Friday, August 19, 2016

FET 2 (Cycle #11): Endometrial Scratch

Since I had my FET appointment today, I thought I'd gift them with my sharps containers. I've been meaning to bring them for awhile now, but kept forgetting. Not even sure which cycles these sharps containers are from. But here are three of them:


Endometrial Scratch

Saying I was a "little" anxious/worried about this appointment was an understatement. I had NO CLUE what to expect from this darn scratchy thing. I just hate pain and knew I'd feel some. The first thing we did was the Endo Scratch. My RE tries to "relax" me by having some small talk, but it actually didn't work - it made me distracted more! LOL.

As many times as I've had that darn speculum put in, it is still uncomfortable every-single-time! Ugh. I don't know how to really "explain" the scratch. But basically, he cleaned off my cervix, put a catheter-type thing through my cervix into my uterus, then did this "windshield wiper" technique. It hurt. I had my eyes closed the entire time just trying to focus on my breathing. So imagine a windshield wiper motion in your uterus. Very uncomfortable and I started feeling the cramping right away. It was like having extremely bad cramps where you almost feel sick, like you want to grab your tummy and just lay down until it passes.

Not only did my RE do the windshield wiper thing once, he did it twice... ugh. The second time felt worse than the first. They had to gather enough of the uterine lining to test it. I actually didn't realize they were going to be testing the sample. This is a good thing. They did the same thing when I had my hysteroscopy and everything came back normal. Hoping the same goes for this.

With all that said... the entire thing lasted maybe 5 minutes? But the cramping continued afterwards. I'm typing this almost 2 hours after the procedure and I'm still feeling some cramping.

After the procedure, my RE said that he thinks I'll end up with twins. He was "joking" in a way. But my entire TTC journey has been focused on not having twins. He said that the way things go, since we've been trying to avoid it, it'll probably turn out that way. The scratch is supposed to help with implantation. Hoping and hoping and hoping this works.

Twins? Singleton? --> either way. Just get me pregnant!

Injections Training

There wasn't much to the injections training. We just went over PIO a little bit, since I haven't done that since April.

Sign Consent Forms

Signed my life away with the consent forms. Nothing new, it was just weird putting on there that I wanted to thaw my 2 embryos and transfer both of them...! My little embies. I have them as a screen saver on my phone right now and I still get mesmerized looking at the little ball of cells... wondering and thinking of the possibilities.

Pay for Cycle

I had to "pay" for this cycle. But since IVF #3 didn't turn out so great (converted to IUI#7), I have a huge credit at the clinic. So, I didn't have to pay anything. The cycle cost $1,040 total - if I were to have paid for it out of pocket. Now, I'm trying to get them to issue me a refund for my balance. As much as I trust my clinic and all... there's no reason for them to hold onto my funds. I have over $8K sitting there. Plus, if this FET doesn't work - it's looking like I won't do another fresh retrieval until January 2017. I'd rather hold onto my money than them... that's for sure! I'm not pushing it right now, but next monitoring appointment I'm going to make a point to have them move forward with issuing me the refund (after they apply the FET 2 charges).

Ok, that's it! Busy day with this appointment, but it's really happening... moving forward with FET #2 and transferring my two precious embryos. I have to say, the "good feeling" I have been having about deciding on this FET vs another IVF egg retrieval, hasn't gone away! I feel extremely good about this FET. I'm hoping that good feeling carries over the entire cycle.

Really, really, really hoping this cycle is the lucky cycle!

Next Steps: 
  • 8/25/16: Start Lupron 
  • 8/30/16: Stop BCP 
Click the hyperlink for more details on FET #2IVF Cycles, or TTC journey.

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