Thursday, January 19, 2012

Make a New Plan, Stan

So besides reading fertility blogs, one of my favorite infertile pastimes is future cycle planning.  I will sit and analyze all the upcoming options, timing, outcomes until I'm blue in the face. I draw up spreadsheets, decision trees, timelines all in the name of making sense out of the uncertainty that lies ahead.

I'm only 3 days into my 2WW for this FET and I've already drawn up the decision tree moving forward should this cycle fail.  At this point, I'm really expecting it to. I mean, I had 19 eggs...19 freaking eggs retrieved and only 3 fertilized! Now those 3 did grow into 5-day blasts, but still - that's terrible odds.

As it stands...we have some options come beta day.  Friday is our first meeting with an adoption agency.  We've already submitted our paperwork and previously attended the info session so this is our first homestudy meeting.  I'm very excited and nervous about it.  We've been seriously considering adoption for the past 3 months now and we're ready to begin paperwork to be homestudy approved.  We are just ready to become parents.

We are currently in a Shared Risk program at our clinic but will not go forward with another fresh cycle until I've been tested for immune issues.  I have stage 4 endometriosis and don't feel its prudent to go for another round of IVF before knowing if there could be other issues at play.  I am pretty sure my current RE, RE #3, will not be on board with the testing so I've already taken the liberty of seeing an RE in the area who is a "believer."  Immune issues are very controversial in the infertility world so I had to seek out a specialist who understands the issues and the treatments.  We met with her last month and she definitely thinks I could be a candidate for immune issues and has agreed to test us if it comes to that.

Let's play the "IF" game, shall we?  If  this cycle fails, I will get tested for immune issues before deciding on any further treatment.  If I'm negative for immune issues, we'll likely go for one more (and our last) try at a fresh IVF cycle with a different protocol.  We will still continue with the homestudy paperwork.  If we are positive for immune issues, we have some choices.  I wouldn't do another round of IVF with my current RE knowing I have immune issues because he won't treat them during the cycle.  It would be a waste. So we either switch clinics and try another round with the immune-issue-friendly RE #4 or drop the treatments and concentrate solely on adoption for now.

We'd get our 20K back from the current clinic but we would need to decide if it's worth risking our adoption money on another IVF treatment.  The treatment for immune issues is quite expensive and then you add the actual IVF treatment itself and well, we'd need to save up for the remainder of the year if that IVF failed and we had to pursue adoption more aggressively.

If I haven't confused you totally, you can see that we have some options to work with.  I'm constantly playing the "what if" game in my head every day and all I really want is for this FET to be it so I can stop playing these silly games. 

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