phil's red turtleneck

2003-06-27 - 2:14 p.m.

how could I make an entire blog entry without mentioning this: what was that sweater Phil was wearing on TAR4 last night? THe man looooooves turtlenecks, I get that, but that red number was fugly!

Anything to add? 0

believe it or not, we got 2

2003-06-27 - 1:38 p.m.

you'll have to pardon yesterday's drama. I was really at my wit's ends.... So, here is what happened. The "Good" embryo had CF. I told you that would happen. What I couldn't predict, and apparently, neither could the embryologist, is that one of the mediums embryos and the mediocre embryo not only survived testing, but didn't have CF. Under normal circumstances, these would not be embryos they would like to implent, but seing as that's all we've got, they went ahead and implanted me at 9:15 this morning.

I am not jumping for joy, simply because I can't take the roller-coster of emotions I was on yesterday. Everyone is crossing their fingers and praying for us. It's in G-d's hands now. We'll have a pregnancy test on July 11th. If any of you have done in-vitro, please send me tips on keeping my sanity over the next 14 days. They warned me about not reading too much into physical symptoms, like achy breasts and cramps. And I know it's totally ridiculous, but when I went to pee, I checked the toilet to see if the embryos had fallen out!!!! Proof that a couple of university degrees don't make you any less stupid!

I'm about 150 pages away from finishing Harry Potter. Will be done tonight or tomorrow.

We bought Mortimer a kiddy pool the other day. Even though he's part Lab, he's never been swimming before: the life of a city dweller. At first, he couldn't figure out depth. He would put his paw in the water and not understand why it was going through. It took about an hour to get him in the pool with all four paws, but once he got going, there was no stopping him. He emptied out half the water splashing about and chasing a floating tennis ball. We didn't think about it when we bought it, but the pool has fish printed on the bottom of it. Well, Mortimer has been desperatly trying to get the fish for 3 days now. He paws at them, sticks his head under water and tries to bite them. Of course, it's pointless, but it's so funny to watch, even the neighbours came out yesterday to watch him... Is it cruel that we humans are taking such pleasure? I'd say yes, except he enjoys it so much, he keeps jumping in the pool everytime we let him out in the yard. This proved to be a problem the first night, at 2 AM, when he begged to take a pee, but it turned out he took a run right into the pool! And this morning at 7, he was only supposed to releive himself and come in for his feeding, but sure enough, in about 15 seconds, he was in the pool again. So we're going to take up hubby's sister on her invite to join them at their cottage this weekend, where for the first time in his life, Mortimer will jump in a lake. I used to be worried, and obviously, I'll keep a very close eye, but given the last 3 days and the pool, I know he will love the lake.

Plus, for aobut 20 minutes, I might be able to think about something other than the embryos.....

Anything to add? 4

not gonna happen

2003-06-26 - 11:57 a.m.

I got impatient and I called the clinic to find out what was happening. The embryologist called me back. The news sucks. We had 5 embryos, only 4 contiued to split at the normal rate. of these 4, here is how he described them: 1 is good, 2 are not very good and one is mediocre. Well, let's all jump up and say yeah! NOT! The seem to think they can get genetic testing results only from the one good one, not the other 3. Also, they won't get the results until the middle of the night, so they asked us to show up tomorrow morning at 8:30 for a transfer, but let's face it folk, there ain't gonna be nothing to transfer. That would be one heck of a miracle embryo if it not only survived the testing, but turned out to not have CF. That is just not gonna happen.

I guess they want us to go to discuss our options, which reading between the lines means that they don't really thing there is any point in pursuing this. One think that I've gathered from sitting at the clinic so many times is that they won't let you try to many times, because repeated failures lower their success rate. It's not just them, all fertility clinics are like that. The say it's for your own sanity and mental health, but it all comes down to their numbers.....

And SARS is still raging in China and no adoptions are being processed.... I feel a second dog coming on....

Anything to add? 1

yummy yum yum

2003-06-26 - 10:08 a.m.

