Constant Blood Work Is OVER

My hcg is down to the negatives, which is GREAT. No more blood work until December, at the earliest, my veins can FINALLY recover.

John and Ashley Hope to Adopt

Our paperwork is in and we have officially started the long, somewhat overwhelming, adoption process. Our Adoption Blog is up, however, it is still a work in progress, please feel free to follow us through our adoption journey.

http://johnandashleyhopetoadopt.blogspot.com/

Beta Levels = 8.9

Going in again on Friday for a final draw, should be below 5 at that time.

Simple Days

My goals are simple today:

1) Get out of bed - Done
2) Blood work - Done
3) Post Office - Done
4) Stay out of bed - In Progress
5) Try not to eat all of our Halloween candy - hmmmm

HCG Down to 24

It is all almost over, my levels are down to 24 today, I go in again on Monday and hopefully that will be my last time providing blood for this round. The veins in my right arm look like they are about dead, it will be good to finally give them a break.

Scarred

I had my stitches removed today and the three incision locations seem to be healing well. I imagine I will have a few scars from the surgery, but they should be fairly small and hopefully fade in time.

My hcg levels are down to 55 and should hit zero in the next week or so.

My new RE says that we can try again with LB3 in late December or early January..... I think we might hold off for a while.

Game Over

I had an ultra sound this morning and the heartbeat was gone, as well as everything else. Looks like it must have exited during my last stay in the hospital. Everything from here on out is suppose to take the natural approach and hopefully shouldn't be too painful.

I hope and pray that this is the final entry to this round of IVF.

Feeling Better Today.

I could actually brush my teeth, at the sink no less!

Ouch!

Hoping to keep this short and sweet:

Continued to experience intense pain & bleeding through Sunday and into Monday.

Was referred to a new fertility doctor out here in Wilmington, she does not normally take on a case mid-way, however due to the level of pain, and rather odd circumstances, she agreed to meet with us.

Our appointment was Monday at 10:30am, once she saw me she felt that an emergency surgery was needed to rule out an ectopic. There is still a gestational sac, fetal pole and heartbeat in my uterus, however she was concerned that the second embryo might have travelled into a fallopian tube.

I was taken to the hospital and omitted to the OR, the surgery started around 2:30pm and I woke-up around 4:30pm. Thankfully the doctor confirmed that there was no ectopic, (which means I get to keep my tubes), she also checked all of my other organs and everything checked out a-ok. She did find quite a bit of blood in my pelvis as well as my fallopian tubes and so she drained that all out before she closed up.

My mom arrived from Seattle around 6pm once I was moved into a hospital room. I ended up having to stay the night and was released this morning around 10am.

The cramping and bleeding are pretty much gone and my current pain is mainly around the incision sites. I am pretty sore and have been bed ridden since arriving home. My mom on the other hand is cleaning the house! :-) Thanks goodness for moms.

I go back in on Thursday to see if there is still a heartbeat. My new doctor thinks that it is a miracle at all that there is anything to have a heartbeat, however she feels the size of the sac is odd and she is concerned that this little heartbeat won't last.

So once again we are playing the waiting game, waiting for my body to heal, waiting to see if this heartbeat will grow, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Update As Told By Mr. B

So what we thought was going to be your standard week 7 miscarriage, has had anything but standards result. At 2:30am I was awoken by Mrs. B hollering out to me from the floor of the bathroom. Her bleeding had increased and she was experiencing severe cramping - she gave it a 9 out of 10 on the pain scale. This led to a call to Mrs. B's Mom and a speedy trip to the emergency room. We were in the ER from around 3am until about 7am.

Here's what happened in the ER:
1) The bleeding is definitely from her uterus, but her cervix is closed.
2) Ultrasound results showed not only a gestational sac, but also a fetal pole and a measurable heart rate.
3) Her beta continues to rise, and is at 1520 - which is way too low.
4) The cramping continued throughout the morning, but the bleeding stopped, so she got 3 Tylenol and was sent home.
5) We were sent home diagnosed with a threatened abortion (doc speak for a near-miss miscarriage).

At this point, the cramping has mostly subsided, but the bleeding has resumed.

Calling Mrs. B's usual doctor (RE) reminds me again how much of a useless sack of trash he is. Mrs. B updated a nurse, who then called the Doc. Rather than calling Mrs. B directly the Doc said through the nurse, "The pregnancy is not viable, so if you continue bleeding go get a DNC (aka an abortion)." Mrs. B asked the nurse to let the Doc know that there is NO WAY she will abort a fetus with a heart beat, as he had previously said there was no possibility she would develop a gestational sac. At this point, we have no idea if this is a viable pregnancy, but we aren't willing to give up on it yet.

