IVF Diary Vol III 21-30 Mar 16

March 30, 20166 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Lupron 0.5mg (10 units) injection AM.

Somehow I have managed to take all my medications at the correct time despite all the time zone changes (Belgium was 5 hours ahead and the UK was four hours ahead at the time). I have taken the Lupron injections in some strange places, including in the airplane toilet. I had alarms set on my phone so I could remember to do it because taking the pill and doing the injection were both at random times of the day! Quite frankly amongst everything that has been going on I am impressed with myself for managing to figure it all out!

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil.

What are my symptoms? Actually, I haven’t really experienced any symptoms in particular. I still have a mild upset tummy, it was doing much better before I left for Europe, but I think everything got screwed up after everything with the attack. I’ve had a few random bouts of tears, but I can’t tell whether they are a result of the hormones or not. Who knows! I’m kind of getting used to this happening now.

How do I feel today? I went back to work on Tuesday and it wasn’t too bad. I did have a little bit of a shaking episode after I had recanted to my Brussels story the nth time. I was just overwhelmed (in a positive way) with how many people told me they are pleased to see me in one piece!!! I was also overwhelmed with the sheer number of people who actually read my blog post. People who I have never spoken to at work before had read it and came up to me to tell me how amazing it was…even all the senior bosses had read it. Basically pretty much everyone I work with now knows about my blog. I’m pretty sure most people didn’t take much notice of the infertility part of my blog, rather were just interested in the Brussels story, but when my friends and family asked if it was OK to share it, I really had no idea how far it would be shared.

I’m not doing well at sleeping, but I guess that is to be expected…and with the hormones I am not sure how much is contributed by events vs the medications. So I am a little tired. But the good news is that I have taken some time off work! Woohoo!!! Relaxation…chilling…are all that is scheduled for me during the stimulation phase of this cycle! A complete contrast to last time. I have even discovered a new yoga place that has opened up near my house. Overall, I am excited that we have another chance at IVF, but a little niggly part of me thinks I shouldn’t get my hopes up because it will be a long way to fall down from this time around.

Any results? Nil

What’s next? I have my first baseline monitoring appointment tomorrow morning. Hopefully it will all be go go go for cycle 3! Fingers crossed this Lupron has done its job nicely.

Weight. I still haven’t got on the scales yet!

Waist. NSTR.

Boobs. NSTR.

The Final Countdown!!!

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal), 5mg Melatonin at bed time and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

Balancing Work and Infertility Treatment

November 23, 201513 Comments

I have been mostly open with my colleagues about the infertility treatment that we are facing. I told a small number about the three IUIs, but in preparation for IVF I decided I needed to tell a few more of my colleagues in my team. In fact, my team gave me a gift card for a nice restaurant as a I was about to take four days of sick leave for the Egg retrieval and embryo transfer for our first round of IVF. But it’s not something that everyone is comfortable initiating a conversation about it all with me. They don’t know where the line is, so I try to be open about it as much as possible and help them to feel comfortable asking me whatever questions they may have.

This ‘open’ approach has mostly worked in my favour; but that doesn’t mean it has been easy. It is coming up to almost a year of treatment and my boss has known about my appointments and treatment for the majority of that time. He has been accommodating, caring and supportive to my needs. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter how supportive your peers and bosses are, there is the issue of the work that still needs to be done.

I feel unreliable, I feel flaky, I feel selfish and I hate not being flexible. I feel like the weak link in the team. I hate that it is almost impossible to plan long term projects and work travel – a key part of my job. I feel helpless, sometimes I feel useless. I try to compensate by being overly proactive in areas that don’t require long term planning; I try to over achieve on short term goals and tasks. But ultimately this impacts my career. I feel like I have taken a career break.

Juggling work with infertility treatment requires meticulous planning – and yet what are you told when it comes to IVF treatment? Always expect the unexpected. So planning for the unexpected becomes an overly stressful burden to your sanity.

For me, the first time we went through IVF it was a quiet time of year for us – August. Many of my colleagues were on their summer holidays, so all was good. This time around we are expecting to start stimulation in the New Year. Things start to get a whole lot busier at work at this time of year. I have already had to say no to travelling to Europe in January because it is likely my egg retrieval will be in that week. Not attending this meeting in Europe may impact my involvement in the project overall. Or simply just add another layer of stress even if I do pick it up afterwards from playing catch-up.

