I had to stop taking synthroid. My rash grew to a full blown swollen cheeks and face and painful to the touch. the one RE I spoke to was a jerk about it and basically said you chose if you want to take it. Yeah, uhm hello I am trying everything, including risking my health, to have a baby I would like to know how this is affecting my chances. My husband and I decided I am going to see a medical endocrinologist to get this figured out. I got tired pretty quick of people asking what was wrong with my face and who knows what the med was doing to my body. I can not stand medication and the fact most doctors dont tell you and down play the side effects and or what else it is doing to you. It aggravates the shit out of me. and infertility is the worse; all they tell you about it is OHSS; I am pretty darn sure that there are way more side effects and things going on fo rmy body than just that possibility. My husband had a good point and reminded me that I dont deserve to walk around looking idiotic; if it is going to work it will work regardless of a slightly elevated thyroid. trust me if i actually was pregnant i would deal with it. but sense I feel like a piece of crap right now after 5 failed ivfs in over a year, i am going to cling to the piece of self esteem that i might have left.
Someone told me kelp helps with thyroid function? does anyone else get any feedback on TSH levels prior to cycling?
Monday, February 25, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Help
is anyone on brand name Synthroid? I seem to be having another reaction. Red face, again like the generic. the pharmacist said maybe it is not an allergy and just the way my body is absorbing the medicine. i am on the lowest dose.
looking for any and all advice. if it helps my tsh value goes up and down, last time checked it was 4.25. research seems spotty on who should take it. I am willing to do anything when i am pregnant, but this is not helping the old self esteem to have a facial rash.
looking for any and all advice. if it helps my tsh value goes up and down, last time checked it was 4.25. research seems spotty on who should take it. I am willing to do anything when i am pregnant, but this is not helping the old self esteem to have a facial rash.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Old School
Thank you all for your comments and support. I have no words but just enormous gratitude. this world we called blogging is just becoming my life jacket. I am so lucky.
We had a fup with the founder and director of our clinic. on valentine's day. yup, ladies we are all about the unique and expensive ways to celebrate love. Prior to the meeting I did look at donors and consider my options. I spoke with our embryology department and had every flowsheet sent to me to exam. I need to say getting this information helped me alot. It gave me some reassurance on what i was being told. The reality is we make pretty good embryos, and a lot of them. I have decided to not pursue pgd or cgh testing. for us it would be 5k, no matter how many embryos. and the reality is even if one cycle tested poorly, i would still continue. yes, after all of this I don't feel ready to move on. I know I should. But I don't. I need to go with how I feel and what makes sense for me and my husband. I am not excluding an egg donor, but I am just not ready. I have a fridge full of meds and ovaries still making lots of eggs. My re told me that i had good energy (trust me his like the energy king) and that he was in no position to tell me to stop. He told me numerous stories of women, much older than me, and all with diagnoses who were successful who kept on trying. I told him that I will know when I am ready. I tend to make good decisions in life and this is one of them. I told my husband at any point if he wants to stop and use an egg donor I will. I just want him to feel honest with his own feelings.
Anyway, the one thing that my RE did say to me is that he is going back old school with ivf. He is very creative, out of the box type of guy, so this was shocking. He proposed a long lupron protocol, antibiotics, back on Dexamthethasone, heparin, and possibly some other stuff. I do not have to repeat the endo biopsey, which is great since i have now had 2 of those. additionally, he said no more intralipids. being the internet freak that I am, I already knew that they were on back order however, he is not seeing the numbers he had been with this technique. He is going to continue with intrauterine HCG. I have done that a few times, but I will do it again if it helps.He also wants me back on a thyroid medicine. I was not psyched about this, but my starting tsh was over 4 this time. i was on the generic version last year for 6 months and developed severe blushing with turn into a nasty facial rash. i am hoping the brand name will help. Trust me i want a baby badly, but I am tired of it being at the cost of my self esteem. walking around with the rash was not fun at all and took awhile to clear up. Does anyone else have a census on tsh levels? it seems there is much disagreement in the field.
I am also going to make some diet restrictions. which will be hard as i am already so restrictive. He also told me to add ocp to my supplement list. I am deleting dhea as well. he isnt a fan. anyway, this is a very long update. what I need now is hope and support. so please keep blogging. I am loving reading and getting inspired.
