Resilient

re·sil·ient
Adjective:
(of a person or animal) Able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

A dear and good friend of mine recently told me she viewed me as resilient. At the time, I said thank you as she was offering it as a compliment and the more I thought about it...I am resilient and so are those of you in the blogging community. Through the support of my family and friends, I am able to recover from difficult conditions and find the strength to move on. It's definitely not easy...as many of you know. But the way I look at it, as hard as it is emotionally...I don't really have a choice. I yearn to be a mother and the only way that will happen is if we keep trying. With that being said, the plan is to move forward with another IVF cycle early next year.

I ended up having my "wtf meeting" last Thursday at my follow up ultrasound. My doctor had a cancellation, so was able to meet with me to discuss our options. After reviewing the cycle, she is still giving us a 15% chance of IVF working. The quality of my eggs is what is impairing the likelihood of it working. She reminded me that I do still have some good eggs left...it's just a matter of finding one of them. She will change my protocol a bit for next cycle - by starting me on the maximum dosage of Follistim/Menopur right from the start. Last cycle, my ovaries really took a LONG time to get started (treatment was almost cancelled), therefore, she wants to see if we have a better outcome by starting on a higher dosage right away.

A bit of good news was that we only used about $8,000 of our IVF insurance money. I have a $30,000 lifetime max of IVF coverage. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that we only used roughly 8 grand. That means we technically could do 2 more fresh IVF cycles and have them fully covered. I originally thought I would only have enough coverage left for one more (to be fully covered). I found out that ALL of my ultrasounds (and there were a lot of them since I stimmed for 13 days) and ALL of my bloodwork was covered by my regular insurance, not the IVF portion. At first I was really excited about this...and then I was rethinking it and was wondering if it would just be delaying the inevitable. I'd hate to make it through another 2 rounds of IVF and still be sitting here in this same damn position. It may be time to start accepting the fact that my eggs are just not cutting it....BUT I'm not there yet. We have definitely discussed other options and are obtaining information about each in case we were to decide to travel another path in the future. But for right now, we are both content with trying another cycle. If that doesn't work, we will then reassess where we're at...emotionally & physically.

Since I've had 2 miscarriages now, my RE would like me to have all the recurrent miscarriage workup done. She doesn't think we will find anything..but just wants to rule anything out before starting my next cycle. So I will be working on that the next couple of months and doing a lot of relaxing. Depending on when my period comes, I will be starting birth control for IVF#3 either in December or January. Right now it seems like a long way off, but I know it will fly by. When I'm not doing treatments, I'm amazed at how quickly the time passes. I actually lose sight of the date since I don't have to keep track of anything.

In regards to the ultrasound on Thursday, she did not see any more of the sac left. She did see a few remnants floating around. Therefore, she would like me to come in for weekly HCG blood tests, so we can track my levels down to 0. It was nice to confirm though that the majority of everything was gone. It did provide a bit of closure that it really is over.

That's where we're at.