tech started laughing and said they weren't surprised that I called. "What?? You knew I might have questions and you didn't try to explain anything to W when he picked it up??" So they explain that when the Nurse called and said what strength they wanted, they didn't have it in a vaginal form so the nurse wanted me to take the oral estrace vaginally. The pharmacist then basically told me that they did their part by filling the prescription but since it was an oral tablet they didn't have an applicator or anything for me...lovely :)

So that night, my husband and I brainstormed...I'm sure someone would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for this conversation. After several suggestions we decided I should try the applicator from my endometrin (progesterone). It was a great idea but since the Estrace pull is so little (less than 1/4 " diameter) the tablet wouldn't come out of the applicator. So I used my finger and did my best to get it as high as I could.

The next morning, my pharmacist friend called me back and told me that there were applicators the pharmacist should have given me...great...but she suggested using a monistat applicator. So I picked up a Monistat 7 and tried that. It worked great the first time, but the second time, it got stuck. So after trial and error, I finally have a system that works...

1) Put tablet in Monistat Applicator
2) Insert Applicator while standing
3) Lay down with legs in the air and push in applicator plunger
4) Remove plunger

Oh and did I mention that the pill is greenish/blue so you end up with green discharge...yup...lovely.

I think I can add this as another reason I would love to just get drunk one night...have sex...and wake up pregnant :)

I go back tomorrow to see if it is working!!