Green Glow

So as it turns out, I've had to take the two shots of Methyltrexate. So now, whenever you turn the lights of in our bedroom, there is an erie green glow coming from under the covers .... right around the uterus section of my body. Something's gotta be going on down there!

Actually, it hasn't been too bad. The last miscarriage I had (Mother's Day, 2004) was sooooo, well, it was bad. Messy. This one, however, hasn't been at all. A little heavy bleeding here, a little there, and several hours of no bleeding. But, the cramping pain in my abdomen has been quite lovely to deal with, considering TYLENOL is the only thing I can take. Right after the nurse gave me the two injections of this lovely chemotherapy drug, she said, "now just so you know, you can't have any alcohol until this works through your system. About two weeks." I just looked longingly at my husband, and he said, "that sure puts a kink in her plans ... she was gonna go out and get stone drunk tonight." Funny guy.

After a long session with my doctor, we learned some very interesting things. It seems that women with PCOS have a higher rate of miscarriage/lost pregnancy early on in their first trimester than normal, healthy women. What a coincidence... that's been my problem all along ... lost pregnancy in the 5th to 7th week... EACH TIME. So, my doctor wants to put me on Avandia (Rosiglitazone). She had a patient that couldn't take Metphormin either, and she put her on Avandia and she got pregnant with triplets, and successfully delivered. Wow! That's a positive emotion/outcome to hold onto. You see, PCOS women produce too much of the male hormones, and not enough of the female hormones, so when the embryo tries to snuggle down and implant, the body rejects it because the hormones aren't at the right level. Okay ... something like that ... but that's the main jest.

If I haven't said it before, I absolutely LOVE my doctor and nurse. They are awesome. I've read so many instances where a woman goes through infertility treatment and the doctor keeps her on the same protocol for months. Not my doctor. She sees that there's a problem, and she's making adjustments to combat the issues. While I can't begin another IVF cycle until about November, she's assured me that a) she's going to send us for all kinds of chromosomal testing and autoimmune disease testing; b) she's going to put me on Avandia as soon as possible (similar to Metphormin w/o as many side effects); c) she's going to pursue a more aggressive protocol so that more follicles are produced with the hopes that more eggs will be retrieved and fertilized; d) she's going to talk with the geneticist about doing PGD (Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis) on each of the embryos; e) we'll probably transfer (when the time comes) 3 embryos instead of 2.

So there is hope, and that's something to hold on to.

In the mean time, I guess the neighbors are going to have to deal with the green glow that seeps out from our bedroom in the dead of night.