Friday, March 20, 2009

Egg Retrieval

Had my egg retrieval on Friday; I was able to get a pretty good night’s sleep and was up bright and early Friday morning. We got to the clinic for 7am, where we were met by our nurse and brought back to the procedure area to get changed. H. was with me every step of the way. They took my blood pressure and gave me an ativan, and then they put my IV in. Luckily, they didn’t have any trouble finding a vein. They pushed some other meds through my IV and it was time for egg retrieval.

It was a very intimidating process. Everyone standing in their scrubs; I couldn’t see their faces and I didn’t know the doctor that was going to do my retrieval. I’m not going to lie; it hurt. I only had 3 follicles – I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who have several. The meds didn’t work – I didn’t feel stoned at all, they had promised me I would feel very stoned. My left ovary was not cooperative and kept bouncing away every time the doctor tried to aspirate the follicle. It was so incredibly painful. In all he only got the two follicles on my right ovary; out of those two follicles they only got one egg. I was devastated and disappointed and was crying on the table.

Afterwards, I just wanted to leave; I only stayed in post-op for about 45 minutes. Then we met with the doctor for awhile to discuss the concerns that I’d had. He then went on to tell me about how he believes there’s a plan for everything. He told me a story about a woman who had finally given up on treatment because she’d been unsuccessful after many years and many failed IVFs. She went on vacation with her husband and got pregnant on her own. She then died of a burst aortic valve because when she’d complained of not feeling well, the baby blocked the valve on the ultrasound. Hmm. Not exactly the story that you need to hear after a crappy egg retrieval.

Long story short – we got one egg.

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