Retail Therapy: Part 2

Oh my. I can't believe I forgot the best one!

I bought myself a birthday present.

Going on my own the weekend of my birthday. :) So excited!!!!

Retail therapy

Missing my B every day.

"Until one has loved an animal, part of one's soul remains unawakened."

~Anatole France

Seeking PGD experience

I'd love to hear from/read about others who have experience with PGD- especially around chromosomal issues. If you'd like to share, or if you have a blog where you documented your experience, you can comment below or email me at the address on my profile.

Thanks. :)

Rundown

I'd really like to share a lot of what we learned yesterday in more detail to potentially help anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation (while keeping in mind that I am not a medical professional and am relying on my perception and memory after talking to the doctor). However, I want to wait until we get the letter from her before getting into the technical nitty gritty.

But here's a rundown of what we talked about:

• III has an inverted chromosome. The inverted section is fairly large, which is apparently good- it allows for more of a possibility that, in a conception, the chromosome would fix itself.
• There is a possibility that the miscarriage was a result of the chromosome. But not necessarily.
• There is a possibility that the chromosome inversion is hereditary. But not necessarily.
• The chromosome inversion is unrelated to our fertilization problems.
• There is no way to tell how much or little this could affect any potential fetus- no statistical numbers like we often get at the RE office. As I said to Dr. N- "It's kind of a crap shoot."
• Doing ICSI may actually be increasing our chance of the embryo being affected by the inversion since in a natural conception there's the whole "survival of the fittest" thing going on. (Unfortunately, without ICSI we have no fertilization...)
  

Our options?

• Donor sperm- certainly not ready to go there yet.
• Keep doing what we're doing and hope for the best. (With a potential for more miscarriages or even a child with birth defects... though the latter is the smallest possibility of all of them. We could have a "normal" child without the inversion or even a "normal" child who may have the inversion and, like III, not be affected at all.)
• Do IVF with PGD. (Meaning testing the embryos once they reach 8 cells for the chromosomal inversion)
  

I'm feeling very overwhelmed. I'm going to be thirty-four in a few weeks, and I feel like we've been doing this for so long and have done so much. And not only are we still here, but another wrench has been thrown in the mix. (Um... I think I'm mixing metaphors, but whatever...)

I'm just really, really sad and frustrated. :(

We didn't really learn anything new today at the geneticist's.

I want to go into more detail eventually, especially since I had trouble finding any info or others' stories on the internet when we first heard.

But right now I'm too busy feeling sorry for myself.

For the moment...

...I am content.

Fire in the fireplace.

Snow in the yard.

Wine in my glass.

Dog in my lap.

Perfect for a December evening.

Appointments made

Yesterday at 11am I called Dr. N's office again. When C answered, I said "Look, I don't want to be a pest..." she apologized that it was taking so long, told me that Dr. N had looked at my file and put it on C's chair, but had not left instructions about what to do. ARGH. She promised me a call back by the end of the day.

On which she followed through. I have an appointment for Monday afternoon. Now that it's set up, I'm really scared about what she will tell us....

I then called Dr. Z's office. When we were given the referral, Dr. Z's nurse told me that when we had an appointment set up with Dr. N, to call and make an appointment to see Dr. Z and that it could even be on the same day. When I called to talk to Dr. Z's AA, she told me that he's in Asia for another week. *sigh* So I have an appointment with him on the tenth.

What that means in the immediacy is that, regardless of what we are told on Monday, it is unlikely we will be cycling until January. I anticipate CD1 to fall on or around the sixth. (Which I'm hoping is contributing to my dark mood... Yay PMS.) If we have to do a fresh cycle, we will probably be too far into the cycle to start BCP when we see Dr. Z. Since I don't know how the timing works for a frozen cycle, I don't know if we will be within an appropriate amount of time to do that, but I'm feeling it is very unlikely that they are going to tell us we are "all set" and can just keep going like we've been going.

I probably should feel positive about the fact that Dr. Z ordered this testing after my first m/c, instead of waiting to see if it was going to end up being an ongoing problem. But I'm having a hard time feeling positive about anything lately.

Stop this ride....

We found out last night that my FIL's cardiac doctor is recommending that he have a heart transplant.

I don't know how much more we can take....

seeking more input...

Thanks for your suggestions yesterday. Much of that is the same as what I do. The hard thing is that there is usually an 8-9 hour work day to get through before I can do any of those things!!! I guess it's a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other time for me right now.

