Round 9

Its 9am on Wednesday 31 August and here I am again at the airport waiting to fly for another quick trip to the uk to hopefully collect a couple more eggs.

After seeing Dr Greg yesterday and having two follicles ready for collection, one on my right ovary (21mm in size) and one on my left ovary (17mm in size) he advised that we trigger me yesterday evening and that collection happens on Thursday morning.

Having juggled various logistical challenges around last minute flights to the uk (extortionately priced with limited availability), work commitments (missing one of the most important meetings of my career, thank god I have an amazingly understanding boss!) and a trail of back and forth emails to the uk clinic (what medication to take, exactly when to take it etc), I am finally at the airport and waiting to board my flight to the uk!

This time last year I was three rounds in, zero eggs frozen and had virtually given up any hope of becoming a biological mother. I realize I am still a long way off from that reality, but I am for sure one step closer to this possibility and that fills me with enormous hope and happiness.

lessons learnt

I remember the strangest things That my parents told me as a child.  No tattoos, don’t ride a motorbike, don’t tell your brothers or sister I gave you that extra cookie and the list goes on.

My father, one of the people I admire most in this world, taught me two valuable things that have stuck in my head and ring in my ears day in, day out and have especially done so through my egg freezing journey.  “Life is not fair” and “Never ever give up”.

I know as a child these words were nothing more than words, It is only as I have grown older and weathered this world they have had real meaning, meaning like they had for my dad when he was a young child. Let me explain.

As a child my father had a potentially fatal illness. An illness that he contracted from a nurse while he was in hospital having his tonsils out. The doctors didn’t think he was going to make it, Infact they said if he did he would definitely be wheel chair bound. At aged 5 my father found the strength to survive this illness, he learned to walk again and managed to live a normal healthy life playing sport to a high level and doing almost all the things that anyone his age would do, even with a slight limp. He ackomplished anything he put his mind to and didnt wallow in self pity or dwell on how contracting this rare disease a freakish way was so unfair. He made the best of the situation he had been dealt.

My father is a great man, he exemplifies honor and integrity. He is exactly the kind of man I hope one day I am lucky to end up with. I firmly believe that overcoming this illness at such a young age gave him the strength and character he has today. I am so thankful he never gave up fighting as a child and that he taught me and my siblings the valuable lessons he learnt at such a young age. I know without a doubt they are lessons that have helped me become who I am today and they have helped me navigate this journey, which at times has been soul destroying.  Thank you dad for helping me be strong. I love you.

Round 8

Egg Collection for Round 8 took place on Tuesday 16 August. It has taken me a few days to pull myself together emotionally and be able to write this entry.

Eggspectations were high

Going into egg collection things were looking great. Estradiol was high, LH was low and there were four good looking follicles between 20mm and 16mm so I hoped that I might be able to collect four mature eggs this time. You really would think I had learnt my lesson to NOT think too far ahead and to expect the unexpected, but it is just SO hard not to get your hopes up.

It is time to trigger

I took the trigger injections as instructed at 8pm on Sunday 14 August. It was a different injection to the usual trigger shot I take, but this was because I was wanting go straight into another round right after egg collection so the doctor had given me a trigger shot with a different dose of HCG so I could start another round straight away after egg collection.

I spent the next 36 hours after the trigger shot eating relatively healthy, doing light exercise and putting a hot water bottle on my tummy to ease the slight cramps that seemed to be happening this time around.

Collection Time

My mum dropped me off at the clinic at 7.15am on Tuesday morning, everything was as it usually is, apart from, to my great excitement there were new patient gowns! Instead of being the usual light blue they had changed to a nice navy blue (it’s the little things!). I was told they are slightly less see through!

A doctor I had never seen before came to see me just before I went into the collection room. He seemed nice enough but as with all my visits to this clinic no one explained who was who and what was happening. That is one of the biggest gripes I have with this clinic, they just don’t tell you what’s going on!  Call a spade a spade people! Have those difficult conversations. Tell me how it is, tell me what is going on and how bad things really are!

I followed this strange doctor into the procedure room where I would be put to sleep. A cannula was put in my arm by the anesthesiologist and my legs were strapped in to place. If it had been my first time I would have been scared, but I wasn’t at all, those feelings were long gone. I was just looking forward to the drugs that would put me out and to waking up back in the recovery room.

I saw Dr Collection walk in, there was a quick hello and then I was off in another world.

