Frozen Eggs Are Better! But OHS is not....

I've finally been able to crawl out of my hell. These past few weeks have been really tough. Thanks to the help and support from so many people, we were able to freeze my eggs! My onco-fertility doctor is AH-MAZING. She got us started with the process right away when I met her the morning of my second lumpectomy. It was a long grueling process of daily multi-shots and pills. And incredibly, I was able to give myself shots! I never thought I could do this. I've never been good with needles and suddenly, I'm stabbing myself in the stomach several times a day. It made me feel miserable. And get HUGE. Turns out, I'm Fertile Myrtle. I had over 40 eggs at the beginning of the process. And then they alllll started growing! My doctor said your ovaries are usually 3 cm. By the end of the process, I had individual eggs that were bigger then that. Specifically, an egg my mother named Harold. He was the lead egg, the egg my body had chosen as "the one", when these meds forced him to bring the others along with him. So I was basically carrying around a fish bowl of ginormous ovaries and tons of little egg follicles. I had to go in every day for blood draws and vaginal ultra sounds. Literally, my 2 worst fears. Anything close to a pap, and blood draws. Now I'm a freakin' pro. My biggest life accomplishment happened during this process, I was able to sit up during a blood draw. Never in my life have I remained conscious while sitting up during a blood draw, or hell, even talking about a blood draw. It took me 29 years but I'm a grown up now! And by the end of the process, I was even watching the creepy TV that was mounted on the ceiling showing the ultra sound and all my gross little eggs. It's just such a weird process and being violated before 8 am every morning wasn't my favorite. One nurse even asked if I wanted to insert the ultrasound wand myself....ummm....no. This is not a porno. But thanks for the offer. And thanks for making the rest of my appointment super awkward. It was pretty strange for me toting around a cooler with shots and needles in it and mixing up my drugs in parking lots, and my cubicle at work. It was a whole new world for me. And finally, after I was the size of a house and extremely uncomfortable and I'm pretty sure scrambling eggs at every sneeze, my day came! They called and said I would do my 'trigger' shots that night! It's all timed so perfectly. The trigger shots make your body ovulate in 35 hours and they swoop in at the 34th hour and vacuum them all up! (with a dyson my brother told me) The first shot was this huge mamba-jamba that Sam had to stick into my outer-hip/top of butt and into the muscle. It hurt and he had a huge grin on his face the whole time. Which made me very skeptical! But he did it, and then I had to do a different shot an hour later, and then another one 12 hours later. So a day and a half later, we went in for the retrieval! I was so excited and also so excited just to be done with it. Not only because I was so uncomfortable, but it was just one thing I could check off my list. They had me fill out some paperwork, like an emergency contact list for my eggs incase I don't pay storage or I abandon them? That was bizarre. Who do you put down for the emergency contact of eggs? Well of course I started with Sam. Then I asked my brother if I could put him down, he thought it was weird and never really said yes, but I still put him down! (can't wait till he reads this! hahaha) And my mother. I assume if they can't find me, my mother would know where I am. If not, she would hunt me down. Then they asked if I did abandon them, what I want them to do with them, donate them to a couple, donate them to research or dispose of them. Which I assume means flush them down the toilet. Honestly, I would love to donate and help someone have a baby, but I couldn't get over the fact that there could be little Becca's running around and me not know about them? I clearly could never be a promiscuous man. And I just feel like I would be in a grocery store with some shit of a child running amok and terrorizing people, and it would dawn on me. That little bitch looks just like me. And that's just too much for me to handle, to wonder about. So I decided if I abandoned my eggs, they should be used for research. I would hate just to waste all these little things! The procedure itself went well. I woke up to "38 :)" written on my hand by my doctor- that was how many eggs they were able to retrieve, and it actually turned out to be 39!

After the retrieval, my doctor informed my mom that Harold didn't make it :( But I did set her record for most eggs which was previously 37. I really lived up to Fertile Myrtle! They were able to freeze 12 eggs that day, and another 13 matured over night- so I have 25 little eggs frozen! I felt fine afterwards, we went home and I took a nap. But when I woke up, I was immediately uncomfortable. I couldn't breathe when I laid down, barely when I sat up. I had shooting pains when I tried to breathe. It was horrible. Sam was at school so my mom came over and took me to my doctor who was waiting for me. She looked and listened, and said we needed to get to the ER, I have Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome. My doctor said less then 1% of people get this form of OHS. So go figure, that would be me. And she said with all the precautions we took, it was a minuscule chance. Way less then 1%. Although it was pretty funny to scare the shit out of the radiologist at the ER during my CT scan when he saw my GINORMOUS ovaries! But it was a long few days of just feeling the worst that I can ever remember in my life. Literally, my lumpectomy's were a walk in the park compared to this. I never even took so much as a Tylenol after my last one. But this was just a whole different level. My ovaries were 20 cm each. That's almost 8 inches a piece! And I had all this fluid in my pelvis and around my lungs. I guess each follicle leaves behind fluid, and since I had 39, it was just so much fluid. There literally wasn't space in my body to drink or eat or even breathe. And I can't even tell you the pain when you're at this capacity and then start throwing up. It's some serious form of torture. I was just stuck in bed and couldn't move or get up on my own. Then a friend stopped by with some work for me, and Sam answered the door and asked if he wanted to come in and see me. WHAT? I'm literally sprawled out on the bed soaked in my own sweat and gatorade vomit like some disturbing episode of My 600 lb Life. Thankfully, he declined or he would've been running out of the house scratching his eyes out. Surgery was Thursday, and I was supposed to start chemo on Monday. Both my fertility doctor and my oncologist were calling me everyday to check in, and on Sunday, my oncologist said he really thinks we should bump chemo back to Wednesday until I'm doing better. I really hesitated because I had mentally prepared myself for chemo. But he was definitely right, Monday morning I was still in terrible shape. I couldn't breathe still, or even walk. But I was so lucky because my doctors, one is in-network, one is out-of-network, really co-managed my care so well. They started texting each other about me and what we needed to do. So Monday and Tuesday I went in for iv fluids and an ultrasound. They bumped my chemo back again until the next monday. But it's really tough to have to prepare myself for another day. I feel much less prepared now that it is tomorrow, then I felt last week. The other thing that I missed in the OHS-hell, the Race for the Cure. My work had set up a team and I was so bummed to miss it.

I'll be happy when tomorrow is over, when my first chemo is in the books and I'll know much better what to expect in the future. Theres only so much planning and prepping you can do for something like this when you don't really even know what to except. But crossing my fingers that all goes well! And thank you again to everyone who helped us get here and get those 25 little eggs frozen! Although, my mother is now asking for grandchildren out of every egg.....