We had our follow up appointment with our doctor today, about our last failed IVF. I had been writing my list of questions since last week...so having a week to think about questions, and research online, makes for a long list of questions. I ended up with 5 hand written pages, that I went through and organized into categories last night, so there was some order to them when I asked them...instead of jumping around.
So we sat down with the doctor, and he took the time to answer every one of the questions that I had. He gave his input on the information that I found online, and let us know if he thought these things were worth trying, or just plain crazy. Most of them he figured were worth a try, and couldn't hurt. So it looks like we have a plan for the next transfer.
I will call on day one of my next cycle, and start the wonderful BC pill soon after. Then at some point after that I will start lupron. I guess they will let me know when it gets closer. We discussed trying a higher dose of prednisone and/or switching to dexamethasone. I am not sure which we will do yet. If we up the dose of prednisone, we will probably do a much higher dose (60mg) for a few days after transfer, and then maybe lower it to 20mg at least until the beta. We also talked about adding in Claratin, and pepcid, which he agreed couldn't hurt anything, so it is worth a try. And thankfully, he would like to try intralipids. So we will be adding that this time. I will most likely stay on the crinone, baby aspirin, folgard, lovenox and prenatal. He gave me some endometrin to see if I have an allergic reaction to it. I can try it and see, or we can just plan on Crinone for next time. It is all still so confusing, but at least we have a plan in place of where we are going next.
We also talked about other tests that we can run, to see if there are other problems going on. His office is supposed to call me with how much the tests will cost, and then we can decide if we want to pay for the tests. I am leaning toward skipping the NK cell testing, because we are going to treat with intralipids anyway, so the results won't make a difference in treatment. I am leaning towards paying for the cost of the HLA and DQ Alpha testing, because if it comes back 100% positive, we may as well not waste anymore embryos by putting them in me. If it is a 50% match, then we know that it may benefit us to transfer only one at a time. And at least if it isn't a match...then we can feel at ease that, that isn't the problem. I am really hoping that they come back with insurance will cover some of the cost, but I do think that even if they don't cover it, we will probably get the testing done.
If it comes back with 100% match, it is pretty much game over for us. the only way that we would be able to have a baby is through a gestational surrogate. I am all for it, if that is what we have to do, but Hubby is hesitant. Plus the cost of that would be a bit more prohibiting for us. Time will tell though. No sense in worrying over this at this point. We will cross that bridge when we get there.
If you ask me for my gut feeling, I really think that the intralipids will be our answer. We will try the other meds (claratin, pepcid, etc.) and I do think that the combination of these additions of medication will make the difference for us. We have some good looking blasts to transfer, and with having 6 frozen, we have a really good chance of having 2 to transfer. Part of me really wants to skip the testing before this transfer...do one more transfer before we test the DQ Alpha and HLA. I think it is because I really don't want to know the result if it is bad news. I don't want to give up the dream of getting pregnant and having our baby. So maybe we will wait to test. We can see if all this extra stuff helps...and if it doesn't work...then we can do the tests. I guess I will wait to see what insurance says.
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