Tag Archives: Gonal-F

IVF #5 – Stim Day 20 – The Last Night of Stims – The 411

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One More Day

Today is officially my LAST NIGHT of Stimming !!   I have been patiently injecting myself am and pm for the past 20 days !  Tomorrow morning, I do my injection of Ganirelix, Neupogen, and Lovenox and then I wait until 9:30 pm and do my 1st Novarel trigger shot.

I went in this morning for monitoring and I have 11 follicles on the right and 3 on the left.  I am hoping that by Saturday retrieval they are ALL mature and retrievable.  I am getting anxious.  I just need this to be MY cycle !  My doctor called in a script for Viagra for me to take vaginally to make sure my lining is an 8. Of course insurance will not cover it and its $41 per pill !   $900 for a prescription… I swear insurance companies are rip offs !  Since my lining looks pretty good today, as opposed to the drop it took last week on Friday, I am only going to get 4 of the 20 pills they called in.

IVF 5 stim day 2                           IVF 5 - Follistim   ivf 5 stim day 4 neupogen     ivf 5- viagara                 ivf 5 meds 2

This evening, I will inject the Gonal-F and Menopur.   I have packed all of my belongings and shipped them to the hotel and I have my dress and coat laid out that I am wearing for the funeral tomorrow.  I am going to just wear it to NY since I am not lugging luggage with me.  It is easier to just wear a comfy dress and take my dressier satin overcoat that I will switch into and a pair of heels. I am taking an oversize purse with my laptop in it and the heels so it will be easy for me to move about.  I am meeting my make up artist for breakfast in the morning and then leaving from breakfast and heading up to the Bronx to the funeral.  I am not looking forward to attending a double funeral AT ALL !   I absolutely HATE funerals.  They are too sad.  I will be there to show my love and support and will forgo the burial.

I will update tomorrow with how things went ~

IVF #5 – Stim Day 19 – The 411

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ivf 5 - keep calm stim on bear

19 days and counting…. Just two more days of stims and then hopefully Thursday night is trigger #1 and Friday is trigger #2 and then I can get these little eggs out of me before my babies come out looking like Benjamin Button ! lol

I did my normal injections this morning of Ganirelix, Lovenox and Neupogen.  I took the 20mg of Prednisone, Claritin, and also took my prenatal vitamin.  This afternoon, I took the Folate and also the Synthroid.  I will inject Gonal-F tonight (ran out of Follistim and the two are interchangeable) and the Menopur.  I have a pm prenatal that I take along with more Prednisone and the Vitamin D emulsion.

I just packed up my clothing, shoes, notes for my book, sheets, and heating pad into a box and have it sitting waiting on FedEx to pick it up and ship it ahead to the hotel.  I am elated to not have to drag luggage with me all around New York while I am in the city for the funerals.  I will leave from the funeral and head to midtown, grab lunch in Penn Station or nearby and then hop on the train to Albany.  It will be nice to be in a quiet hotel suite, equipped with a full kitchen, and no grandmom to ask me every five minutes if there is something she can help me do !  Thank you Jesus !   🙂    She means well, but at times, it is taxing. I wish she could do some of my writing so that I can take a nap LOL.

Today, my mom had her first radiation treatment.   All went well and we met with the doctor afterwards. I took her to lunch at PF Chang’s and then home we went.  After she worked for a while, I made her go to bed to take a nap and rest.   She is probably downstairs on her Ipad or cellphone playing around on Facebook lol.

In regards to my swelling ovaries, I spoke too soon !  Those things seem to start filling up late last night about 11-12 and felt like they were being blown up a bit kinda like a balloon for several hours.  It was so noticeable that I could not sleep from the discomfort.  My tummy is now a bit distended so I am hoping that nothing is growing out of proportion or too fast and I end up having the surgery on Friday.  I was looking forward to having all day Friday to relax and maybe catch a movie at the mall up the street from the hotel, hang out in the huge Border’s Bookstore and get a juicy burger from Five Guys in the food court.   Hopefully I will be able to get that in.

More tomorrow after my scan…. I am going to take a nap before I have to go to infertility support group meeting tonight !

IVF #4 – Stim Day 10 – The 411

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baby - my body is not ready yet

I went in this morning for my monitoring appointment and everything is looking good.  Unfortunately, I have two leads on the right and three on the left and a gang of additional follicles that have not caught up.  My E2 (estrogen) level is just under 1000.  My nurse conferred with Dr. Grossman and Dr. Kiltz and I have to stay on meds another night or two.  I am sooooo glad I did not sell off all of my additional meds or donate them !  I kept two boxes of Menopur and some of the Gonal -F and of course I still have some Lupron left in the vial I have been using.  I am completely out of Omnitrope, but I am not flipping out about it.  I took in three vials over the past 9 days.  The HGH/Omnitrope was an added medication to help with egg quality and maturation.

I was all packed and ready for my 7 am departure tomorrow, and am kinda disappointed that I will not be leaving until this weekend.  Not that I want to rush anything, I am hoping my follicles grow like gang busters overnight so that I will do my retrieval on Saturday and my transfer on Monday or Tuesday.  I am pretty sure my mom has her next chemo therapy treatment on Wednesday, which means she has to come back on Tuesday.  I just hope I am done by Tuesday so that we can head back to DC for her treatment. Again, I am not going to stress about it.  It is what it is.  My mom can just hop on the train back to DC if need be and I will just come the day after.  Her chemo treatments are now 5 hours long so I do not stay with her anyway.  I was just hoping she would be at the clinic when I put her grandbabies back in 🙂

Baby - keep calm im not ready yet

Here is a picture from the monitoring screen today:

baby - ivf 4 stim day 10 scan

Time to go mix my meds and inject them !  More tomorrow after my monitoring appointment.

