On the heals of our trip to Seattle was a trek to fertility treatment town for our follow-up appointment with Dr. RE about the egg donation. That was yesterday afternoon. As much as I ruminated about it last week, I did not feel nervous about it yesterday. I was just happy to spend time with Sattva. I like our treks over there because of the time it affords us to hang out. A 3pm appointment meant that the waiting room was empty and our bubbliness went unnoticed by absent somber patients.
The exam rooms are arranged for couples, and like I noted last time, it ill fits a group of three. Mr. August sat on the Dr.'s chair, and I wondered how that would go down when the doc walked into the exam room. Dr. RE showed me he was cooler than I thought by just sitting on the exam bed in a relaxed position. His poor intern however, just stood there by the door.
There seemed to be confusion at first on his part as to why we were there, as if he believed our decision had not been made and we were coming to tell him yeah or nay. It turns out we were expecting the same from him. He came out with it rather quickly that all things are well lined up for the egg donation. From a medical standpoint, Sattva is a good candidate to donate eggs. Her CD3 FSH levels were within normal, she had good antral follicle count and everything else seemed fine. He explained the risks to her and we talked about the time line. It looks like January or February is when this will happen. First, there are a few appointments with the psychologist, as well as an orientation for Sattva and I. Before the appointment ended, Dr. RE said we needed to settle the matter of how many embryos to transfer. This discussion seemed to make the intern laugh, which was nice. The last intern was really stoic, so it was nice to see some humanity. He said he would be willing to transfer three, but he wasn't a big proponent. He preferred 2, unless we were firmly opposed to twins. He thought one was conservative, which was what I thought as well. So should there be 2 viable embryos, 2 will be transferred.
A complex mixture of emotions is what I'm contending with this morning. I am excited and hopeful. This could work. Egg donation works. Not always, but it does. If it does, we will not only have a baby, we will also have created a new family. There will be a cousin for Sattva's children and bond between our families.
I'm also apprehensive. I feel like we have just met the height requirement to go on this gigantic roller coaster ride. Now we must go wait in line to get on and then the click of the safety harness will sound in our ears, and we will be off. Who knows in what condition we will come out of this ride. With any luck, one of us will come out vomiting.
Before the discussion with Dr. RE came to an end, I wanted to be clear on whether it was worth putting Sattva through all this; whether the end justified the means if you will. If he told us he thought the chances were pretty slim, I would for sure want to call this off. I wouldn't want her to go through this for a total shot in the dark. His answer, once again, pleased me. The word 'worth' caught his attention and he replied by putting much emphasis on discussing the worth of the endeavor. He seemed humbled by the phenomena of altruistic egg donation (um, yeah, me too) and felt that it was worth it. He admitted to having gone through with the egg donation protocol with donors much less reproductively fit. He didn't go as far as saying it looked promising, but the three of us felt by the end that he thought this was a good idea. He's been doing this for decades and we feel that we can trust him on this.
So egg donation is a go.
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