So What's Next?
After our FET failed, Dusty and I were at an absolute loss
for what the next step would be. We had
hoped and prayed so hard for that FET to work to keep us from having to make
this decision at this point. See, what
has us torn right now is we have two remaining embryos, great, right? Well, they are frozen together. Not so great.
Our RE basically said, we were almost there, and the embryo implanted, but didn’t continue to grow, and they just don’t know why. Not much of an answer. I’m not sure I expected one. I’ve learned that infertility is full of “We don’t knows”. Why am I infertile? We don’t know. Why didn’t think work? We don’t know. Why did the embryo implant, but not grow? We don’t know. Why is your clinic’s frozen success rate so low? We don’t know.
That last one really gets me. I hesitated to ask our RE that, but you know what, those rates are published, and that is just something they need to learn to answer. When looking at my clinic’s frozen embryo success rate for my category (under 35, non-donor eggs), it is a miniscule 26.8%. That’s awful! That’s barely above 1 in 4! When I compared that to another clinic nearby, but in a different state, their success rate for FETs is 55.6%! That’s double my clinic’s success rate! I specifically asked my doctor about it and he had no answer at all. He did say that 2 years ago, my clinic’s success rate was close to that of their fresh cycles (47.8% for pregnancies, 42.6% for live births). Well, rates from two years ago don’t help me now. My RE said they are constantly trying to improve their results and it is something they watch. Again, doesn’t help me much now.
We had a phone consult with the RE, commonly known in the
infertile world as the “WTF Appointment”, which stands for, well, you guessed
it. I saw a more “family friendly”
definition the other day that said it stood for “why the fail”. Sure, let’s go with that.
What did we learn in that appointment? Not much, that’s for sure! Our RE basically said, we were almost there, and the embryo implanted, but didn’t continue to grow, and they just don’t know why. Not much of an answer. I’m not sure I expected one. I’ve learned that infertility is full of “We don’t knows”. Why am I infertile? We don’t know. Why didn’t think work? We don’t know. Why did the embryo implant, but not grow? We don’t know. Why is your clinic’s frozen success rate so low? We don’t know.
That last one really gets me. I hesitated to ask our RE that, but you know what, those rates are published, and that is just something they need to learn to answer. When looking at my clinic’s frozen embryo success rate for my category (under 35, non-donor eggs), it is a miniscule 26.8%. That’s awful! That’s barely above 1 in 4! When I compared that to another clinic nearby, but in a different state, their success rate for FETs is 55.6%! That’s double my clinic’s success rate! I specifically asked my doctor about it and he had no answer at all. He did say that 2 years ago, my clinic’s success rate was close to that of their fresh cycles (47.8% for pregnancies, 42.6% for live births). Well, rates from two years ago don’t help me now. My RE said they are constantly trying to improve their results and it is something they watch. Again, doesn’t help me much now.
So, we ended our phone call with the decision that I would
return to their clinic (2 hours and 45 minutes away) for another saline
ultrasound. Yay, third in the current
year (catch the sarcasm there?). That
was an experience. They should have paid
me for that! The doctor let a resident
do it, and she lost part of the catheter in me, yes, lost, in me. Words that should never go together,
ever! But, we did get good news, as my uterus
looked fine. And all for the bargain
price of $350. *sigh*
When we returned to the fertility clinic June 5 for the
saline ultrasound, we asked the RE what he would suggest given our history, and
whether or not he thought we should move forward with transferring our two
remaining embryos, or start all over with a fresh cycle and only do SETs
(single embryo transfers). Dr. M said he
saw no reason for us to not do a frozen and transfer both. We did ask about “refreezing” one, but he
said that once they had been “thawed”, the chances of the embryo surving
another freeze and thaw was very low.
To be honest, we didn’t feel very good about that when we
left there. I think we were both
thinking we’d move forward with a fresh cycle at that point. We were honestly sick to our stomachs
weighing our options, and felt the clock ticking. Assuming I had a normal cycle, we’d have
about three weeks to figure out what we wanted to do. Not much time.
We wanted another opinion, so we called my local clinic to
book a consult with Dr. P. Well, her and
her husband, Dr. H, were going out of town for vacation towards the end of
June, and so my appointment with her was not going to be until the first week
of July. If my cycle would have been a
normal cycle that month, that would have been too late, or very close to being
too late. But, not knowing what else to
do, I went ahead and booked that appointment.
I let a couple of days go by, and decided I would call back
to see if she’d had any earlier cancelations.
She hadn’t. I decided to see if
there was any way I could get in with Dr. H any earlier. They squeezed us in for a consult appointment
on June 9th. Thank goodness!!
So, I’ll continue from there in another post, given this
post is pretty long as it is!!
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