We had a fup with the founder and director of our clinic. on valentine's day. yup, ladies we are all about the unique and expensive ways to celebrate love. Prior to the meeting I did look at donors and consider my options. I spoke with our embryology department and had every flowsheet sent to me to exam. I need to say getting this information helped me alot. It gave me some reassurance on what i was being told. The reality is we make pretty good embryos, and a lot of them. I have decided to not pursue pgd or cgh testing. for us it would be 5k, no matter how many embryos. and the reality is even if one cycle tested poorly, i would still continue. yes, after all of this I don't feel ready to move on. I know I should. But I don't. I need to go with how I feel and what makes sense for me and my husband. I am not excluding an egg donor, but I am just not ready. I have a fridge full of meds and ovaries still making lots of eggs. My re told me that i had good energy (trust me his like the energy king) and that he was in no position to tell me to stop. He told me numerous stories of women, much older than me, and all with diagnoses who were successful who kept on trying. I told him that I will know when I am ready. I tend to make good decisions in life and this is one of them. I told my husband at any point if he wants to stop and use an egg donor I will. I just want him to feel honest with his own feelings.
Anyway, the one thing that my RE did say to me is that he is going back old school with ivf. He is very creative, out of the box type of guy, so this was shocking. He proposed a long lupron protocol, antibiotics, back on Dexamthethasone, heparin, and possibly some other stuff. I do not have to repeat the endo biopsey, which is great since i have now had 2 of those. additionally, he said no more intralipids. being the internet freak that I am, I already knew that they were on back order however, he is not seeing the numbers he had been with this technique. He is going to continue with intrauterine HCG. I have done that a few times, but I will do it again if it helps.He also wants me back on a thyroid medicine. I was not psyched about this, but my starting tsh was over 4 this time. i was on the generic version last year for 6 months and developed severe blushing with turn into a nasty facial rash. i am hoping the brand name will help. Trust me i want a baby badly, but I am tired of it being at the cost of my self esteem. walking around with the rash was not fun at all and took awhile to clear up. Does anyone else have a census on tsh levels? it seems there is much disagreement in the field.
I am also going to make some diet restrictions. which will be hard as i am already so restrictive. He also told me to add ocp to my supplement list. I am deleting dhea as well. he isnt a fan. anyway, this is a very long update. what I need now is hope and support. so please keep blogging. I am loving reading and getting inspired.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Failure
Thank you all so much for your support. The past two days have been the hardest to date. As I predicted my beta was completely negative. I am so glad that I tested early, it made yesterday more of a formality than anything else.
My husband and I had a phone consult with the director of our clinic late tonight. Yes, the man does phone calls at like 8pm at night, it truly is amazing. I finally lost it on the phone with him. I cried. Maybe I am in denial, I dont know, but I can not believe where I am today. He is usually the king of optimism and will say things like it is all about persistence. But not tonight. That is what was so hard. He told me that I am, and will always be in the category of unexplained. My fsh fluctuates between 5.5 and 7 every month since I started 2 years ago. How friggin sad is that? Normal FSH and I cant even get 1 baby out of the highest of technology.
He basically told me that I can consider donor eggs. That in the end it is more about egg quality than anything else. That the world is imperfect and that even with lab values they dont know who will be successful and who will not. He has patients with really high fsh and those like me who are normal and don't succeed. Of course I know this but it was still hard to hear. I have had many of conversations with him and he usually tells me to keep going and or tells me an amazing story of a patient who did 8 ivfs and ended up with a baby. Tonight he felt defeated as well and that is what made me feel sad. My husband tried to comfort me by telling me that he had to be that way given how persistent I have been. 5 ivfs and 1 fet in 13 months. My husband basically said he would have been crazy to give me the persistence speech at this point. I guess he is right, although it was still hard to not have him cheering us on. He did tell me that he will support any decision that we make. But I need to be honest, doing another ivf with cgh is expensive as is donor eggs. How pathetically sad that all of this comes down to money, but it does. The world is about money and we are very out of money at this point. My husband and I also promised ourselves a long time ago that we would not go into debt to have a child. I really, if nothing else, want to commit to that. To end this journey with debt will just make me feel even sadder than I already feel today.
So that is where I am at. I work up and decided to blog because I just cant sleep. I found myself crying in my sleep. I dont even know how to grieve this. My body feels like it has been hit by a truck. I will never understand why I deserved this or why anyone should. But I have to find my way back. right now I feel lost, irreconcilable to myself . If i do donor eggs I will need to have energy to do that, and right now I have nothing except the biggest most horrible feeling in my heart. My first thought when I woke up was that this is like the feeling you get when something horrible happens in your life and or when someone has died. there is that minute that things feel ok and then when you are fully awake the sadness hits you hard. that is how I feel right now. And i have no clue how to make this better and or find the way out. I hope I find my way back soon. I feel sad, alone, and confused. My blog, my husband, and the little energy i have left will have to keep me going.
Thanks for listening.