IVF #4 – Stim Day 9- The 411

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baby - ivf 4 stim day 2

Tonight is hopefully my LAST night of stims !  I mixed and injected all the meds and surprisingly this cycle, I do not have one bruise !   WOW !   I made it through without looking like a human cushion pin !!

I have a monitoring appointment in the morning and more labs and I am praying that the other follicles catch up to the 20, 16 and 14 leads that I had on Monday.  I feel a lot fuller and more bloated.   My acupuncturist noticed my abdominal bloat this morning.

I went to acupuncture with my mom and then we grabbed lunch at a place she read about since she was craving fajitas.  She ended up not even liking them, which is typical lol.   Her taste buds are so off, I do not even know why she even tries to eat out.

After starting Taxol last week, my mom started experiencing radiating pain.  She text me at 2 am to ask if I was awake so that she could figure out something to take for the pain in her back.  I gave her a flexeril but it didn’t do much to help.  We called her Oncologist’s office this morning and they wrote a script for Vicodin.  I went and picked it up this evening and filled it when I went to pick up my Emla cream.  I found the numbing cream does help when injecting the PIO (progesterone in oil).

I have packed my box of spices and treats, packed up all my meds, needles and supplies and I am shipping those boxes to the hotel tomorrow so they will be there when I arrive on Thursday.  My hotel has a kitchen in the room, which I love, although they do serve a full breakfast daily and dinner Monday thru Thursday.  I always eat breakfast, but I usually just have to concierge take me to the grocer and I buy food to cook since I am so picky.   My mom is going with me this time, so I will have company !!  I am excited that she will be coming along.  Being that Upstate NY is extremely cold and it is to be -2 on Thursday, I doubt we will venture out except to the grocer.  We will probably go see a movie on Saturday at the mall if I am up to it.

Please send up some prayer that this last injection pushes these little follicles to where they need to be.  I will drink a few cups of Ballerina Tea tomorrow when I get  back from my appointments and “clean out”.  I found that by cleaning the digestive tract, I did not have nearly as much bloating and discomfort post-procedure since I emptied my colon and intestines the day before.

IVF #4- Stim Day 7 – The 411

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baby - lets get this party started

Today is stim day 7 and there is a party going on inside my ovaries !  I feel pressure and like I have gone from moth balls, to golf balls, to little baseballs in there.  My nipples are starting to get tender, my abdomen is swelling and my boobs are swollen !  I am a hormonal MESS !

To top off my hormonal messiness, my mom’s steroids are kicking in so she is cranky, fussy, and irritable.  Needless to say, I took off for the basement and hid out until after most of the day had passed LOL.  After her nap, she appeared from upstairs level refreshed and normal. (THANK GOD).   The steroids given to cancer patients makes them little demonic gremlins !

I mixed all my meds and drew up the Omnitrope and injected all of my meds.

I called the hotel to readjust my hotel arrangements since I am being told that Friday is the big day instead of Monday.  I am all set !  I have my travel tickets for me and my mom and am praying I do not have to change them again.  Sometimes the fare is less but more often than not it is more.  At any rate, I am pretty glad that my mom is coming with me and I do not have to go through this last IVF attempt by myself being BORED to tears in Upstate NY in the COLD ! 🙂

I am kinda sad that we got about 14 inches of snow so we were not able to do my mom’s celebratory tea.  I did make the cutest little guest gift bags with white bags with a tea mug, teas, and cookies enclosed.  I put pink tissue paper in each and they turned out pretty cute.  We have rescheduled the tea for next month when hopefully the weekly snow will be over.

Day Two of Stims – The 411

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Day Two of Stims - The 411

This evening, it was a lot easier to mix the medications. I iced my tummy for 15-20 minutes before while I waited for the Gonal-F to warm to room temp. I mixed my Lupron, Menopur, and Gonal-F as directed and injected it. I then injected the Lovenox (which has caused my menses to continue – ugh) and took the oral Prednisone. I was done in less than 15 minutes once I started mixing the meds. I dabbed Ambesol on the injection sites to numb them and then iced for 20 minutes after.

Surprisingly, the injections do not hurt or sting. I am becoming a pro already ! 8 more days to inject these meds and then I will find out if I get to trigger. I am hoping that I will not have to report to the fertility center until the day after they are anticipating so that I will have five days to let my little embryos grow to blast. They do not do transfers on Sundays so I am pushing for a Thursday retrieval so that my transfer will be on Monday.

It is going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out since a camera crew will be on my heels the entire time I am at the center, in my hotel, and everywhere I go. Reality TV, here I come !

Gonal F, Menopur, Lupron, Novarel – Injection Meds for IVF have Arrived !

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Gonal F, Menopur, Lupron, Novarel - Injection Meds for IVF have Arrived !

This morning, the last of my medications for my IVF cycle arrived from Freedom Fertility Pharmacy. WOOOT WOOOT !!!

I am glad that all of my meds are here and that I will start injections on Monday or Tuesday. After my baseline on Monday, I will told when to start injections.

Me, sticking needles in my abdomen … by myself? LAUD !! Here we go… #babymakingviaivf2014