CD2: More Fun With Mr. Needle

CD2 is upon me at last. I got a lab slip from Dr. Italian's nurse last night. It has the typical FSH/E2 but all ofthe general STD stuff they test for and since I have the bonus factor of being over 40, they added in a shitload of other blood tests for which I had to fast. Ugh.

They said I should go to LabCorp as that's where my best insurance bet will be. So I went to their site and looked for one in the Santa Cruz area. Score. One was open on Saturdays until 12PM. I headed down about 10:30AM starved from my fast. LabCorp lied. Well, their website lied. They were sold to Stanford and Saturdays were no longer available. Shit. Where to go? I slipped into the Chiro's office next door and begged their advice. They said to go to "Doctors on Duty", "just 'round the corner."

OK. I found that easy enough but they wanted a $60 fee for drawing my blood, PLUS I had to actually SEE their physician for god knows who what. What's more? They couldn't do all the tests I needed. I pleaded them to point me in the direction of yet a 3rd place. They said to head down Soquel to Dominican Hospital and that they definitely were contracted with LabCorp AND had a lab that would see me.

I headed off, following their directions, and never found the hospital. By now my blood sugar was nose diving and I was in near full migraine mode. I saw a Sutter Urgent Care and pulled over immediately. Turns out they did indeed have a lab and were happy to help me. Whew. 20 minutes later, after they'd put in the the huge list of codes for my draw...they finally called me back.

When I was finally out of there I was so relieved to finally have my tests done but then I thought, in a panic, I wonder if fasting, no food or drink for 14 hours, would fuck up my FSH/E2 tests. My thinking was: if my blood is has less volume because of the fast, then won't my levels of FSH be falsely high? So I hemmed and hawed most of the day over whether I should redo my tests tomorrow, on CD3. It would have been nice to have done a 2nd test, but my reason for doing FSH and CD2 rather then CD3 was that I want that number to be lower if possible.

My last FSH was something wretched like 17 or 17.5. If this one that I took today is elevated then I'm going to be screwed. Dr. Italian won't likely let me cycle if I'm above 12 or a bit more. He CAN, however, submit my case to their internal medical review committee to see if they'd consent to let me cycle.

Crap.

So maybe I should have gone to the Hoity Toity College IVF clinic for a consult. There's a doc there who is fine with high FSH levels - but their overall stats, even for younger women, is rather sucky.

Dr. Pompy would make me do a FSH "jump through the hoops" test...so that's out, too, I think.

What to do?

Along another note, I got a call on Thursday that a set of 3 embryos were ready for me if I wanted them. I received the packet on them that same day. There are only 3 embryos, the quality is mid grade, and the biological mother listed both Alzheimers and Parkinsons in her medical history. Her descenents didn't seem to live too long either. One the father's side, he didn't list much in the way of medical history. A red flag. Both were short. So, I'm passing on them. I'd rather go for a larger cluster of embryos. 3 isn't much. The mom was 32 at retrieval...sort of midrange.

Hmmm....lots to think about and things will be moving rather fast from here out.

So I started my BCPs today...and will wait to hear on my FSH values. Should get them by Tuesday at the latest since Monday is a holiday.

Stay tuned for more fun with high FSH.