The Game Plan

So the consult went well. Spent about 1.5 hours speaking with the doctor and another 1.5 hours speaking with the RN and signing consent forms.

The "talk appointment" with the doctor was productive. We met in his office around a conference table. He said he'd been thinking about my case off an on the night before. That was nice to hear because the typical doctor reads your chart about 30 seconds before walking into the room. It's nice to know that my issues are keeping someone up at night other than myself. The gist: basically I'm "special"! Dr.'s way of nicely framing the fact that I've got one ovary- and she's lazy, deminished ovarian reserve (don't make as many eggs as a normal 29 y/o woman), a blood clotting disorder (higher risk for miscarriage and umbelical cord clots if I do become pregnant) and a history of ovarian cancer that may or may not decide to come back if I start using hard core IVF fertility medications, oh and a partridge in a pear tree.

It's kind of hard to sit there and still be a lovely smiling patient when someone lays out all of your short comings on the table like that. In leiu of crying in front of the doctor and my husband I reassure myself that  "these are the facts". I've got a lot of obstacles to overcome to acheive pregnancy- none of which are in my control, so I defer to Doc's expertise. We discussed what he felt the drug protocol should be. I will be taking a higher dose of the meds (than a typical 29 y/o patient) to stimulate the ovaries to produce a shit ton of eggs. I'll be on a typical cocktail of meds called the Antagonist Protocol. I'm still learning what all this means. When the eggs are retrieved and then fertilized we will be having 1 sperm injected into each egg. This process is called ICSI (ick-see) which stands for Intracytoplasmic sperm injection, this gives each egg the best chance to become fertilized.

The doctor LOVES his Apple products so he showed us on his Ipad, a video of how IVF works. Also took us on a virtual tour of the sterile operating room where eggs are retrieved and implanted as well as the lab where they are fertilzed and hatched. Dr. gave us a hug and a smile when we walked down the hall to the RNs office.

The time we spent with the RN was mostly signing paperwork and learning about what additional tests I needed to complete prior to starting my first IVF cycle. We also got the price list and good lord, it's one thing to know how expensive this is going to be but it's quite another to see all those numbers on paper. I need to also follow up with some specialists regarding the blood clotting disorder.

It was a long appointment and I have a bit of homework to do. Right now H and I are getting all of our financials in order because payment for the cycle is due up front.