I'm interested in hearing your take on our current situation around our next step in our process. III is pissed off. I'm frustrated and nervous, but feel like it just goes with the territory.

Here's the run down:

8/09- positive beta after IVF#2 (though ICSI #1)
9/09- m/c at 8w
11/9/09- 3 day bloodwork + recurrent m/c bloodwork (though I've only had one)
11/11/09- sonohystogram: all clear
11/24/09- Attend appt with Dr. Z who hands us copies of our blood work results, which show normal for me and an inverted chromosome 2 for III. Tells us that we have to see a genetic specialist before we can proceed. Hands us the card for the specialist, who is in a different office, though right around the corner.
11/25/09- 10:15am- call specialist, am told I need to talk to the dr's secretary, C, who is on the phone and she'll call me back. 1:10pm- still haven't gotten a call and am leaving to go out of town for the holiday, so I call again. C's on the phone again, so the person I speak to takes a basic history and says I'll get a call back. 2:15pm- C calls to tell me they need all of the bloodwork results faxed to then from my RE, and then the dr has to look at it to "see if she can help" us and then C will call me to set up an appointment. 2:20pm- I call Dr. Z's nurse, who tells me she'll immediately print it out and send it to them.
11/26-29/09- Thanksgiving weekend. Everyone is closed.
11/30/09- I call and miraculously get to talk directly to C. I ask if they received my paperwork. She says "What's your name again... um, I think we did... um... yeah, I'm pretty sure we did. Yes, I gave it to Dr. N. She'll look it over and then I'll be calling you to set up an appointment."
12/1/09- no call. Pissed off III.
12/2/09- no call. Frustrated me.

What do you think? Is this reasonable? Could Dr. Z's office have done things differently? (<---III's opinion=yes) What should I expect from Dr. N's office? How long should this take-how long should I wait? When should I call again? This is the first time III has really reacted to any situation we've encountered, which is interesting. I'm definitely in a blue place, which lowers my expectations and hope. I'm just trying to get some perspective... lay it on me!

ISO blue day remedies...

Walking up the stairs to my classroom this morning, I thought "I'm having a cranky day." (already!)

Then I thought "Geez, I'm perpetually down lately, so if, at 7am, I can already identify this as a 'blue day' that's not a very good thing..."

I'm a doer. I want to be able to control what's going on with me. (That's part of what makes this IF stuff so hard.) I thought "What can I do to put myself in a better mood?"

So I'm here to ask my blog buddies: What do you do to cheer yourself up and help a bad mood improve? I need suggestions!

Hodge Podge

I spent the holiday weekend with other people's babies. My sister's son, who is adorable. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about being with him (my sister and I have very different viewpoints on many things, including child rearing) but it was lots of fun. I loved being the auntie who could spoil him and play with him and then hand him off to his mom. :)

I also visited with one of my very closest friends from high school. He and I have a complicated history, but we have kept in touch and are still important to each other. III and I spent an afternoon with him, his wife, and their 2 kids. His two year old son LOVED III. It was fun to watch them play together. I left with mixed feelings. I loved seeing III with the little boy and so it made me ache (once again) for one of our own. I also miss my friend, though at the same time our relationship continues to be... hmmm. It's not really something I can put into words. Maybe another time.

Before we left on Wednesday, I called the office of the genetic counselor. III and I are both frustrated by this process already. We had to make an appointment to go in on Tuesday and be told there was a problem with which my RE can't help us and be handed a card. I called on Wednesday to be told by her office that my RE needed to fax all the bloodwork over so that she could look at it and determine whether she could help us. (Whether??? If she can't, then what??) So I called my RE and they faxed it right over, but then Thursday was Thanksgiving and they weren't open on Friday... I haven't heard from them today. I am contemplating being a pest and calling again today. I just want to get this taken care of. I tried to do a little Dr. Goo.gle research, but it is hard because this is so specific to the chromosome that is affected. I found something that said the inversion of chromosome 2 can cause miscarriage in 30% of the cases, but 1) I don't know if that's when the man has that inversion or just the woman and 2) I don't know if it makes a difference where the inversion is. Whatever happens, I'll definitely post more on it so others who find themselves in the same boat can possible find it in their own goo.gle searches.

Finally... I apologize because I haven't been reading blogs as diligently as I used to. I started this to find women who could sympathize with my situation because of their own experiences, but now I'm finding two things... either I'm so overwhelmed with my own situation that I have nothing left for others' trials with this beast, or others' successes leave me feeling discouraged and hopeless. :( I'm definitely at a point in this process where I no longer know what to do to even help myself.