But it's hard to write when things are bad....if you follow me on Instagram, you saw that I posted a picture when I got my blood test taken. Let me tell you, that was a wild goose chase. I was hoping to avoid going back to New York, for what should have been a simple blood test. This was anything but simple. My doctor gave me orders for STAT hcg, estrogen and progesterone, these tests should have been able to be done at any Quest. But, not all Quests run STAT blood tests. So, the first Quest sent me to a second Quest, and the second Quest couldn't guarantee the results by late afternoon today. They called a local hospital and the local hospital said they could run the tests STAT and they'd be processed within the hour. Great...3 hours after I began this initial journey, my blood was taken in the most painful blood test in history. They promised me left and right it would get to my doctor, and when I was in tears from the blood test, they even joked that part of my anxiety was because, "you're worried it won't get to your doctor in time!"
If you've guessed by now that the blood test results didn't make it to my doctor on time, you guessed right. By 3:50 I had not received a call; so I called the hospital-which couldn't confirm or deny they'd sent it, because, "we're so busy, we don't keep track of those things. If the patient tells us their doctor didn't receive the results, we'll re-fax it." I got up the courage to text my doctor to ask if he got the results, he responded right away, asking if I requested it STAT. Yes, yes I did.
I called back the hospital, and they told me that I never should have been told my results would be done today, they won't be complete until Tuesday-the hold up was the estrogen. Not the important number anyway...they won't give results to patients, and they won't give results over the phone to doctors either. My doctor was already out of the office, so faxing was not an option. I may or may not have had my husband look at my chart...for better or worse he delivered the shocking news that my hcg was 20.
TWENTY.
I immediately started texting him it's too low, that's too low...and I texted that to Dr. Beloved, and of course I'm texting to avoid the hysterics of a phone call...but he called anyway. And he said ideally, it would be at least 30 at this point, but this is also the problem with quantitative hcg-the initial beta isn't really what yields the result, sure, I'm technically "pregnant" but it's the second blood test, where we would see doubling or not, that really gives a more important picture. Because of the holiday weekend, almost all places are closed until Tuesday. So more waiting...I might see if I can get an order to get another blood draw at the hospital on Sunday. As bad as this blood test was, I'd go through it again for an answer. For the next blood test, we will either see an appropriate rise of numbers, a slight rise, or a drop. Best case scenario, this rises appropriately, worst case scenario would be a rise, but not enough of a rise because any rise means I need to continue all medication, which most likely means it's not viable anyway, but you have to do what you have to do. In the words of my doctor, he said something like this, "we keep going until we aren't going anymore." If there's a drop, I stop all meds and get a period. Miscarriage #2.
We had a nice chat today where he reiterated, 40-50% of the embryos are going to be bad, that's just the way it is, and if these two are bad, I'm pretty close to that statistic-can't say for sure because we have one left in the freezer. This is normal. I know it's normal, and I'm ok with this, as long as I can keep going. Next up will have to be a fresh cycle for a couple reasons-if I get pregnant off of the next transfer, I'm looking at a fresh cycle into my early 30s, which starts to impact the quality of the embryos. I am also hesitant to transfer the 1 frozen one after going through this. I can't put all this money, and all this effort and energy and time, to have this be an unhealthy embryo. It's also incredibly emotionally draining.
There are also some positives from this cycle: I got pregnant. I got pregnant. If I would have not gotten pregnant, I would have felt I was doomed, but this allows me room to hope that it's just a matter of time before I get pregnant with a healthy embryo. I also transfered these 2 embryos because they were frozen at day 6 and are not able to be genetically tested. My thoughts were to weed them out if they were bad, increase my chances of 1, or have twins. If these ends up in a non-viable pregnancy, oh how thankful I am they were both transfered-imagine if one was still left in the freezer and it was up next for transfer. That would be horrible.
So, for now we wait...the same words we heard 3 months ago, "it could go either way at this point."
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