Ups and Downs

I guess I'll just start from the beginning and write in order.

28 eggs retrieved yesterday was so amazing! I came home and promptly passed out for about an hour and a half...after getting some oatmeal and a smoothie from Jamba (thanks baby!).  I felt great- they had given me some stuff for the cramping right after the retrieval so all was good and well in my world.

Then about three hours later I started getting the pain.  Oh yes, the pain.  It felt like my stomach was going to burst.  Like I got kicked right in the ovaries.  But it was fine- all well worth it.

Then I drank...a bunch.  No, no- just water.  But a lot of it.  I had some salad and some soup and a ton more water. 

Then I drank some more water.  I mean, they told me to hydrate- and stay hydrated.  I'm an overachiever.  Those of you who are in tune with the body might know where this is going.

Still, I hadn't peed much...and then it was time for the progesterone shot and my nightly concoction of medicine.  I took my Dostinex, my prenatal, my medrol steroid, my folic acid, my antibiotic, my probiotic, my fish oil, my baby aspirin, and my B12.  Then we panicked for a moment because we couldn't remember which size needle to use for the progesterone and B almost tried to convince me it was the 18...which is flippin huge.  Luckily, Dr. Google saved the day and we used the 23.  After a sore bum and my concoction, I drank some more water.  B started cooking steak because they said I need to eat a lot of protein...and I heart steak.  So about 30 minutes later...I start to feel super nauseous.  Like really really nauseated. I chilled out and pretended like I could man up, but could hardly get the steak down I felt so sick.  I ate about 5 bites and went to bed.

Right before I fell asleep, the flood gates opened.  I had to pee.  I came back to bed.  30 minutes later, back to the bathroom.  Back to bed.  An hour later, again with the peeing.  I ended up waking up every hour for the rest of the night.  I peed 8 times from 10:30-6:00am.  Obviously I didn't sleep much. It kept waking me up.

Plus, if you remember from last time, I have severe endo on my ureters and it HURTS when I have to pee.  So that wasn't a fun night. 

Near the morning, I started getting super dizzy and everything got all fuzzy and dark when I would get up.  You know, like when you stand up too fast but it lasted way longer.  Well, the last time I got up before the sun came up, I was really dizzy but I made it from the bed into our bathroom before I completely lost my balance, everything went black, and I fell forward into the wall in front of me.  Luckily, our toilet room is small and the wall wasn't very far away.  I was able to sort of catch myself and sit on the toilet.

I went back to bed because I was super out of it.  Then B got up and left and I couldn't sleep anymore.  I got up again (to pee of course) and I made it to the bathroom before I blacked out again and fell over.  I remember just kind of standing there with my legs buckling, swaying back and forth, and reaching out in front of me. I couldn't see anything. Then, it just went black and I was on the wall.

I crawled back in bed. Laid there for a minute and talked myself out of any serious "what's wrong with me" feelings.  I got up to walk to the kitchen and totally blacked out again, but I didn't fall. I just couldn't see and I was super dizzy.  I gained my balance and made it to the couch.  I tried again a few minutes later, same thing.  I made it to my phone and called B.  He told me to call the doc.  I made it to the computer and I looked up OHSS symptoms...none of which were anything I had experienced. 

I called and told the nurse I had blacked out a couple of times and fell in the bathroom. She got Dr. Z on the phone who said I had to go to the ER. I called B back and he started making his way back home from work.

I stumbled my way into the kitchen to grab some trail mix and a water.  I thought nuts would help. I sat on the couch and ate and drank.  About 20 minutes later, I was feeling a little better and got up...and I only got a little dizzy.  I made it into the bathroom and was feeling ok.  I peed (yet again) and got up without being dizzy this time.  About five minutes later I got up and wasn't dizzy anymore.

I called Dr. Z back but he had gone into surgery, so the nurse took my call and said I still had to go to the hospital.  So B came and made me some eggs, got me a banana and a gatorade, and took me to the hospital. We were in the waiting room when Dr. Z called me back.  At this point I was feeling much better.  I thought it just must of been some crazy low blood sugar or something.  He said I didn't need to go to the hospital...but I  was already there.  Then he said that the Dostinex does have a side effect of blackouts...just rarely.  So he said I should cut back to one every other day.

I decided since I was already registered in the ER I should just been seen.  Big mistake.  We spent the next 6 hours waiting for tests and I was examined all over.  They thought it was my heart, then OHSS, then my blood pressure.  Turns out, my blood pressure went way down when I stood up, even hours later.

So my diagnosis was...I was dehydrated.

What?

Yes, dehydrated.  That's how the doctor explained it to me.  I hate doctors sometimes.  I mean, I told him how much I had peed, I told him that I had drank more yesterday than what's humanly natural.  It's not dehydration.  They gave me IV fluids.  I called my mom who was with our nurse friend who explained that it's dehydration in a sense.  Basically, I drank so much water that I peed out all of my "electrolytes" or sodium.  So I had an electrolyte imbalance.

The ER doctor told me to drink gatorade and not drink so much water. 

Got it.  All that for "drink gatorade".

WTF?

So, anyway, I'm sitting in the ER in my gown with my EKG monitors all over my chest...when I get another call from Dr. Z's office.  I almost forgot that we were going to find out the fertilization report today!!

Well- it's very, very good news!  Out of the 28 retrieved, 21 were mature.  Two were "intermediate" maturity so they kept those in the bunch and the others were immature.  So they did ICSI on 23 eggs...and drumroll...19 fertilized!!!!!

19!!!!!!

We had one fertilize abnormally with two sets of DNA and the others didn't make it.  But there's 19 beautiful little ones growing right now!  I told our embryologist that the next hurdle is the 3-5 day "situation" we encountered the last time..."so take really, really good care of them, ok?".  She laughed.

I asked her what we learned from this then, and she said "we learned that you have to do ICSI". Ha. Yeah, got it. There's no way of telling whether it's a sperm problem or an egg problem (I'm putting my money on the egg being the stubborn one...I am the one with all the problems, plus, I had that high FSH number...).  But she said that fertilization naturally is definitely a problem for us.

I hope, hope, hope that this bodes well for their continued growth.  Please keep growing little ones.  Please keep splitting and working your magic!

So I'm sitting here in way too much abdominal pain.  I feel even more like I got kicked by a horse and I'm super bloated.  But apparently, it's not OHSS.  It's just my body's way of saying "I did my job, now you pay".

I'm so, so, so glad!