IVF Time #4 (last covered by insurance)

Chris and I have been doing another IVF trial. This is the last one covered by insurance. I feel like I've aged a decade in the year and a half we've been doing this. I've certainly gained weight. The recovery time, every time, has been longer.

We switched doctors this round. The clinic has a better reputation, better stats (and is much more expensive). The clinic itself I don't actually like. The location isn't as good. With the exception of my doctor and a couple other doctors I find the physicians quite rude and impersonal. There seems to be this sort of arbitrary 'well, we do it this way' mentality you, as a patient, has to constantly fight against. If I end up going for a fifth round, unless this guy can convince me he's worth it, I'm tempted to go back to the old clinic.

Right now, they've taken the eggs out of me and they're currently in a petrie dish turning into blastocysts. The first couple times we did this I was awed by the idea that genetic material that was a mix of both Chris and myself was in a little dish across town. I am no longer excited or awed by the process.

We'll find out today whether we implant them today, on "day 3" when the embryos are little 8 celled things, having not yet turned into blastocysts, or whether we'll wait until day 5 when they are hundreds of cells (8 celled embryos have about a 1/3 chance of sticking. Blastocysts have about at 50/50 chance). And I'll keep you updated on that. Figure I'll know around February 16 or so whether I'm preggers or not. I can probably do a home pregnancy test on Valentine's day.

But that's not why I'm actually writing right now.

The real reason I don't like this clinic is what happened to me when they removed my eggs. It's a much more elegant clinic, as I've said. At the old clinic the system was like this:

They called you to the back (and Chris goes somewhere separate to provide a "sample").
You changed
You waiting on a little chair until they were ready to take out your eggs. (the longest I ever waited was 5 minutes because why would they have called you back if they weren't close to ready).
You went in to the room.
They talked to you for a minute...how ya doin', confirm your name and social security number.
The anesthesiologist introduced himself, confirmed you were who you said you were.
The nurse talked to you a little
The doctor said "hi"
The embryologist opened up his little window, said who he was, confirmed you were who you said you were
then the anesthesiologist says, "I'm putting in the medication now"
You were out.
They took the eggs out, got you into recovery, and that was that.

Not so at the new place.
They took me in the back and had me get changed.
Then I was brought to an exam room where they had me sit around with Chris for a while. They took my blood pressure and asked me my weight twice (once the nurse did and then the anesthesiologist did).
They took Chris away to provide the "sample"
And I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
To give you an idea how long, we were asked to be at the clinic at 8:30 in the morning. We got there at 8:20. I was asked to change at about 8:35. I did not go into the surgical room until 9:57.
After about 30 minutes a nurse kept coming by telling me it would just be five minutes more. She told me this four times.
By the fourth time I told her I didn't believe her. She got indignant. "well, I just checked and they really are just leaving now..."

I suspect that's why I got to the procedure room when I did. I think the nurse was so offended with my response to her "just 5 more minutes"ing that she put me in the room before they were in any way ready for me. Which now sucked even harder.

So off I went to the procedure room where I was ushered in by the anesthesiologist. Two women and a man were huddled around a computer. They did not acknowledge my presence.

The anesthesiologist asked me to hop on the table (at the old clinic, the table moved up and down. I have no idea whether this table moved up and down, but if it did they didn't want to bother with it). that was at 9:57. The anesthesiologist put an IV into my hand.

The anesthesiologist started talking to the guy about his...very pregnant wife. (Although it didn't actually bother me, I found it, given the circumstance, to be somewhat insensitive). The nurses started to chat amongst themselves. I lay there, and IV going into the vein in my hand, unable to move for the next 8 minutes. I know this because there was a clock on the wall.

One of the nurses came up to me and told me they weren't ignoring me, that the embryologist was still working on the previous case. I told her that was fine, but that they were ignoring me. She seemed surprised and said they were not. I said that clearly they were. She and her nurse buddy hadn't introduced themselves and were having a private conversation as if I wasn't in the room. The guy (who turned out to be the doctor, whom I had met once, extremely briefly), who had left the room, hadn't introduced himself and had been having a private conversation with the anesthesiologist without introducing himself to me. That seemed like ignoring to me, what was her definition of ignoring?

She apologized. The anesthesiologist ran out to get the doctor (realizing I was right). Then she started to make small talk. The doctor came in and introduced himself, apologizing half-heartedly that he hadn't introduced himself when I was taken into the room, and informed me that we had met that Saturday when he did my ultrasound. I told him we hadn't actually met then either, since he raced into the room, did the ultrasound, told me everything looked fine and then tried to leave the room quickly. When I had asked him for information about where I was he got indignant and told me almost no information before leaving as quickly as possible. He never introduced himself and never made any effort to look me in the eye.

Around the 20 minute mark I announced that I had been in the procedure room for 20 minutes. They seemed unhappy, I said I wanted to mark the time for posterity. About three minutes later the embryologist came in, asked my name, and the anesthesiologist, without warning, put the drugs into the IV bag. I looked at her and said, did you just give me the anesthesia? She said yes. I may have said "you could have warned me" but I may have just passed out.

At 11am I woke up in the recovery area, in quite a bit of pain and Chris at my side. They had taken 22 eggs (a record). They gave me some Fentenol (sp?), which is very nice stuff (Angela tells me it's the drug of choice for anesthesiologists) and I went home.

But it's three days later and I'm still pissed. Seriously, what the fuck?

of those 22 eggs, 14 fertilized (this is on par with previous fertilization's, #1 -- 12, #2 -- 13, #3 -- 12). I'll keep you updated.

UPDATE: Got the call from my doctor, of the 14 that fertilized, 12 are still going strong and more than half of those look very good. He wanted to wait for a day five transfer so we'll wait and transfer any embryos on Tuesday. I am very concerned about doing this since the last time I did this I had 9 good eggs on day 3 and by day 5 I had one crappy egg. He knows this and is willing to put his reputation on the line. We shall see.