Then, there is the added problem of being physically at work; suffering from pain and tiredness as a result of the hormones and your body coping with the side effects of the drugs. I tried to hide the pain. I must have gone to the toilets about 25 times a day to hide. Sometimes I just spent 5 minutes sitting there taking a timeout. And it wasn’t just the physical pain, the emotional strain plays a part in all this too. Simply put, the infertility treatment has also affected my mental focus on doing a good job. For example, I was not satisfied with my output around the time of the IVF (I had a deliverable due just before the start of the IVF cycle – this was a terrible terrible idea!), although I know I am very self-critical and set high bars for myself – no one has actually complained about my work thus far. I just hope that is because what I delivered was satisfactory, and not because people were afraid to upset me!!!

I just hate this.

And I am lucky that I do not have to lie to my colleagues. I cannot imagine having that added pressure of guilt and keeping up with lies in addition to the stress of the treatment itself. Some people need to keep their treatment a secret either for job protection or it is within their nature to keep family life private.

So what have I learned? Second time around, I will schedule in a combination of annual leave and sick leave into my diary for the start of stimulation. Fortunately it’s a new year of leave, so I will be able to do this this time around. Who knows what would happen if we have to do IVF all over again after this round. But this time, I’m going to try to focus on the treatment rather than juggling it with work.

Maybe I’ll take up some knitting or do some oil painting to keep me occupied. I’m going to need to find something to keep my mind busy!!!

:-s

As for the long term impact on my career, well, I will just have to not worry too much about it just now. Maybe if we get to summer next year and still no pregnancy, how I feel about my career is going to really influence my decisions about what we do next.

The healing power of Stockholm and my Nobel Prize

September 27, 201515 Comments

As I return from my work travels in Stockholm, I have some down time to reflect upon our recent failed first round of IVF. I say ‘failed’…it’s actually quite difficult to say with any confidence that it was actually the IVF that failed us. It is possible I suffered an ectopic pregnancy, but the doctors were unable to confirm it, although they treated me for it with methotrexate to terminate the pregnancy to be on the safe side. Something was growing, they just could see it. If my pregnancy was truly ectopic, then it wasn’t the IVF that caused the demise of my pregnancy….the IVF treatment managed to get me pregnant, but my body decided it wasn’t going to succeed; my body simply decided that this wasn’t my time to join the pudding club.

Or it could all simply be described as just terrible bad luck. Sometimes, there is just no reason known to man why Mother Nature can be so cruel.

Of course, it is natural to blame oneself. There are several potential causal links to an increased risk of ectopic pregnancy: tubal damage, smoking, age, IVF – all of these increase the risk: approximately 1-2% of pregnancies are ectopic. But mostly there is just the plain and simple element of unfortunate luck. You can find on the web doctors who speculate that the risks are higher with IVF because either:

a) With a 3-day transfer, the embryo that would ordinarily be in Fallopian tube at this stage, seeks out the more fluffy warm tubes because that is where it thinks it should be, then gets completely lost and doesn’t ask for directions.
Or b) the doctor who performs the embryo transfer procedure places the embryos too high up in the uterus; or they are transferred too quickly and end up in the wrong place.

However, my doctor explained to me that statistically speaking, the risk of ectopic pregnancy doubles with IVF because generally there are two embryos being transferred and so that risk doubles from 1% to 2%. This makes a whole lot of sense to me. I was just unlucky.

I am thinking through all of this right now because I need to take away something positive from this failed cycle. I’ve got to get my cup half full again….and so the positive could be that we just needed that extra help from ICSI or the hormones, and I was just one of the really unlucky ones to not stay pregnant this time. Next time might just be our time. There is still no reason why it shouldn’t be.

I was feeling a little sorry for myself in my last post. But the last couple of days have been an improvement, and it is starting to look like our path is finally beginning to flatten out, allowing us to take a breather.

Time to catch a breather before heading off on to the foggy path called infertility.

