Thinking Thoughts

Ummm, yeah so some parts of Georgia may have slightly overreacted after the last snow storm. Today brings "wave 1" of Snowpocalypse 2.0 which means that it's currently snowing sleeting raining here in Athens. But hey, I can use a good rain day. In everyone's defense, it's all about the temperature. I talked to my mom this morning who lives about 30 miles northwest of me and she said it's snowing (and sticking) like crazy, so I guess it's all about the temperature in your area. Sad trombones for us here in Athens. Hoping "wave 2" packs a slightly more serious punch when it comes through tonight. If it's going to be cold and gross, it better snow buckets!

Anyway, the real purpose of this post is not to update you on the Georgia weather… I'm pretty sure the national news is waiting with baited breath to see us look like idiots again anyway. No, of slightly more importance than the rain/sleet/snow falling from the sky, is the follow up consultation I had yesterday. It would be better classified as a "follow up chat" because it lasted a total of twelve minutes and I didn't get to consult him about anything. Mm hmm, you read that right. I managed to get together an entire page of questions and I got to ask exactly one of them, and I got zero answers for my hard work. Ughhhh.

Essentially, Dr. Duffy apologized for our failed cycle several times, which I guess is nice, but I don't know, it just seemed like a waste… lets move on, especially if I only have twelve minutes of your time. He also said that he didn't want us to give up after this one IVF which kind of let me see the writing on the wall… he doesn't think we'll be successful from the FET(s). He said he'd like to add in growth hormone to our next IVF cycle. I was kind of thrown for a loop… I was thinking different protocol or something like that, but he thinks the biggest issue with the cycle was not my response to meds (I do) but oocyte quality (and that too), so growth hormone should help. He then spent several minutes trying to explain why I shouldn't be upset that we didn't use growth hormone for the first cycle because "no one would have predicted a woman at my age, and with my AMH would have poor quality eggs"… umm, I'm pretty sure I predicted that, but whatever.

The only two things he said regarding the FET is that he wants me to discuss two things with Sam. A- doing a day 3 transfer of our two best vs thawing and growing all six to day 5. And B- doing an Endometrial Function Test before doing the FET. Both of those things kind of caught me off guard. As to growing the embryos to day 5, why would we do that when he recommended a day 3 earlier? And why would we expect grade 3 embryos to make it to day 5? I'm just confused about that… I'm thinking about it like he requested, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to think. As to the EFT, it was so out of left field. I'd specifically asked about the E-tegrity test (the Beta 3 integrin biopsy that CCRM uses) at our first consultation and he said there was no need, but now he's wondering about uterine quality… why? Have mercy, but if we have to overcome egg quality and a hostile uterine environment, we should give up now. I can't imagine how many cycles or how many transfers it would take to get everything just right with both of those issues in affect…. more than we have money for, that's for sure.

So essentially, I'm thinking, thinking a lot. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to think about any of this. My one question that I managed to slide in before he ended our phone conversation was "what are our chances with any of the transfers?" He refused to answer with anything other than, "our current clinic success rate for FETs is about 40%"…. umm, so not helpful. I'm beyond frustrated and beyond confused. Where do we go from here?

I think the snow rain day calls for a little break from all of this thinking though… off to take Erika's recommendation and catch up on Revenge.