Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The case of the missing hormones

Alternately titled "Where's my f-ing estrogen?"

Even on the fertility shots, my estradiol level is in the crapper. My blood test on Friday showed a level of 23 on day 6 using 150ml of HMG. So my RE upped me to 225ml per shot, which I was initially happy with since I'd like to produce more than one egg this month. I'm not looking for multiples, but I'd like the chances of at least fertilizing one to increase.

But even with the increase, my level on day 9 was only 160. So we increased my dose again, this time to 300ml, which is four vials per shot.

Since I only had enough medicine for two full cycles, this brought me down to seven vials when I had twelve more doses. Typical pharmacies don't have fertility meds in stock, so after my wonderful fertility nurse made about a dozen phone calls, she found a mail-order pharmacy that is shipping out five vials by this afternoon.

The downside is, always, the cost. Those five vials came to $340. If I had ordered them from my London pharmacy, they would have only been $75. Lesson learned—-order more meds than you expect to need. But not buying the extra vials would have meant wasting the whole cycle and the $300 I already spent on the first 20 vials.

Another blood test and ultrasound tomorrow morning with IUI this weekend, assuming there is something there to aim at.

2 comments:

  1. Crap! That sucks that you needed more meds. Glad you were able to get them quickly, but that really sucks about the cost. But you would not have wanted to waste this cycle - very good decision!

    Hoping the additional meds get your body going in the right way!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm sorry to hear about your sub-par estrogen levels. I will be praying that the extra meds will rev things up so you have a a couple "targets" this cycle. I am praying for you! xoxo Cath

    ReplyDelete