CD11: White Knuckle Cycle

Remember how I told the nurse that I didn't need to come in the very next day for bloods and US because I was only at 15mm?

This was two days ago, right? Two days ago that follicle was at 15mm. And we know that follicles grow basically 2mm/day. So said 15mm follicle should be at 19mm today. A perfect size for HCG. Yes?

Well, somehow in two days my single guy went from 15 to about 24.5. Essentially it grew 5mm A DAY.

I ask you, how is that even possible? This is my first time using cetritide over ganirelex and I've never had movement like this.

Ideas that immediately come to mind:

1. Bad batch of cetrotide
2. Refrigerator did damage to the cetrotide (too cold?)
3. Cetrotide just doesn't suppress me
4. Faulty injection (nah!)
5. Wrong amount of cetrotide for my body weight
6. One of the U/S techs screwed up on their measurements (but which one?)
7. Allergic reaction to cetrotide which kept dosage from being absorbed fully (possible: I had a nice red itchy abdomen after injecting)

All I know is that I've never had this problem with ganirelex before so when the nurse called today with the stats, I asked if it would be ok for me to switch back to Ganirelex, as it's what I know works best for me. If there is anything whatsoever wrong with my batch of cetrotide, I certainly don't want to take it again.

She said it would be fine, but didn't check with the doctor which sorta distressed me. I asked if Dr. Czech had even looked at my file at all for this cycle and the answer was that another doctor was the doctor actually monitoring my cycle. Dr. Czech comes up with the basic strategy and the other doctors implement and monitor.

I'm not sure I like this approach, especially as it was never communicated that Dr. Czech was not being "hands on" with my file.

Another gripe that I voiced to the donor coordinator today was that this was the first clinic I'd ever cycled at that didn't give me a calendar to go off of. At each step along the way, I've been given instructions verbally. Tonight I was told to take my menopure, cetrotide (or ganirelex), and HCG at 11:30PM. But nothing about whether I continued with my EE2 in the morning. How hard is it to print it all out for a patient and make sure she leaves with it at the end of an appointment?

I'm not a fan of cycling at a clinic with this much disorganization but as I'm retrieving in just about 40 hours, there's not a lot that I can do at this point.

Today's stats:

E2: 504 (292 two days ago)
FSH: 10 (7 two days ago)
LH: 3 (nice and low, so despite the 25.6mm, I'm fine)
P4: 0.2

Main follicle: 24.6mm
7.3
5.3
<8 (no measurements on this one)

Yes, four. It's a real pisser that they weren't clear on the strategy for this cycle - that we were going for 1 rather than more - as I could have had FOUR.

So, with a single follie at 24.6 or so, that is probably already cooked (aka: dead), I've decided to not go the GS route this cycle. It costs $500 just to register myself with the FDA, and that has to be paid for before retrieval, before I even know if anything was retrieved, let alone viable.

Just too much risk.

So assuming that it is viable, I'll either transfer or freeze - guess I'll make a split decision on Saturday when I get the fert report. I spoke to the embryologist today, she said that they free on CD1 (Saturday) as they've found that they have a 95% survival rate with a 1 day freeze as opposed to a 75% survival rate if they wait til day 3 to freeze. But the problem here is that we won't know if it can cross that CD3 hurdle when the cell division instructions shift.

Talk about one helluva a crapshoot of a cycle.