This morning was our regroup appointment with Dr. Schoolcraft to discuss what went wrong with our embryo development. Waiting for the doctor I was very nervous and had a lot running through my mind. I knew nothing would dramatically change, but was hoping but nervous for some clarity on what happened. When he came in to meet with us he said that he wasn't sure what went wrong. Everyone in the lab was confused by it as well. They had ICSI'd 50% of our eggs and IMSI'd the other 50%, and neither group did exceptionally better than the other group. They used two different media, and neither of those groups did better or worse either. He said it falls under possible reasons. Eggs poor quality either from my PCOS or from responding poorly to the stimulation drugs or sperm poor quality, even though ICSI & ISMI should have only been picking the best quality sperm for the job. He said most embryos can last until Day 3, so between Day 3 and Day 5 is commonly where you see things go south if they're going to. He said he is very surprised we don't have 5 or 6 based on what he saw, and he believes if we have to do this again in the future we should hit closer to that mark. If we go through this again, he will change up the stimulation protocol to an antagonist protocol (I think that's what he said - it's where you use a different drug than Lupron for the suppression). He said the hyperstimulating wouldn't have made the egg quality poor, but my body maybe didn't respond as well to this formula of stimulation - creating too many eggs, but of poorer quality. He said the general public with PCOS will only get about 33% good embryos from a cycle where a non-PCOS person might get 50%, but that still should have left us with 10 embryos! There were a few times I had to bite my tongue to say to him "you're the best in the world and you can't tell me what is wrong with us?!" He seems to get the most difficult cases pregnant, and yet us who should have been a slam dunk was not...
He did say partway through the regroup that we were focusing too much on next cycle, when he feels good about this embryo that we have frozen. I asked him what our odds were and he said he would give us 40-45% chance of success. That sure sounds bad after our initial 70% chance of success had we had two good embryos to put in, but he said this embryo is pretty miraculous to survive what no other embryo in the bunch could. I am praying for some peace in my mind and in Brian's mind and some positive attitude adjustments for us. This could very well be our baby and we can't give up hope yet.
After we met with him, we met with our nurse and set up our frozen embryo transfer (FET) schedule. Our FET will be on Friday, September 16, a day after my birthday. In a few weeks I will go in for some hormone level checks, if all checks out, I will start Lupron injections again, then once I get my next period I will start the estrogen patches and progesterone suppositories to get my lining nice and thick for the embryo to stick to. 8 weeks and counting...
No comments:
Post a Comment