Huge Beta

I called the clinic as soon as they opened this morning and was able to get an appt before 10AM thankfully. I was dying to find out what my beta levels were and get our pregnancy confirmed by the doc! I showed up early but thankfully they never make me wait, even if I'm early. They called me right back and took my blood. She said since this was the first test, they would do both hcg (what I keep referring to as the beta) and progesterone. Progesterone is a necessary hormone during pregnancy, esp in the early stages to maintain the pregnancy (thus why I was prescribed prog. suppositories as part of fertility treatment).

So finally Dr Meyer called me back and confirmed that I am indeed pregnant. Yay!! He said my beta was 1100 (my reaction was 'woah, really?!'). That's a pretty high number which I knew from my internet obsessions. Here's a beta chart that you can look at to get a general idea (look at day 16, today is 16 days past ovulation for me). Notice there are two charts, one shows values for single pregnancies (one baby) and the other is for multiple pregnancies (twins or more). As you will see from the chart, 1100 is high even on the multiples chart.

Dr Meyer said that beta is high enough that it may be TWINS!! (as I was just alluding to) but that it's too early to tell. I don't even have to go back for a second beta as expected since it was so high. He said my progesterone looked good (I didn't ask the exact number). So I'll finish up the progesterone I have (just a few more days) but then do not need to refill it. He also confirmed my expectation that I no longer need Avandia or Glucophage (for my PCOS) while pregnant. So other than prenatal vitamins, I am going to be drug-free for the first time in two years! I setup an appt for two weeks from now (9/18) for our first ultrasound where we'll hopefully learn more.

Now off to tell our families...

It was too good to be true

I knew it was too good to be true. My lovely drug, Avandia, is going through all sorts of hoopla. I wasn't worrying about it since the risks seemed minimal & unrelated to me. But after a warning message from my insurance company when I went to refill, I figured I'd finally better ask my doctor. Of course, I just left a message for the nurses who talked to the doctor. They called back & said he wants to switch me to glucophage.

OH NO! WOE IS ME!

I really do not want to go back on glucophage. I was always sick on it. Even though I was supposed to gradually step up the dose, I never could make it to the final dose. This was one of my top two complaints that led to switching doctors. So I'm going to give it a shot.. and keep one eye on the Avandia news (see here). At least Dr. Meyer is giving me a lower dose, so maybe it won't hit me as hard. But I'm not excited by any means. He wants to see me back in three weeks to checkup and see how I'm doing on it. (Of course if I'm preggo I'll be back sooner for more monitoring).

Countdown: 7 days to HPT

my new doc

Carolina Conceptions is a new clinic in our area that I mentioned in an earlier post. Before I even left my apppointment, I'd pretty much made up my mind that Dr. Meyer was my new doctor and that I was not going back to see Dr. Toma! It is in Raleigh so it's a slightly longer drive but well worth it. The facility is brand new (still have all sorts of construction in the building and the parking lots not even finished) but the drs have plenty of experience.

After just a short wait, the nurse ushered me back into Dr. Meyers office (brownie points for him already being in the room instead of sending me to a empty room to wait more). Dr. Meyer is a very pleasant person and is happy to work with you on a treatment plan. Since I didn't have my medical records from NCCRM (see previous post for that rant), I had typed up all my IUI & IVF results (thankfully I had all that info here on my blog). That info plus the treatment chart (that was my 'treatment bible' through IVF) was enough information for him to determine what steps to take next.

I was thrilled when he said that he thought I could get pregnant without doing IVF. There's about a zillion reasons why that made me happy, but primarily money, time & pain in that order. So he wanted to try something he called sequential therapy IUI. Basically it's just a combo of the type of IUI that I did before, plus the same injectable fertility drug I took during IVF.

He also said I do not have to take metformin (glucophage) anymore! This was the best news I could have gotten. I had been complaining since Sept. about the awful side effects of this drug but my old RE basically said 'get used to it'. Dr. Meyer said we could try Avandia instead and that it had little side effects.

So the waiting game begins... wait for a period to start. He actually said I could take prometrium (that I have left over from IVF.. thats one really great thing about this doc, he's trying to maximize the leftover drugs that I've already paid for!). The prometrium will start my cycle but I'm waiting until I get back from an upcoming business trip (to Minnesota) to make sure that we have no conflicts with the travel.

IVF consult

DH & I showed up at the dr for our 4PM appt. 45 mins later we finally got to see the RE. Then he rushed me with all my questions. He kept checking his cell phone & once said 'you about done with all those questions?'. UGH... what a jerk. We were only in there maybe 10-15 minutes tops.

Most of my questions were shrugged off, indicating that there is nothing we could have done different & there are no other tests we should do to look for any other problems. Just try again. He said that I stimulated like their 21-yr old egg donors (I guess that was supposed to make me feel better?). Of course stimming that way did us no good since my levels went too high (as you know already if you've been following along on this blog). The only explanation he would give as to the failure of this cycle was the possibility that 'coasting' (no ovulation induction meds) for so long prior to retrieval and/or that I had not been taking my full dose of glucophage could have reduced the quality of the eggs. I have several issues with this statement. First, we had no idea until today that there had been anything wrong with the eggs. All he could tell us was that we had 'slow embryonic development' (though even that confuses me since 2 got to blastocyst stage on day 5 which is typical.. did they start slow & then catch up?). Second & third, I had informed the nurses of my difficulty in taking the glucophage as it made me sick & he never tested me for insulin resistance (not all PCOS patients are insulin resistant & only need glucophage if insulin resistant).

For the next try, he had only a few changes to make. Take birth control longer (20-25 days instead of the 15 or so I did last time). He is also going to start me off with FSH of 100 (started at 150 last time) and Lupron of 5 (10 b4) and just try again. He also said to make sure to take the full dose, at least during the stim phase if I can't manage it the rest of the time. (Glucophage gives me GI issues at full dose, or even at smaller doses sometimes).

So, just try again. Now that he's seen how my body reacts, he says he knows what doses to use next time. What if these doses are not enough? Plus, the problem with that mentality is that we only have one more try that our insurance will cover. And we don't have $10-15k to pay for another try ourselves. So I'm very interested in doing all we can to increase our chance of success at this try. I'm not in a hurry to do it right away.. if time is what we need to be better prepared then fine by us.

got my meds

All the meds showed up bright & early this morning (thanks FedEx) so I'll be good to go for my first shot today. It was interesting digging thru all the medicines, some had different names (generics) so I had to try to match up everything so I'd know what was what. I figured out all but one, so left a msg with the nurse. They also didn't tell me whether or not to keep going with the metformin (glucophage) or not, so I asked about that on my msg too.