Waiting… Waiting…Waiting

I woke up 15 minutes (yes that is really all the time it takes) later in the recovery room. There was a nurse offering me some water and trying to mop up the blood that was spurting out of my cannula for some reason. I was given an IV with paracetamol and about 30 mins later I was able to get changed and head upstairs to meet the embryologist. I still hadn’t been told how many eggs were collected which was always the bit I dreaded. My first two failed cycles last year no one told me until I was called to see the doctor, but then when I had collected some eggs in more recent rounds the nurses had told me straight away, so I was feeling very nervous and trying not to read anything into it.

I met with the embryologist who wasn’t able to tell me too much at this stage other than they managed to retrieve two eggs, the other follicles didn’t have eggs in sadly. She wasn’t able to tell me if they were from my left or right ovary or if they were mature. I now had to wait 3-4 hours for her to watch these two eggs under a microscope to see if they were mature and ok to be frozen.

Are you kidding me!

Prior to heading home I was told I had an outstanding balance of £10. When asked what this was for I was told £5 for antiobiotics and £5 for paracetamol.  Having just paid this clinic over £5000 for this cycle alone (scans, blood tests and medication) not to mention the fact that I don’t actually have many of my scans in the UK so the clinic is making a savings from me on that, to ask me for an additional £10 for things that I had never been charged for in the previous 8 rounds, I found to be a real cheek!

When I questioned these costs I was told they have decided they now have to charge extra for these things, something their “new management” had decided but failed to tell any patients!

Emotional, livid and tired I paid the £10 and got a taxi home, it wasn’t worth the argument.  The amount of money was so small compared to the thousands of pounds I had spent to date, it is just the audacity of being charged for things that a) I hadn’t been charged for in any of my previous 8 rounds and b) I would question I even needed as I wasn’t in any pain so intravenously administered paracetamol I’m not sure I needed.

This clinic has time and time again made me feel like a business transaction not a privately paying patient in search of healthCARE.  They really have lost the ‘care’ part of that word!  If I wasn’t so far into my egg freezing journey with Dr Collection I would definitely change clinics.

I waited until 4:30pm and still no phone call from the embryologist.  Usually I would get a call about 3pm, so again I was trying hard not to read into anything but why hadn’t she called?  Finally at 4:45pm I called the clinic and asked to speak to the embryologist, I was told she wasn’t available and needed to call me back.

I waited a painstaking 10 minutes for her call playing every scenario over in my head….. I had told myself NOT to do this but its SO hard.  Why hadn’t she called already?  Finally the call came in and she told me that both the eggs they had collected were mature and could be frozen.

Shattered Eggspectations

I’m not sure why I cried when I got off the phone but I did and it didn’t stop until I cried myself to sleep that night.  I didn’t really know why there were so many tears, the release of another cycle being over, getting two mature eggs, the disappointment of not getting four, definitely all the hormones! I was glad to finally fall asleep that night and wake up the next day hopefully feeling stronger, more rationale and ready to get into Round 9 in just a couple of days!

In the UK eggs can usually be frozen for up to 10 years, unless there are special medical circumstances and then this can be extended.  When you go to use your eggs you can do so with a partner or using donor sperm, you can also choose to export your eggs to another country and use them there. In the UAE as far as I can decipher the law is different.  You can actually freeze your eggs here, but there are restrictions around their use.  They can be frozen for up to five years, you can only use them if you are married and you can not export them out of the country to use.

Generally speaking egg quality is better when you are younger (in your 20s or 30s) and as you get older you become less fertile and your egg quality declines.   This decline increases significantly after 35.

It is a difficult question to know when you should go ahead and freeze your eggs.  Ideally you would do it when you are at your most fertile, in your 20s, but firstly who has that kind of cash at 20!? (because the process is not cheap) and secondly who wants to openly admit in their 20s that by the time they are 40 (when they are likely to have diminishing ovarian reserve (DOR)) that they aren’t going to have met ‘Mr Right’ and already be a mother?  I know I hadn’t even heard of ‘egg freezing’ when I was 20!

So now, women like me, who have hit their late 30s or 40s, been focusing on a career and haven’t yet met Mr Right have the option to try, at this late stage, and freeze their eggs or give up their dream of becoming a biological mother. There are some companies like Apple and Facebook, who are moving in the right direction by offering to pay for female employees to freezing their eggs so as to delay motherhood a little longer.  These companies, in my view, have got it right and I wish there were more like them and that egg freezing was more accepted, not something that is talked about behind closed doors.

A single female should be proud of the fact that she is taking control of her declining fertility. Egg freezing should be openly talked about and accepted, it is an insurance policy and in my view a sensible option for a single women in their 30s who wants to one day possibly become a mother.