I have been kept mentally busy with work, socialising and networking with my colleagues, so I have had little time to think emotionally about the failed round of treatment. Physically, the pain has dissipated, the bleeding continues (seriously, where does it all come from?!!?), but it is a very small amount that it has barely bothered me. I still feel exhausted, but jet lag most likely lays claim to the cause of that. I miss my pre-natal multi-vitamins, I really hope to be allowed to take them again soon. They help keep my bowels in shape and my energy up.

And I will grow back my positivity because over the next 3 months as we have a plan to get us to our next IVF cycle (hopefully if I get the all clear from my repeat HSG!!). In short – we have our 2 week, 2000 miles, road trip starting from Las Vegas, visiting various amazing places like Grand Canyon, Zion national park, Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, Hoover Dam and a whole lot more. I have another 3 work trips to Europe to fit in – Munich, Berlin and Brussels/Mons (I haven’t been to Berlin yet so that is exciting!). We have a consult with our doctor scheduled for late October to discuss the plan for the next cycle. I need to find some time to fit in a HSG once my period returns (seriously NOT looking forward to that). I am hoping my body is going to play nice and we can get an IVF cycle in just before Christmas. It’s also Chris’s Birthday soon and I want to organise a small party for him. And amongst all that we are going to try and fit in a weekend away to Shenandoah National Park to see the beautiful colours of autumn. No time for stopping over the next 3 months!!

Stockholm has done me a lot of good (despite the jet lag), I’m feeling mentally refreshed and excited to be moving forward. However, I was very disappointed to discover that my invitation to pick up my Nobel Prize must have got lost in the post.

No Nobel Prize for me…..But it was beautiful!

But I did get a chance to scope out the building they award them in, the museum my name would be listed in, and the best restaurants to celebrate at….May be someday I’ll be back 😉 bahahahahaha – Keep dreaming Dani!

The Nobel Museum, Stockholm – Something to reach high for 🙂

When to tell work that you are having fertility treatment?

February 7, 2015February 7, 2015Leave a comment

Should I tell work about our troubles with fertility? I had so many questions about this, playing out many scenarios. Who should I tell? When is an appropriate time to talk about? How do you get onto the subject? What my colleagues would think? Would they treat me differently? Would they see me differently? Would they even care?

We had our big team meeting to discuss our annual programme of work two weeks ago, just after our doctor diagnosed ‘unexplained infertility’. At the time, my head was spinning with all these big questions. Knowing that we were going to be talking about the coming year and which project each person would be assigned to, I thought perhaps my team should be aware that I had a good reason for why I was less keen to travel for work. But I chickened out of telling anyone. It was too difficult to bring up the subject and I had no idea how to raise it. So I left it at that, I said nothing We planned our programme of work, and agreed when I would travel.

This year, so far, I have work travel plans to go to Paris, Washington DC, Toronto and Bavaria. I’m not going to be racking up the air miles gold status like I did in 2014, but it’s enough to be starting with. It’s enough to probably mess up a few chances to conceive – or if I were to fall pregnant, then I would need to be cautious about how much I fly. Last year we were very lucky. Despite my many trips to other side of the pond, there was only really one time where my work travel reduced our chances of success. It really was quite amazing!

Back to the question of when to tell work? Well, a good opportunity came along when I had a one to one with my line manager to discuss annual personal objectives. I struggled to get the words out, but eventually managed to explain that Chris and I were going through fertility treatment. My boss is very nice and has always joked with me ‘wait ’til you have little Chris and Dani’s running around!!’. So as you can imagine, he provided some comforting words – mostly focusing about what would happen when I do get pregnant, how much support I would get and not to worry about anything. I felt very comforted, but I could not really talk about what my biggest concern was – taking time off work for appointments and treatment. I have plenty of leave I can take, but a lot of my work requires advance planning, so with treatments based around my irregular cycles, this may have an impact.

Once I get a bit more comfortable talking about it, I know I will be able to easily talk to him about it. I am very lucky. It’s actually myself who is the biggest hurdle in all this. I have great colleagues who I know will definitely be very supportive and understanding, but it’s knowing how to initiate that discussion I can’t quite get over. Maybe next week, if I’m feeling brave!