Special Lady Cocktails

When I first was swept up by the internet infertility tornado, I remember reading forum posts from other hopeful women. Falling on a theme (as I often do), I obsessed over the ridiculousness of women taking all kinds of crazy pills - usually without having a doctor recommend them. OMG! DO YOU JUST TAKE ANYTHING YOU FIND ON THE INTERNET??? Some posts swore by the helpfulness while others confessed that they worried it may have hurt. Once discovered, some doctors gave full-on lectures how it was not appropriate for the poster's situation, only to find out that someone else (usually another doctor) in their clinic had told them to take it. Truthfully, I was personally affronted that such naivety and desperateness could drive women to arbitrarily take anything in an attempt to conceive.

The picture above is from MY house. That's right, Ms. Holier-than-thou is ...well, the same as everyone else.

At first it started small. My first pill was THE PILL, and I was told I would have to take it by my Indian doctor to make sure I was synced properly for my IVF treatment. Fair enough. I called my OB/GYN and promptly got a prescription. Let me mention here that I do not like taking birth control pills (bcp) as not only does it make me gain weight and experience occasional nauseousness, but sometimes I experience additional glum side effects (depending on the brand). Fine - whatever - I set my alarm on my phone to give me a daily reminder; particularly because my history of remembering to take medicine on a daily basis is pretty dismal. Especially BCP. Our local IVF doctor also advised to add a pre-natal vitamin (another item bound to make me nauseous) and I immediately relented as I ran to our local Publix.

Baby aspirin and acupuncture were added to the regime - the latter being something I normally would have scoffed at a year earlier. Doctor semi-recommend it and so I shelled out the cash. My husband gave me the big-eye, but I'm guessing he recognized my fervent look and said nothing. 100 bucks a pop for 6 weeks = not cheap. What can I say except I wanted no regrets.

IVF treatment #1 was dismal. 2 eggs retrieved, only 1 fertilized. Even that 1 took a damn long time to fertilize.

Now I am prepping for treatment #2. In typical fashion, I have been obsessively researching similar cases. Not just blog posts, but academic papers and any type of current research I can lay my grubby little eyes on. A clinic in India recommended 25mg of DHEA for 3 months. I rush to pull up the scientific documentation and realized all of the research is really based on a tiny Tel Aviv study. The study showed a significant difference in live birth rates with women who were poor responders and took 75mg of DHEA for 40 days vs women who did not. A follow-up study had additional encouraging results. Screw the 25mgs -I only had about 40 days till cycle, I was going to go full boat - 75mgs it is! [I would like to make a note here that I was not able to take the full 75mg initially because of side effects. I had to build up and even now I have minor side effects.]

Next I read how melatonin could also help woman with poor ovarian reserve and immediately I was hunting down more articles and recommended amounts. 3mgs seemed to be the magical number, but that amount knocked me on my butt. Still 1-2mg was doable and thus it was added. Combining it with the DHEA means I sleep really well, but I'm groggy as all get-out when I wake up. Heaven help me if I don't get a full 8-9 hours. Oddly enough, my friend says she takes 10mg all the time and it barely helps her sleep. What can I say? I'm a lightweight.

Did I stop there? Heck no! I was on a search that day and after reading some articles (which I can not find at the moment) regarding myo-inositol, my amazon shopping cart increased. Among other things, myo-inositol was suppose to help women with cyst issues and a giant cyst almost caused a no-go last cycle. My OB/GYN found a cyst last year and I began to wonder if some of the pain issues I had felt over the last year were cyst related. GIVE ME MYO-INOSITOL NOW!!!

There were a few other things on the list, but these 3 new items had good scientific data to back them up and they applied to women with similar (if not exact) conditions. The other pills I noticed my fellow women-at-arms were taking were either less scientifically regarded or didn't apply to me. Besides, as I mentioned before, I'm a light weight and I wanted to see how I was going to handle this new concoction.

Which brings me to last week. I'm not quite sure HOW I ended up at the Rainbow (read: hippie) Grocery store - but all of a sudden I found myself at the cashier's stand with CoQ10, some fancy fish oil supplements, and yes even some Royal Jelly that was well hidden in a jar of honey. And some awesome low-sugar dried mango. And a yummy nut mix. And Activated Charcoal that I told myself would be good to have on hand if my dogs ever get into something they shouldn't. Somehow I think my subconscious was trying for an easy excuse to get some for me. You know. Just in case.

"Just a spoon full of sugar..." (or honey) 

Someone needs to write a paper

An idea appeared in my head that will probably be only interesting to a tiny, tiny subset of people in the entire world. Even in the tiny subset of women that do IVF, it will only be of interest to less than about 1% of those females. And some fertility doctors. And maybe some researchers. BUT THAT'S IT. And only if it isn't a medically ridiculous theory to begin with. (I only play a doctor in my brain.)

Screw it. Here it goes anyway. You can say you saw it here first. I'll be anonymously famous!

I'm wondering if cryoablation, or any uterine lining issue, would cause the pituitary gland to mistakenly produce slightly elevated levels of FSH. 

Feel free to chime in if you have any medical knowledge on the subject!

Trying to get research data on that would be a doozie. You'd need solid baseline before and then calculate proceeding ones with the norm for the age range. Oh yea, and you'd need to find enough women who were having it done.

I'd ask my doc, but I think that would officially put me in the "she asks weird questions" category.

We're going to have a meeting about the meeting and get back to you.

The nurse called today and initially told me what I thought she would: "The doctors had their meeting and your doctor wants to schedule a consult with you to discuss the results. Wait what? Earliest we have available is next week. How will that work for you?" GAAAAAHHHHHH!

Seriously? I have long thought that doctors operate in a different world where test results are just little things on pieces of paper that get moved around and talked about while sipping tea. No rush. Take your time. One lump or two?  It's not like we are waiting for each minute to tick by. The internet feeding our fear like a hypochondriac on WebMD. This confirmed my tea theory and it took me all of second to decide that I was NOT going to wait another 6 days.

"So what does it all mean? Are we still ok to use my eggs?" Nurse: "oh yes, it just means the doctor will probably want to give you more fertility meds and you should think about freezing some embryos now. It could take months before we find a gestational carrier." And there it was. We were still a go with my eggs and of course, my husbands gametes. (Is it weird that I don't want to post the S word?) I didn't have the heart to tell her we were going to India instead.

Now we just wait for our meeting about their meeting about our test results. Where they tell me "TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!!!" As if I didn't already know that. Hopefully I will have a zillion more questions by then. Wait....that's my hopeful? I may need to schedule a meeting with my hubby to discuss this...