Following on from B's last post (which can be read here), B shares continues to share her journey with us.
Waiting, waiting and a little more waiting.
Well, I haven’t blogged for a while, we left off with our GP saying they could not do our screening bloods. This would have cost us £500 at the clinic we were at, which we just couldn’t afford with a wedding to pay for. So I looked for other clinics and called to ask if they charged for screening bloods for donors, one of them didn’t, just for the AMH test which would have to be redone as my old clinic wouldn’t give me a copy of my result with them unless I paid £70 and spent a lot of time messing about, so we decided to pay the £90 to re do the AMH and I booked an appointment.
Out first appointment was very different to the first appointment at the other clinic, I had a scan and OH had an SA (semen analysis), I had a chat with a nurse, then we waited for the SA to be analysed and then saw the doctor, the doctor confirmed we would be good to do straight IVF rather than ICSI as J’s sperm is good, we just have problems getting the baby in the right place. So, now it was just a case of redoing my AMH, the clinic wanted it doing in the first 5 days of my period, we then went on holiday, my period came whilst on holiday, it was a week late (and we were oddly excited about it!), we called the clinic from abroad and booked my AMH bloods, we came back off holiday on the Monday, my blood test was booked for the Tuesday, I went and did my bloods, it was just a case of waiting a week or two for the results now, then I could book my counselling and my screening bloods.
On the Wednesday I went to work, my first day back after a week and half off, I had woken up with pains on my left side, this was niggling at my mind, so I left work and went to buy a pregnancy test, I went to the loo in work and peed on the stick, it came up positive, for me this was instant horror and panic, I burst into tears, left the loo, told my boss I had to go and A&E and called J. This may seem an odd reaction to me finding out I was pregnant after trying for so long, but I had had my period, it had just stopped, I had pain in my left side (the side with my remaining tube) and I didn’t have any pregnancy symptoms. I KNEW it was another ectopic as soon as that other line came up. I was terrified; I would’ve been about 6 weeks.
I don’t want to go too much into my ordeal with the NHS, I ended up visiting 2 different hospitals, 3 times in total after being told twice by each hospital that there was nothing wrong with me, it was just a miscarriage and I would be fine, one doctor even told me to ignore the pain and sent me home, needless to say I ended up right back on his ward screaming out in pain and they finally accepted I was having an ectopic and treated me.
Sounds stupid but I was led in my hospital bed panicking that all this would ruin the IVF, as well as mourning the loss of another baby. Two ectopics and a miscarriage, why me? I called the clinic and explained what was going on and cancelled the councelling and blood screening appointments I had booked and moved them back a week. I was treated with methotrexate which is a chemotherapy drug, it ruins your folate (folic acid) levels and your immune system, I was so ill, I spent a week in hospital, but this also meant that I couldn’t conceive until the 15th of June, I had to wait 6 weeks from the methotrexate injections they gave me.
So I was off work ill, went for my counselling session and bloods, took J’s blood results that the GP had done in that they needed, he now just needed to go get his HIV done at the STI clinic (hilarious right!?), there were a lot of tears, spent some time trying to recoup, probably went back to work to early, I struggled, mentally and physically I was exhausted, I am still exhausted and no one seems to even try to understand, the lack of compassion is astounding sometimes, but I do work with a load of men.
I was told I could chase my blood results after 4 weeks, I patiently waited 4 weeks to the day and then called the clinic, the results were back, I booked an appointment for the next week.
So now we are nearly here, we went for our appointment on Tuesday, saw the same doctor as we did last time, she’s lovely and has so much time for us, we’ve got to the point now where the receptionist even knows us when we walk in, the doctor said yep, everything was good, I explained earliest I could start is mid may (next week! Haha) and she said all we were missing was J’s HIV blood test, then we could be matched, on Wednesday J called the STI clinic and chased his results, yes they were back, yes he could collect them, so he went to the clinic and asked for a print out, and guess what? They can’t print out?! Minor panic, they had to get the medical secretary to write up the results and print them out, J collected them on Friday morning, we emailed them over and they went into the doctor’s pile of things to sign off. Our file will now go to the egg sharing coordination nurse and they will look for a match, when one is found, they’ll call us. I know people who have been matched within 10 days, on their website they say it can be 1 to 2 months. My dream is to be cycling on my 26th birthday (15th of June) but we shall see.
So here we are, just waiting for a call, hoping someone wants my eggs.