My husband and I had a phone consult with the director of our clinic late tonight. Yes, the man does phone calls at like 8pm at night, it truly is amazing. I finally lost it on the phone with him. I cried. Maybe I am in denial, I dont know, but I can not believe where I am today. He is usually the king of optimism and will say things like it is all about persistence. But not tonight. That is what was so hard. He told me that I am, and will always be in the category of unexplained. My fsh fluctuates between 5.5 and 7 every month since I started 2 years ago. How friggin sad is that? Normal FSH and I cant even get 1 baby out of the highest of technology.
He basically told me that I can consider donor eggs. That in the end it is more about egg quality than anything else. That the world is imperfect and that even with lab values they dont know who will be successful and who will not. He has patients with really high fsh and those like me who are normal and don't succeed. Of course I know this but it was still hard to hear. I have had many of conversations with him and he usually tells me to keep going and or tells me an amazing story of a patient who did 8 ivfs and ended up with a baby. Tonight he felt defeated as well and that is what made me feel sad. My husband tried to comfort me by telling me that he had to be that way given how persistent I have been. 5 ivfs and 1 fet in 13 months. My husband basically said he would have been crazy to give me the persistence speech at this point. I guess he is right, although it was still hard to not have him cheering us on. He did tell me that he will support any decision that we make. But I need to be honest, doing another ivf with cgh is expensive as is donor eggs. How pathetically sad that all of this comes down to money, but it does. The world is about money and we are very out of money at this point. My husband and I also promised ourselves a long time ago that we would not go into debt to have a child. I really, if nothing else, want to commit to that. To end this journey with debt will just make me feel even sadder than I already feel today.
So that is where I am at. I work up and decided to blog because I just cant sleep. I found myself crying in my sleep. I dont even know how to grieve this. My body feels like it has been hit by a truck. I will never understand why I deserved this or why anyone should. But I have to find my way back. right now I feel lost, irreconcilable to myself . If i do donor eggs I will need to have energy to do that, and right now I have nothing except the biggest most horrible feeling in my heart. My first thought when I woke up was that this is like the feeling you get when something horrible happens in your life and or when someone has died. there is that minute that things feel ok and then when you are fully awake the sadness hits you hard. that is how I feel right now. And i have no clue how to make this better and or find the way out. I hope I find my way back soon. I feel sad, alone, and confused. My blog, my husband, and the little energy i have left will have to keep me going.
Thanks for listening.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
caving in
so I caved in and tested. completely negative. yup. that is right. 5th ivf cycle, no answers, 6 day 5 embryos and we are left with nothing. i feel like nothing short of a loser at this point. who does this 5 times without a diagnosis to end up with nothing. mostly i feel stupid for being so positive, like i have been told to do by my clinic, to end up with the same result. i feel like a complete idiot.sorry the positivity shit ends today, i am a realist and that is how i am going to be from this point further. i cant keep my head in the clouds any further.
I know i can do ivf again. here is alittle secret; i should not have to. i find ivf very easy is so many ways. needles, medical stuff none of that phases me. i have a great response each time. you know what phases me. the shit that this has brought into my life. the vacations i cant take in case its retrieval day, the lies i have to say at work to get time off to keep some amount of privacy, and the money that i have literally wasted over the past 2 years to end up with nothing.
my poor husband he is going to be devastated. sadly he keeps the hope up for us throughout the whole wait. i tried to convince myself every cycle is different. the reality is that i had no symptoms; guess what that equals no baby. my clinic always says dont test early. i am tired of listening to that. those tests are sensitive and if i had any hcg left in me it would have showed up. sorry i look at pee tests constantly on blogs..the lines appear when you are pregnant.
I just think I need to face that this is not going to happen and that I need to move on. perseverance is one thing, self torture is ridiculous.
I know i can do ivf again. here is alittle secret; i should not have to. i find ivf very easy is so many ways. needles, medical stuff none of that phases me. i have a great response each time. you know what phases me. the shit that this has brought into my life. the vacations i cant take in case its retrieval day, the lies i have to say at work to get time off to keep some amount of privacy, and the money that i have literally wasted over the past 2 years to end up with nothing.
my poor husband he is going to be devastated. sadly he keeps the hope up for us throughout the whole wait. i tried to convince myself every cycle is different. the reality is that i had no symptoms; guess what that equals no baby. my clinic always says dont test early. i am tired of listening to that. those tests are sensitive and if i had any hcg left in me it would have showed up. sorry i look at pee tests constantly on blogs..the lines appear when you are pregnant.
I just think I need to face that this is not going to happen and that I need to move on. perseverance is one thing, self torture is ridiculous.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)