I went in for a visit with my RE and to check my lining, yet again. I was laying on the exam chair, spread eagle as usual (lol), watching my u/s tech for clues. She's one of those people you can read like a gossip mag in line at the grocery store. Everything you need to know is on the outside, but you get details just because you can. This visit wasn't the same though. As she measured my ovaries and their giant cyst companions for growth or inflammation, she gave no sign that she even knew I was there for the longest. Finally, she looked up and said, "It looks like your bleeding has stopped. That's good?!" Um, is that a question or a statement? Is that all you got out of that? How ominous! Please...tell me I didn't wait an extra week just to come in here and have you tell me cycle 2.5 is cancelled too! Uh-uh. Not gonna hear it, lady. While she printed my images (aka hoo ha pics), she told me to dress and meet my nurse in the fancy new exam room next door. She's more like a secretary if you ask me...handing out calendars, scheduling my next appointment, making little notes in my file. They really should just get this broad an office.
Me being me, I can't help it. I sit in the non-exam chair with my folder on my lap, my calendar out on top. Jackie comes in to go over my hoo ha pics and discuss what to do next. Again with the blank face. I watched her for a while and she flipped pages and wrote in the margins. I couldn't take it. "Ahem!", I breathed. "Whaddya got?" Jackie looked up and says, "Well......it looks like you've had some movement. You're showing a good increase, it's around 9.1mm, so I'll have to talk to him and see what he wants you to do." Uh....you say what now? She flips more pages and says she can't find where I was last visit. Still stunned, I tell her I write my measurements on my calendar, like the good type-A that I am, and hand it to her. Its like my brain has become stuck or something. She reviews it and says what a great record keeper I am, and then belatedly notices that she hears no chatter coming from my general direction, as she usually would. Normally, by now I'd be on question 9 of what's to come next? She asks if I'm ok today, and after a moment, I tell her I think I just hallucinated. "You said I'm at a what, now?" Her eyes get big. "Oh!", she says. "I thought Jennifer would have told you. She always gives people details when she's doing their ultrasounds." I sigh through my words, "No, she didn't say a thing in there." Jackie then proceeds to explain to me that my uterine lining appears to have gone from a receding 6.8 to a goopy 9.1 in THREE days. "Dude. Huh? How's that even possible?", I want to know. "You must have responded well to the double in Estrace.", she guesses. She says a bit of that is mucous (um, ewwww), but that I've grown nicely. I leave pretty stunned with myself. I don't even remember how I got to work that day, and I've got an hour commute!
Like clockwork, around 2:00 pm Jackie calls me with instructions. I'm used to hearing that I need to either stop all meds and wait for my period or come back in to talk about my "next steps" with the RE. Instead, she goes with, "I want you to start your Endometrin and other meds, and we'll see you on Friday for your transfer. I'll call you with a thaw report once your first pipette of embryos are defrosted. Any questions?" Shocked to heddes, I say none at all and end the call. Holy babka, Batman! We're doing this thing!!!!!!
Belatedly, I remember that she mentioned mucous. I must have put the gory detail out of my mind when she said it. What does that mean? I mean, I know what cervical mucus is, I remember it from my labor & delivery days. Your body produces a ton of it during early pregnancy to create a sort of bath tub plug for the fetus to be able to sort of...float around in the oven. But since I'm not pregnant (yet), why do I have so much? How do we figure that out, you ask? Why, we consult the inter-webs, of course! I read that women on high doses of estrogen (or um...I dunno, women who take it 4 different ways at a time, ha!) are likely to produce copious amounts of mucus. *sigh* That pesky estrogen. As I'm mulling this over, my phone buzzes on my desk again. Its Jackie calling back, I see. She better not be calling to say she made a mistake and I need to stop meds again. There I go killing it by letting these thoughts creep it. But, no. She just called to say that I needed to stop my Lupron and she'd forgotten to tell me. Unbeknownst to her, I do read words and had already seen this on my calendar eons ago. I thought to ask about the mucus. Would this affect my transfer? Could it keep my embies from settling in? "Not to worry", she says. "He'll just aspirate it." Whew! If sucking out some extra mucus with a giant version of a baby snot sucker is going to make this happen, get to aspirating!
Things have been good since the visit. I'm using the Endometrin 3x/day, which isn't fun, but since I've been shoving Estrace up there for the last two weeks, what's a little Endometrin to add to the mix, eh? I've taken out stock in Kotex, but that's another post for another day. Ha! Stay tuned for the post-transfer post....coming soon to an inter-webs near you!