The ER Story (and the after effects)

It all started off with me getting up to gulp down tons of water at around 1145 the night before. I am normally a water guzzler, and living without water for 12+ hours sounded awful to me. Fortunately the extra hydration I was working on from 2 days prior helped me not get dehydrated. Honestly, I cheated a little bit… at around 0230 am and 0630 am I had two sips! It wasn’t like I was going to retain that 1-2 ounce of water for the next 6+ hours for the anesthesia to act up. Anyways, I did feel guilty later on… but fortunately my water consumption didn’t cause a problem!

We reached the clinic at around 0826 am, our appointment was for 0900 am. There were two couples in the waiting room. One of the female was freaking out and the other one seemed cool (from what I overheard later on, both were first timers)… I guess I was somewhere in the middle. The more I thought about the whole process the more I panicked, and that has been the case all the way through… so I am trying not to think or over analyze things! I was the third female to be called in at around 0900 am. The guys had to go to Andrology department to do their job before they could join us. By the time I went in to the Recovery Room, one of the female was ready to go in to the OR and the other one was getting her pep talk. It felt like an eternity before my DH showed up and the nurse came to us with all the pep talk and the information. However, I had already overheard all the instructions that the lady besides me had received… so it wasn’t anything new when the nurse came to my section! Things moved pretty fast after that. To hook up to the IV, I had to squeeze a giant sperm… that was fun ;) and the nurse liked joking about it too! The IV didn’t hurt much, however it started trickling after some time… so they had to re-hook it onto me again! The doctors showed up right about then and introduced themselves… followed by me having to go pee, which was a waste, because I had already pee’ed out all the water consumed by now (by going to the loo at least 3-4 times the night before)! Also, pee’ing with the IV on was interesting, I was walked to the OR soon after… everything after that is a blur!

There were at least 5-7 people in there. I was strapped on to various monitors and before I knew I was asleep! As per my DH, I was in the OR for around 20 minutes and was completely awake 15 minutes after coming out! I was dazed when I woke up and had an oxygen mask on my mouth/nose! The nurse took the mask out and asked how high my pain level on a scale of 1 to 10 was. My answer: around 7-8. She said I should be okay with a Tylenol, though I demanded for some stronger medicine. I just realized how much of a wus I was… I have always dreamt of me doing a natural birth (when I get there)… and avoiding Epidural et al… but after this, I am not sure!:P I think, I was more afraid that something was abnormal more than the pain bothering me… a pain killer was of course not the answer to abnormality… but anyways, they injected something in to my IV and I was okay in around 10-15 minutes. After which, they offered me a choice of 3 beverages and 3 snack items… I chose apple juice and graham crackers! I dislike salty stuff and didn’t want to experiment with saltines. They also gave me Tylenol and Tylenol with Codeine… Once I felt stable, I had to go pee and then we were let go. By the time we left (at around 0130 pm), I was almost pain free (I better be right, after all the drugs)! We had a Ruby Tuesday lunch (to go) and after that I slept for around 2-3 hours on our couch while DH worked (from home)! Rest of the day was pretty uneventful, I guess actually the whole ER was not as dramatic as I had imagined!

At home, I realized I couldn’t get up on my own, my abdominal area was very sore; my DH literally had to pick me up. Unfortunately I had to pee a lot and it wasn’t fun getting up every now and then. By the end of the day I was very bloated and uncomfortable… I somehow fell asleep, though had to get up at least 4-5 times in the night to pee. Problem was that I was drinking a lot of water and on top of it my bladder got (partially) full only to pressurize my ovaries and hurt. That has been the case ever since I got home (…up until now). I hate having to pee or do the other job (forget sex, which they say is okay before ET). I have noticed that the bloating is at minimal in the morning and my abdominal area is hard as rock by the end of the day. However, I have managed to stay Tylenol free after coming home… I just feel like I shouldn’t be pounding on pain killers (unless absolutely necessary) since I have tons of medications in my system anyways and under ideal situation I would have liked my body to be as “organic” as possible during the baby making process!

I feel like my ovaries are slowly moving back to their original position (from the center location covering my uterus during the last u/s)… cause whatever pain I have is on the sides and no longer in the center. I started with Medrol and Doxycycline the day of ER and started the PIO yesterday. I am a little sore from PIO, but it really didn’t hurt as much as Follistim and Lupron while taking it. May be the ice made my rear numb! :)

I got the scare of my life today (Saturday – two days post retrieval). We were not supposed to receive any calls today! We were lazing around in the bed and my phone starts ringing… it was my clinic! No, I was not supposed to hear from them. We have 13 of our embies in the incubator… at least some of them have to grow into healthy babies; we should not be getting any news from them today! I picked up the phone… the reason they were calling was: They were not sure if our transfer was going to happen tomorrow (3DT on Sunday), but they just wanted to let us know that they would be starting the ET very early tomorrow morning and we should expect a call from them at around 0730-0800 am and we would have to be at the clinic by around 0900 am if the transfer is scheduled for tomorrow (in the weekdays the ET is supposed to happen in the afternoon)! Oh what a relief!

So here we stand today, hopefully one step closer to our baby. I am grateful that we have reached where we are today. I hope this cycle turns in to a BFP, but if not, hopefully we will learn a thing or two from it for our future cycles. Your support means a lot to me. Handful of people around us know about this journey, and I would have probably gone insane by now if I didn’t have you gals with me! I hope and pray that we all fulfill our baby dreams in the very near future!