Follistim- my new best friend

So let's see, where did I leave off? Oh yeah, we were about to start the injectables. So the next month, October of 2009, we geared up to start these shots. I had no idea what to expect, just that I would be giving myself nightly shots starting on day 3 of my cycle, then I would be monitored the same way as before. I wasn't told anything about side effects, but sometimes it's better to just not know, or so I thought. I went into the Dr. on day 3, was given a 30 second "tutorial" from the nurse about how to give myself these shots with the follistim pen, then went to pick up my VERY expensive medicine at the pharmacy. I usually have a hard time spending a lot of money on something, but spending $900 for an inch and a half size vial of this medicine really hurt... especially because so many girls didn't have to go through this. Just taking my credit card out of my wallet to make this purchase reminded me again of how I was "different." It just wasn't fair!!

The $900 vial of follistim- next to a quarter to show how tiny this thing was!

I was told to do the shot around the same time every night because it would be better that way.  We  decided on 8 pm. We figured it would be a good time because I would be home at that time every night and it would give me some time to process before going to bed. Having to be home every night at a certain time to get a shot brought me right back to when I was around 10. I couldn't always go to sleepovers at my friends' houses because of my shot; I also had to go to the infirmary at sleep away camp every night just to get my shot. Again, it made me "different" and I hated it! 

So there I was, the night of my first shot, and my heart was beating out of my chest. Was I ready to give myself a shot? Would it be better for Ari to do it? He was certainly willing to, but I concluded that I needed to have the control over it. I needed to know exactly when it was going to be injected instead of it being a surprise. So I read the instructions for the follistim pen about 10 times, made sure I screwed the needle on correctly, put the tiny vial of medicine in, dialed the end to the correct dosage, checked the dosage about 10 more times, and then there was nothing left to do but give myself the shot. I had to do it in my lower abdomen and there was plenty of padding down there so I wasn't worried about it hurting. I don't know what I was most nervous about... the shots not working like the clomid, getting horrible side effects, getting bruises from the shots, or all of the above. I worked up the courage, and I did the shot! I was so proud of myself, but then I got really upset. It just wasn't fair! That's all I kept repeating in my head: "it's just not fair!" 

So fast forward about 5 days to my first appointment. This was the moment of truth when I would see if the $900 we spent on this medicine was worth it. I planned for the worst, but hoped for the best. And there it was, finally some good news! My body was starting to produce follicles and hearing that was like music to my ears! In a regular cycle, a woman produces one follicle either in the left or right ovary, and this houses the egg. Around day 14, the egg is released from the follicle and travels down the fallopian tube to be fertilized, thus what we call ovulating. Not only was my body responding, but it was responding incredibly! I had about 6 follicles on the right and 7 on the left. I know it sounds like a lot, and it certainly freaked me out, but she explained that not all of the follicles will (a) have an egg inside, and (b) some of the follicles grow faster than others and these will be the ones to release mature eggs. The follicle has to be at least 18 mm. in order for it to have a mature egg inside. So now I just had to go back every other day so they could check my progress to make sure they grew to just the right size. Compare it to making a hard boiled egg, no pun intended. If you boil it too long, the egg will become over cooked or might even explode out of the shell. If you don't boil it long enough, it will be soft and not ready to eat. But if you boil it for just the right amount of time, it'll be perfectly soft and delicious! 

So I went back in on day 10, 12, 14, but now we had another problem. Every single follicle I mentioned before was getting huge! She had been pretty aggressive with the dosage because I had no response to the last 2 meds, and now she was worried. She discussed the possibility of having multiples with us, which I knew was a possibly with fertility meds, but not like this. We're not talking about twins or triplets, we're talking about 5-6 eggs becoming fertilized. She then discussed the possibility of doing selective reduction... yes it's what it sounds like. If we became pregnant with more than 2 or 3 babies, we would have to "abort" some of them in order for me and the remaining babies to be healthy. This couldn't be done until after 12 weeks by the way because it could abort the whole pregnancy if it was any earlier. This was shocking to us, but we were ready for whatever we had to do. Some people might think it's crazy to agree to this, but we wanted a baby so badly and after all we had gone through, we felt we could deal with the consequences. She decided to do the trigger shot early, the medicine that would make the eggs release from the follicles, to avoid so many of them being mature and getting fertilized. The only problem was that there might have been no mature eggs at all because she triggered early. It's kinda like a catch 22, either you have slightly immature eggs with the hopes of just one of them being fertilized, or you have tons of mature eggs and have to deal with multiples. She told us to get busy exactly 36 hours after doing the trigger shot, which is what we did. We really thought it would work! We were so happy I finally ovulated, we thought there was no way I wouldn't get pregnant with all those eggs in there. So after getting busy, we had to do the dreaded 2 week wait (2WW). This is the amount of time you have to wait before you see if you got pregnant or not. For us, it didn't even get to 2 weeks because I got my period. Game over, we were heart broken! 

Because I ovulated SO MUCH, I had a reaction that happens very rarely to women who go through fertility treatments, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004549/ 
In case you'd like to read about it.
Basically what happened was after I ovulated, the follicles filled back up with fluid and each one got huge. Remember, I had about 12 follicles in there, so I was hurting! It's worse than the worse period cramps you've ever felt. I couldn't go to work, I didn't even leave the house. My belly became so engorged with fluid, I looked about 5 months pregnant and gained 8 lbs. in the matter of 3 days. The only thing that would make it better was time. I was advised not to drink too much water because it would make it worse. For those of you who know me know that water is all I drink! I have a water bottle attached to my hand at all times! It took about 2 weeks but it finally got better. After this traumatic experience, we decided to take a break from fertility drugs. We did want to try another round of the follistim, but I needed some time to heal, both physically and emotionally. We took about a 3 month break and it felt so good! We picked back up in January of 2010, exactly 1 year into our journey. Stay tuned for round 2 of follistim!