The day didn't start off too well. I woke up with a start when the alarm sounded. I was having a dream that Chicken had been run over by a car. Then as I was trying to get in the car, carrying a bunch of things in my hands, I dropped my beautiful pottery commuter mug and it smashed to bits (notice a pattern here?). I was in a great mood after that. I couldn't help thinking about the water bottle smashing on the day of extreme bad news. My mind was drawing lines and making predictions about the appointment.
Dr. RE was great as always. He came in and right away expressed his sympathy for our loss. He said that they wanted to call, but knew I was likely in shock and that it was better for me to receive care in Pleasantville rather than in FTT, so he let my family doc. handle it (but he did all my family doc to make sure I was looked after). He reviewed the prom.etrium schedule I was on during the pregnancy, to rule out that we had stopped too early. I was taking the prome.trium up until the morning of the ultrasound (12w1d), so we ruled it out as a contributing factor in the miscarriage.
After some discussion of this and that, he said that he couldn't come to a conclusion in his mind as to whether the m/c happened because of the embryo or because my lining couldn't support the pregnancy. My lining is not, as previously believed, as good as we would like. In fact, he said that my lining had never reached an optimal thickness in the last three years that I've been under his care. The embryo might have been perfectly healthy and viable, but it was my deficient lining that cased it to stop growing.
Gulp.
I think that in my mind, I had created what I was hoping to hear him say at the appointment, and was obscuring what I was afraid to hear. His actual assessment was somewhere in the middle. He didn't say: "Hey, that was a fluke of bad luck. Let's get back on that horse and try again next month". What he said is getting us steps closer to: "there isn't much to do with your body in terms of growing a fetus, so you should just cross that out as an option."
Dr. RE suggested that we try a more aggressive lining building strategy over the summer by having me take estr.ace orally, vaginally and through a patch (are there any other possible routes of entry for the estrogen to come in? I can bathe in it or sniff the darn thing just to be sure). He will then do two endometrial biopsies: one during the follicular phase and one during the luteal phase of the cycle. This needs to be done over two different cycles because once he's biopsied the endometrium during the follicular phase, he won't be able to get valid results for the luteal phase in the same cycle. So, hopefully, by the end of the summer, we should know more about next steps.
Dr. RE also said that Sattva's response was not as good as he had hoped, especially since non of the embryos made it to freezing. He did say there could be modifications made to her protocol (i.e. more drugs) to see if it would produce more eggs, but he didn't say too much more about that. I tried to discuss whether he thought we should accept Sattva's offer or start the process for embryo donation, but he wanted to defer that conversation until we knew more about my lining. He acknowledged that even if my lining continues to be sub-optimally responsive, we may still chose to try egg donation (because women get and stay pregnant with less-than-ideal linings). Would I really do that though? I don't think so. That would be my cue to stop persisting down this path.
It's always been hard to believe that my body would or could do this pregnancy thing. I am losing faith that it ever will. These are dark days for me. Mr. A is keeping an open mind, and waiting to hear the results. Thankfully, he has enough optimism for two.
I leave you with a picture of my graduation.
0 comments:
Post a Comment