Starting Gate

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. My parents came to stay for the week so I was pretty busy visiting. I also ended up with hives! I've never had them or seen them before and I hope I never get them again. I was put on an antibiotic and I think that's what caused the outbreak. Obviously I'm very allergic. I was itchy all day on Thanksgiving and then on Friday, I woke up covered with these huge (quarter size) looking circle-welt things all over my body. They were worse in my warm spots. So my butt was literally covered with tons of these welts that itched like mad. I had them on my thighs, bottom, breasts, face (eyelids and in my ears), even on the palms of my hands...all over pretty much. I called an on-call doctor since my doctors office was closed for the holidays and he confirmed that they were hives and said they usually last up to 6 weeks or even longer. I almost dropped the phone. He put me on Benedryl- 4 pills every 4 hours and I had my Mom and J spray me with that pink calamine lotion constantly. There were times I wanted to scrape my skin off with a knife from the itching... it was miserable. Luckily the doctor was way off on the 6 week time frame and they disappeared almost completely after 3 days. Fun times-

I am still feeling very positive about my new RE...Dr. Z. I had a financial consult and a care coordinator consult early this week. I'll be having a consult with a genetic counselor on Dec 11th. (required) They sent me a very organized binder with everything I need to know. It listed all of the pre-testing that is required from J and I. Since I've already done a lot of testing most of this is blood work. It's a long list of blood tests. Some of the blood has to be shipped to Chicago... those are for the natural killer assay and the antiphospholipid antibody test. The rest can be done locally. They'll be testing for everything from Prolactin, TSH, Cystic Fibrosis, Rubella, Hepatitis, HTLV, VDRL/RPR, ABO/RH, MTHFR, etc... to anti-sperm antibodies, antithroglobullin antibogy, antimicrosomal antibody, and Immunoglobulin IgA (which are all Immunilogical Testing). They also want a day 2 or day 3 FSH and E2 so I'll go and have it all done the same day. I expect my period to arrive early next week so I hope to have all of the blood work mid-to late next week. I really hope my FSH is lower! Say a quick prayer to my pituitary gland so that it can slow down on that FSH production :-) I'll also be driving 4 hours each way to my new clinic for a day 2 or day 3 anteal follicle count w/ Dr. Z. They plan to start me on bcp's at this time in preparation for IVF #1 if all goes accordingly. I'm hoping I can do my b/w on day 2 (isn't FSH lower on day 2 compared to day 3????)or would day 3 be lower?
and then drive up to Dr. Z on day 3. Dr. Z will tell me at that time which protocol he wants me on and I should be assigned some tentative cycle dates.

One negative- Dr. Z uses several infertility meds... he usually had his patients on 80% FSH (such as Gonal-f or Bravelle) and 20% LH (such as Repronex or Pergonal). I really like the Gonal-f pens b/c they're easy and there in no mixing, vials, etc.... well Dr. Z doesn't use the pens...only the vials so I'll have to mix all of my meds, even if I use gonal-f. For some reason he doesn't like the pens and thinks they lead to more errors in dosaging. Oh well- guess I'll have to figure it all out when the time comes- or have J figure it out.

Overall- I'm excited. I'm scared. I'm hopeful. I'm trying to take it one moment at a time.