Blood and fog

When does an IVF cycle really, truly begin?

I'm going to argue for the first needle stick. And now I've had mine, for the cycle that I am desperately hoping to carry off in January.

Cornell likes to do their own FSH testing. They want frozen serum. For aging me, they wanted day 2. I thought about just flying to New York (as I did last time), but that would have been outrageously expensive and inconvenient.

We sent Beaker off to get pounds and pounds of dry ice. We sent me off to find a lab that was open over the weekend (!) and willing to take my blood, spin out the serum, and hand it back to me. The phlebotomist clearly thought this should be illegal, but neither her supervisor nor the lab objected, so she gritted her teeth and stabbed me anyway. Stuffed it all into a cooler left over from some of Beaker's refrigerated medication and dropped it off at Fed Ex on Saturday for Monday delivery.

Remaining obstacles to actually cycling include: The results of that test. Locating an actual LH surge later this cycle (I tried, and failed, last cycle, which was only 24 days long, grrrrrrrr). Getting on the co-culture schedule for November. Figuring out how to manage travel and childcare and all that during the cycle itself. Handing over the money.

ADDENDUM: FSH came back about the same -- a little lower in fact, 6.71 vs. 7.26 -- as three years ago, and the other hormones were right where they should be too. Hot diggety. Dr. Data says, same protocol, and let's go!

ADDENDUM: Except then I went and looked at the stats. Last time I was still in the under-35 category, with a 40% chance of taking home a baby. Now I'm in 35-37 and verging towards 38-40. Where it's down to 20%!

Yes, I know, I know, there's no actual cliff, I was at the upper end of the box before, so MY odds were worse, and I'm just heading into the lower end of that upper box now, but still... I think I have a personal threshold of a substantially better than 50% chance of success in 3 tries, and I may be aging out of that fast. Also, I hadn't realized how much of the decrease in live-baby rate is due to increased miscarriage risk. That's a major buzzkill.

Comments

[Jody]

I can't help being excited for you, regardless of the complication factors.

Does it help at all that you cannot do anything about any of this, but at least the FSH trended down? I mean, better to have it be lower, given that the age factor was already known. In a way, anyway.

Eh. No one can feel good when confronting the odds of BFNs. I'm going to hope for the very, very best.