What a nightmare -- oh, and the ER doc was a nice guy with a good bedside manner named "Doc Goodgame" how awesome a name is that?

Finally.

The battle is over and I can breathe again.

Saturday night I started bleeding and it was pretty clear right away that this was finally the end. I was considered 7 weeks & 2 days pregnant and it had been exactly 4 weeks since the transfer.

4 weeks of hell.

Finally I can begin to heal.

I hate to say I prayed for this, as I don't want you to misunderstand, but God and I made a deal a few weeks back that if this wasn't going to work, he would let it end, quickly, uneventfully and naturally. Pretty good deal for God if you ask me, however lately I have felt that he might have gone back on his end of the deal. Finally, something went right, even if that something was a miscarriage, it could have been so much worse.

I feel like me and only me and although it is overwhelming and sad it has small flickers of hope coming through that tomorrow will be better than today.

Screw 'em

As of today, I am going back on my progesterone and estrogen. Dr. Sandler says there is no chance this pregnancy is viable, but I say screw'em, my hcg is still going up, I have had absolutely no spotting or pain to suggest a miscarriage or ectopic and at this point I am not ready to blindly believe that all doctors are right.

Screw'em.

http://www.misdiagnosedmiscarriage.com

Get Me Off This Roller-Coaster!

Blood work today revealed my hcg has increased to 1300. Which leads my doctors to believe that something else is going on besides a miscarriage. Not a viable pregnancy mind you, but something else, something bad. And so I have been called out to the New York office, my appointment is on Wednesday the 14th.

At this point I think we can pretty much assume that at each step of the way we will encounter the worst possible outcome. How much longer is this going to go on as I am not sure how much longer I can stay on this horror show of a ride.

Don't Worry

Thank you all for your kind comments, emails, flowers, phone calls and so forth, they mean the world to us.

In reflection of everything that has happened over this last year it is way too easy to feel sorry for ourselves, we rarely take the easy way on anything and we do not intend to start today. Please know that we are sad, but at peace with it and we know that sooner or later something will go right.

As for today's happiness, I am going to buy a pair of much desired cowboy boots, open the windows and remember how much I love this time of year.

Thanks again for all of your prayers, we appreciate how many people came together for us, it just wasn't meant to be this time around.

Bad News Comes In Twos?

Well, the news is not good, in fact today was pretty much as bad as it gets in the world of IVF.

My hcg is 860 which is higher than it was, but no where near what it needs to be. The ultrasound revealed a small gestational sac, but way to small to be viable. They have requested that I stop all fertility drugs today which they assume will bring on the actual miscarriage.

In other news, I found out that those 28 beautiful embryos resulted in only 4 viable, they implanted 2 which means I only have 2 left. This was rather a shock to us as we were told on the day we did the transfer that they had frozen 10 embryos, all viable, somehow between the transfer day and our official letter our embryo count went from 10 to 2. What this means is that we only have two more chances, two more chances for a possible pregnancy and coming from 10 chances, 2 seems pretty impossible.

We have requested my medical records but at this time it is their word against ours and right now their stance is that we misunderstood the doctor when he told us we had 10 embryos frozen.

I am crushed. Not only has this pregnancy been confirmed as non-viable, but our future chances have gone from 10 to 2.

At this point we are going to restart the adoption process as it has become very clear that there are few options left for a family.

Thank you all for your prayers.

Looking for a Miracle

So here is the deal, I don't normally ask people to pray for me, however my belief in the power of prayer has skyrocketed in the last few weeks and so I am sending out an SOS for all of those people that follow this blog, whether you are religious or not, please send out as many prayers as you can spare for Mr. B and I.

At this time, our status is very much in limbo, my hcg levels that declined have only risen since and at this point, though they are low, there is still a tiny chance, a 1% chance, that this soul might make it past this initial battle.

My Beta Levels:

(which should double every 48-72 hours)

21-Sep = 130
23-Sep = 115
25-Sep = 115
28-Sep = 213
2-Oct = 596

My next ultrasound and blood work is scheduled for Tuesday and if a little miracle happens, they should be able to see a gestational sac, if they don't and my levels still rise, an ectopic pregnancy will be confirmed.

I have been told the chances are so small and not to get my hopes up, but I truly feel that this miracle is possible. They say it is possible for both embryos to implant, and then to lose one, which would account for the drop in hcg. I hope that I am not fooling myself, and there is a part of me that wants to give-up because I don't want to continue to hope for something that isn't going to happen, but then I have this seed of hope that keeps coming back.

Let's pray for a miracle.