I almost had to go to the ER last night. For anyone who knows me and my husband, that probably elicits more laughter than fear. Between the two of us, we seriously go to the ER 1 or 2 times a year. My stepdaughter has not been since I've known her (more than 4 years now). But yet, T and I are intimately familiar with the nice new hospital near us on the west side of town.
Somehow I rammed my foot into T's foot while at a music festival last night. At first, I just spewed out some expletives since it just hurt a lot - like stubbing a toe. Then I made the mistake of looking down. My big toe's toenail was flipped backward and blood was gushing out of my toe and pooling up on the ground and my sandal. Awesome. We found the first aid tent and they wrapped me up all nice (while the tech's girlfriend ran away screaming -- I'm serious). They said if it still hurt, I should go to the ER because they couldn't tell if there were lacerations and I may need stitches. It did hurt this morning, but I decided to just go to the walk-in clinic instead. All's good and the ER was avoided, but I apparently won't have a big toenail for 6 months to 1 year. And I had to get a tetanus shot, so now I have a super cute bandaid with butterflies on my left arm. I'm guessing the hipsters at the music festival tonight will find it ironic, and I'll start some major trend.
Hopefully we'll be able to tell our kid someday that he/she was conceived on that crazy weekend where I almost lost my toe! Since this was our first month on Clomid, we went in on Friday for an ultrasound to check out the progress. Friday was cycle day 13. Per my instructions, the ultrasound should technically be on CD14, but they won't schedule them on weekends. However, when we got there, the nurse said that really they should be on CD15. So she was concerned that the ultrasound would be too early. Since we are paying out of pocket (an ultrasound is ~$300), she wanted us to consider coming back on Monday. I normally ovulate on CD15 (Sunday this time), but wasn't sure how the Clomid would change things. We hemmed and hawed and then said it's only money and went ahead with the Friday ultrasound.
The nurse immediately said we made the right choice, as there was no way we'd last until Monday. They are looking for follicles on both ovaries to see how many eggs we could potentially have. A follicle is considered mature around a size of 20mm and grows about 1-2mm a day. We were hoping for two follicles -- or at least one REALLY good one that was maybe "better" than my prior natural cycles".
I had THREE follicles > 20 mm (one 25mm, one 22mm, and then one right at 20mm). I also had one at 14mm that could feasibly have an egg, but would likely not. So she called them 3.5 follicles. She was shocked they only retrieved six eggs during my IVF while I was on the grandaddy of meds versus these 3.5 follicles on Clomid. I think this definitely shows if we need to do IVF again, they will be changing my drug protocol, because I can definitely react to something!
T and I had originally said that we'd go forward with the IUI with three follicles, but not with four. The 3.5 of course put us in the gray zone. After some chatting with the nurse, she reminded us that the follicles may not all have eggs, and of course even if they do, all eggs may not fertilize. We took a deep sigh and decided to go for it.
I had not seen a "smiley face" on my ovulation predictor yet, so she wanted to go ahead and schedule the IUI for Saturday morning since we were obviously ready to burst. She was afraid we somehow missed the LH surge that gives you the smiley face. We were supposed to wake up Saturday morning and test again -- if it was negative, we'd come in for the insemination on Saturday. If we did get the smiley face, then we'll know it's working correctly and reschedule to Sunday (day after the surge). We indeed got the smiley this morning, so Sunday morning (CD15 - right on schedule), I'll go in and give this whole crazy thing a try again.
We do always manage to get excited on cycles where "something" is different - whether a better sperm count or more follicles in this case. So fingers crossed that this results in something fun (and ideally not quadruple the fun!).
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