Monday, December 10, 2007

not your usual test

I think the SAT was easier. (definitely easier emotionally!!!)

It was a LONG day. It took us an hour and forty minutes to get to the clinic this morning. It was stop and go traffic for about an hour of that. That wasn't the best way to start off the morning.

Also, the blood draw didn't happen until later in the morning... D's mind festered, worrying about it a bit too long. The nurses were really good with him, tho. He only passed out twice. I was a bit surprised, but I guess we should have done that part first thing, to put him out of the misery rather than dwelling on it for a couple of hours.

Other than that, it seemed to go pretty well. We did a LOT. The only telling result was an ultrasound on me that showed that I had very constricted blood flow to the uterus. That could be a Problem. Other tests included cystic fibrosis, genetic karyotyping (on me), antibody testing on both of us, and a hysteroscopy (camera) to check for fibroids or endometriosis. That came out normal, everything looked fine inside.

Moving forward, the dr suggested doing a new kind of testing on the embryos, but the results take 6 weeks to come back. That would mean doing a retrieval and a transfer on two different cycles, 2 months apart. I think that testing is called CGH (or something like that, you might want to try a google search on that).

One of the other checks they did was for the # of follicles they could possibly get on a medicated cycle. I only had 7-9, which is low, but he said that might still work if they come back w/ normal chromosomes. With the testing done above, they'd know the gender of each embryo before it was even put back in. Interesting, no?

When they do that testing, they freeze everything, do the test, then thaw them when the results come back. Their thaw rate is 98%, which is amazing. ORM's thaw rate was around 50%.

I think that's it. I'm exhausted.

3 comments:

Cindy said...

Wow, sounds like quite a day.

Interesting about the embryo testing... I haven't heard of that one. And yeah, that's an AMAZING thaw rate.

Amy said...

Thanks for your note. Money is not an issue since I have insurance. Also I was checking out SART and Cornell's success rates are about 20-30% less then CCRM's. It blew my mind. I definitely want to go there but DH is not ready. I'll probably end up cycling local and going in the summer of 2008. I hope I still have ins then.

D. said...

I saw your comment on Amy's blog. I can see your point.

I really enjoyed reading your blog. So interesting to see everything that CCRM does. If I don't get good results in my FET I will probably go out there, too. They clearly seem to be the best by a longshot. You are definitely in good hands now! I wish you the best of luck!