Showing posts with label egg donation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label egg donation. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

the calendar

i received my 'calendar' its a set schedule of dates i will be taking hormones, when i need to go in for an ultrasound, etc.

I'll be taking the pre-natal birth control pills for 2 weeks before beginning to give myself daily subcutaneous injections of lupron. after a week of that, i'll have a period and go into the doctor's office to check my estradiol levels, to make sure the drugs are working correctly. Then i begin injecting 2 other medications daily for a week. then I go in for an ultrasound to monitor the progress and check that everything is okay. The final medication I will take is a big ugly shot in the butt called a trigger shot. it has to happen at a certain time before the extraction procedure. 

My fertility doctor faxed my medication to the MDR pharmacy, they specialize in fertility drugs and such. They called me to verify the address, and the next day i received an entire foam refrigerated BOX of hormones and needles and stuff. It filled up half a refrigerator shelf at first, then i organized it all to fit in one of the door shelves.

I wont be needing any of that until the 26th. Now i just have to remember to take a pill at 9pm every day.

step 1

when i called to let them know i'd gotten my period, they told me to begin birth control on day 2, while the fertility doctor planned out a calendar.

The nurses faxed down a prescription for femcon fe, a birth control with iron. I took my first birth control pill ever tonight. somehow i'd managed to avoid that type of birth control. i've been on the patch, lunelle, depo, and nuvaring. its crazy that in all my years as a sexually active adult this is my first birth control pill. they're chewable and mint flavored! i'm  glad i waited for the birth control pill industry to evolve into chewable, mint flavored medicine.

well it was delicious. tasted like a mint flavored necco wafer. even brought back nostalgic childhood memories of necco goodness. I dont eat much candy anymore, just chocolate and salty snacks.

It was weird too, cause the pharmacist who rang me up was about to go through the egg donation process for her sister. crazy, huh? I told her this was my first time. i'm supposed to update her on how its going. but i probably wont, cause i rarely go to that part of town anymore, and i'll be getting the fertility drugs from a clinic in L.A.


begin process

so this is my first donation. I signed up with a couple of companies a few years back. nothing happened. in february i signed up with an L.A. based egg donation agency who advertise that they sell eggs from extraordinary donors. so they pay 8000 the first donation instead of the standard 5000. They want donors who are somewhat attractive and college educated. I got IQ tested and everything. they recorded a video of me answering questions like "My talents include...." and "something unique about me is..." and "my hobbies include..." That was horrifying. i was nervous and kept smiling funny while i was talking throughout the video. i wanna redo it now. 
I also did a ridiculous personality test designed to catch people with mental disorders. it had agree/disagree questions like, "sometimes i want to hurt people for no reason" and "sometimes i hear voices that other people dont hear" it was hilarious.

this egg donation agency targets the gay community, so when i signed up i was crossing my fingers and hoping i would get to give a sweet gay couple my eggy weggies.
I got chosen in march by a heterosexual couple who resides outside of the united states. I was bummed that they werent gay. I hope sometime in my life a gay couple wants my ovum...*sigh*

The 'intended parents' as the agency calls them probably chose me because my genetic heritage is similar to theirs.  so we began with the screening process. I worked with a lawyer to sign my egg donation agreement. The intended parents needed a surrogate, and they were looking for one. so i waited for a couple months. they found one, so we continued and I went through with the medical screening with the fertility doctor. apparently i have about 17 follicles in my ovum? cool. They took 6 or 7 of those large tubes full of blood. they even took a bunch of my husband's blood too.

Then the surrogate backed out for whatever reason. they said they have to wait to find another surrogate. Then my blood tests came back and my thyroid levels were off. My fertility doctor said it was off so slightly that it was probably subclinical - probably normal for me, but still i had to get a doctor's note saying i could go on with the egg donation process. so that delayed us yet another couple months.

I made an appointment with the gaslamp clinic in downtown san diego. I'm a naturally hyperactive person. I always have been. So when the nurse at the clinic asked me if i feel like i'm on crack all the time, i laughed. They ran thyroid panel, and the doctor there gave me a box of pills to begin taking to bring my levels back to normal. I faxed the information back to the fertility doctor and took my first pill. the next morning at 8 o'clock on the dot my fertility doctor called me enraged, that stupid doctor at the clinic had misdiagnosed me and given me the opposite medication. so i called the clinic to yell at the doctor and demand my money back, i went and got my money back, and my thyroid panel test results. My t3s were off but everything else was normal.

I made an appointment with a 'real' doctor at a normal primary care facility. the doctor there looked at my test results and felt my throat and asked me a million questions and concluded that i had a slight hypothyroidism, but because she didn't know the cause she couldn't prescribe medication, and she referred me to an endocrinologist. She said the specialist would want to run another thyroid panel, because they run their thyroid panels differently, so i gave more blood, reluctantly.
That thyroid panel came back normal. the doctor wrote me a clearance stating that my levels were normal, and the previous levels were subclinical.

By the time that nonsense was over, they had found a surrogate. It took a while for her to finish her legal contract. I waited patiently for another month. and then got an email that the surrogate had just gotten her period, and to let them know when i get mine. They're going to manipulate my menstrual cycle to sync it up with the surrogate's cycle. and then the process will begin

I started my period on 9/8