I've never had a bad monitoring appointment...

...until yesterday.

Yesterday was my second monitoring appointment for this upcoming frozen embryo transfer (FET), but it was the first time I had to make the trip in "real time" shall we say.  Until this point, I'm sure you remember, I was driving up from Baltimore with the kids, and either staying all day, or turning it into a little visit with family and friends.  However, because the kids are all in school, I had to come up with other arrangements.  Thankfully, I have a college aged cousin who moved to town for work and school and I was relieved to find out she had a car, didn't start work until 8:30, and was willing to come at 7am to cover from the time DH has to leave, until my kids have to be dropped off at school. #godblessher 

We had to face the challenge of finding appropriate car seats for each kid, that would fit across her car in the one row.  I want to post more on that another time because there are so many options out there and I find it all so fascinating.  

Anyway, yesterday I woke up early, 4:30am precisely, and left at 5:05am.  Besides missing two rest stops to fill up and finally pulling in for gas with only nine miles left in the tank, it was an uneventful trip.  It took longer than normal because of a few accidents, but it was an easy drive for me.  I arrived at the doctor at 9:30 and was done by 10:00 and by 11:00 I was back on the road and made it home by 2:30-leaving me just an hour to spare before I had to pick up the kids. All in all, this is the system that will allow me to continue seeing my doctor in New York, and it wasn't terrible.  I know it sounds terrible, but I'm not finding a new doctor for many reasons, which is why this is not a hard thing for me to commit to.  

So, what made my appointment so bad? I know you want to know!

Let me give you a little back story-this is my 9th medicated cycle.  I've never had a hormone issue while medicated-I stimulated fine, in fact I was on incredibly low doses and almost over produced! I've never had a lining issue-everything always looked great.  

Until yesterday. 

The ultrasound revealed no growth in my uterine lining, despite two doses of estrogen.  

This was pretty shocking news-to Dr. Beloved and myself.

But, he tried to reassure me that building the lining takes time, that's why we plan for 16-20 days of building the lining.

It's still early...

Try not to worry...

Except I couldn't help but keep asking him: I've never had this issue before-I did a cycle two months ago, four months ago, and I've never had an issue responding to hormones-why now?

It just doesn't make sense. 

I could tell he wanted me to just buy into his belief that this could all be chalked up to how early in the cycle we are, but he could tell I wasn't biting, and with that look on his face, he pointed out a suspected growth in my uterus, a suspected adenomyosis-an adenomyoma.

Cue terror..

I'll be honest, I have a very, very basic understanding, but it's essentially when endometrium goes through the uterus and in my case, created a specific area. In most cases, people have much more painful periods combined with heavy bleeding, which I haven't experienced. When we looked back on August's ultrasounds, we saw denser tissue and the thought is that it's possible the estrogen is fueling it's growth (he described it like an expanding sponge) as oppose to growing my lining, which is why I'm assuming the answer isn't as simple as just give me more estrogen to grow my lining.  But, my dose of estrogen is increasing, but I'm sure there's only so high the dose can go, but, it's important to remember that my lining didn't grow, at all.  So it's possible it just won't grow enough to have a transfer right now. 

That's right, the transfer might be canceled. 

I do know that we discussed that should this adenomyoma grow-it needs to be removed so I can move forward. Again, I don't understand all of the intricate details of how or why or when. As of now, I'm continuing on the meds, and go back for monitoring on Monday. I'm assuming we'll have a much clearer picture since I will have had two more doses of estrogen that will have also increased in dosage. 

I'm in a holding pattern, again.

I have to wait, again.

I'm faced with it going either way, again.