I'm back at work today following the retrieval, which went pretty well I suppose. Really the worst part was getting the IV because my veins are for shit. Luckily I had an excellent nurse who was able to get it started on the first try. My anesthesiologist, Dr. Fong, was kind of great, he was an older Asian man with a thick accent but when I told him how sick I was after waking up last time he said he would make sure it didn't happen again. God bless him because there was no 'number 3-ing' yesterday - a marked improvement from my last egg retrieval. I got to change into the backless gown and despite bringing
my own rainbow socks from Sock Dreams I had to wear the gray footie socks the surgery center gave me, blah. Doug got to come back and sit with me until they took me to the surgery room. Everything seemed fine until Dr. Downer came in to talk to us. Dr. Downer is not my RE, he's the other half of my RE's clinic. He did my last retrieval but beyond that I haven't had much interaction with him. First off he said "I'll be honest I don't know how many eggs we'll get since last time we got four." Buh? Last time we got 12 eggs but only 8 were mature and 5 fertilized. I reminded him of this immediately. Also he talked about how low my estrogen was. By the time he left I felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. My doctor, Dr. K, has been much more optimistic about our changes for success. Dr. Downer just made me feel hopeless. Sigh.
Last time I was already out of it when they took me to the room where they were doing the retrieval, but this time I didn't go under until I was in the room. I got a little panicky when I saw all the equipment and they put EKG monitors and an oxygen mask on me. The last things I remember was that "Beast of Burden" started playing on the MP3 speakers in the corner, my nurse read off my name and birth date to Dr. Downer, then I got really warm and I was out. I came to in recovery, feeling a little sore and dizzy. I remember before I was fully awake Dr. Downer came by and told me they got 11 eggs. I stayed in recovery for about half an hour and then they let me go to the bathroom before they took out my IV. I got dressed and rolled out to the car where Doug was waiting. I spent most of the rest of the day in bed, sleeping a little. I had oatmeal and hot tea and used the heating pad a little. Generally speaking I felt 100% better than I did the last time, not nausea and way more coherent. Today I'm a little sore and have a slight headache but feel okay.
I was waiting on pins and needles to hear from the embryologist this morning. She called earlier and out of the 11 eggs retrieved, 10 were mature, they ICSI'ed all 10 and 9 made it to this morning. Now we have to hope that a good percentage of those 9 embryos make it the four-cell stage tomorrow and then the eight-cell stage on Saturday. Our transfer is scheduled for Saturday at 8:30AM. We haven't directly spoken about it but I'm almost positive we're transferring two back (as long as we have two to transfer back).
I'm still trying to think positive, despite Dr. Downer.