I had such serious stuff to blog about yesterday, I completely forgot to mention the new man in my life..... Carter Oosterhouse, the new carpenter on Trading Spaces..... yummy yum yum! I think they should have a little box on the side, like a picture-in-picture window, with a camera just showing us Carter during the entire episode.... And please end him only to very hot locations, so he'll be forced to take off his shirt..... A girl can dream, can't she....

I also need to put myself in an information vaccum over the next two months. I hear the last season of Sex and the City started last week, but we in Canada don't get to see it til late August. So I need to flip through People without looking and stop watching Access/E.T. (OK, I can easily give those up). It annoys me though, that some bureaucrat at the office of Television and Radio decides that HBO can't be broadcast in Canada, and that the Canadian channels that do buy their programming make us wait so long. We get The Wire at the same time, why can't we get Sex and the City???

On the in vitro front, we will find out at some point today if we have any CF-free embryos to implant. I am not holding my breath, but I also can't get it out of my head. It's so nerve racking....

Anything to add? 0

rocking from one cheek to the other

2003-06-25 - 10:57 a.m.

beware: long entry ahead.

I didn't blog all weekend 'cause we had too much going on. Saturday morning, I had my last scan, after which they decided our egg retrieval would be first thing Monday morning.

I felt kinda crappy the whole weekend, but it was nice on Sunday and after a little grocery shopping and a brief stop at the book store to buy both Harry Potter and East of Eden (I'm such a sucker), I spent the rest of the day outside in the yard, reading and throwing the dog the ball. I know I've said this before, but I LOVE MY YARD now that it's fenced in. The dog can bark at passers by and they don't worry that he'll get close to them, I can throw the ball a thousand times and know he won't go chasing after a butterfly, it was a loverly afternoon!

First thing Monday morning, I checked in for my procedure. Just as we were about to go in, they announced that my husband's sperm, which had been frozen after our first cycle 3 months ago, did not thaw properly, so he needed to have surgery again to get some more. Bummer. This time, my retrieval was quite painful. Last time I felt nothing, this time, she was sucking those eggs from under my rib-cage, I kid you not! They had to stop twice to give me more pain killers because of how much pain I was in.

I went to recovery, at which point they came to tell use that if my husband wanted a spinal again, he would have to wait at least until 2pm. This seemed to worry the embryologist, since if 2 turned into 3 pm, the eggs might not survive that long. So my brave husband elected to have his surgery with local anasthesia. They were able to do it within the hour, and after a very brief stay in recovery himself, we went home in the afternoon. Whiel he does say it hurt during the procedure, he has has no pain what-so-ever afterwards, which is a big departure from the spinal last time.

We had to wait til yesterday, Tuesday, to find out the results. Here goes: We got 7 eggs, 5 of which were mature. Those 5 eggs were in-vitro'ed and 3 actually fertilized. that's a bummer. That's exactely the same number as last time. Then, they thawed the 3 from the first cycle, only 2 survived. So all together, we have 5 embryos now, which have been sent to the special lab, where they will grow for 3 days and be tested for Cystic Fibrosis on Thursday. Among those five, if we are lucky enough to have ANY that are CF-free, they we will be implanted on Friday or Saturday. I am not holding out much hope. To start with 12 eggs all together (5 last time, 7 this time) and only 5 viable embryos is already pretty rough, when you take into consideration that we have a 50/50 chance on each with the CF, I get a feeling it'll be a miracle to have a single one that's CF-free.

The most unpleasant part of all this is not thinking about the incredible slim possibility of a pregnancy, it's the side effects I gotta deal with until then. I am totally constipated, except I'm not! I go to the bathroom, but I constantly feel like I've got to pass gas, and it hurts like a bitch. I kid you not, The pain is so sharp, I had to pull over and let my husband drive yesterday because I couldn't breath through the sharp, yet temporary pain. I was a little worried something might be seriously wrong, except I spoke to my best friend K last night, (she did in-vitro last month and got pregnant) and she told me she had the exact same thing after hers and he doctor told her not to worry, it's the enlarged ovaries pushing on your intestines.... It lasted almost a week for her, and then, she got pregnant and started having morning sickness..... Yeah!

As I type this, I'm sitting in the store, shifting from one butt cheek to the other, hoping against all hope to publicly pass gas to relieve some pressure..... I'm sorry you had to read that

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