It Should Have Been Me........

I've had a few setbacks in the past week, lots of issues with my chest and yet another abdominal infection has left me in a lot of pain, feeling like I'm back at square one and still unable to sleep at night. As I lay awake last night, watching each hour pass by until it was time for Patrick to get up for work and eventually I dozed off at I guess what must have been around 9am. 

At around 11:30am, I am awakened from my slumber by the sound of my phone beeping, thinking it was just a text message, I was prepared to ignore it and just respond later, but it was kinda niggling at me for some reason, so I picked up my phone to see that I had received an email from Gordon entitled 'New Blog', but there was no content to the email, not even an invitation to check for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors (I'm not a pedant, honestly...!!!).

I open the Aculife website on my phone to find a post from a very excited Gordon about his experience yesterday. Yesterday some pretty significant ground was broken. Yesterday two worlds collided and became one. Yesterday saw the welcoming of Complimentary Medicine into the world of Western Medicine. Yesterday was the day when a Practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine was welcomed into and permitted to work alongside the finest Doctors in the field of fertility and reproductive medicine. That's pretty amazing.

You see, up til now it has been a battleground where although acupuncture has been used to compliment fertility treatment for many years, It has been seen by most IVF Clinic Directors as a waste of time, as some Mickey-Mouse, complete waste of money attempt at giving yourself some sense of false hope. I've even been directly discouraged from having acupuncture as a compliment to my fertility journey by an IVF Clinic Director, despite its positive effects being unquestionably proven. 

My experience has primarily been that acupuncture is somewhat of a taboo subject inside the walls of IVF Clinics and is met with a head-tilted, nodding sympathetically gesture of feigned empathy to the tune of 'Ah sure, you'll try anything when you want something so badly'.

This has meant that the morning of Transfer, the day that you need to be at your most relaxed, becomes the day when you have to perform a feat of logistically epic proportions on top of undergoing the whole Transfer process. Your timing must be precise... especially if, like me... you have to travel the morning of the transfer. 

My experiences have been as follows... So, Transfer is at 12, but I need to call the Clinic at 10:30 to see if the embryos survived the thawing process, but in order to transfer at 12, I need to be at the Clinic by 11:30 at the latest and I need to leave at least 30 minutes of travel time between the Acupuncture Clinic and the Fertility Clinic to allow for traffic and trying to find parking and any other delays that may arise, so that means I need to leave the Acupuncture Clinic by 11, so I need to arrive at the Acupuncture Clinic for Pre-Transfer acupuncture at 10:15, which means that I need to leave home at 9am. Leaving home at 9am is not a problem, but having the constant worries of 'I'm going to be late......... I'm going to miss my appointment......... Oh God, why is there so much traffic???........ It's just raining, why has the whole world decided to drive at 5 miles an hour???... Why is there never anywhere to park?...' Along with the worries of ' I wonder if my embryos have even survived......... I've come all this way and I could be told that I have no embryos to transfer........   Only 20 more minutes til I can call the Clinic to find out.... seriously, is this clock going backwards...???' And once you have completed the Transfer, you then have to take some time to recover, before returning to the Acupuncture Clinic for Post-Transfer treatment...!!!

All of that stress and worry on top of what is a hugely stressful procedure anyway. 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could arrive at the Fertility Clinic on the morning of Transfer, go to your prep room (which doubles as your own private recovery room), have your Acupuncturist there to treat you immediately before and after the Transfer and then go home and relax? What a different process that would be and that is what took place yesterday at SIMS. The burden of that extra stress was taken from the patient and distributed between the Fertility Doctors and the Acupuncturist. They had to figure out the logistics and the timing and it was up to them to make sure it all went as smoothly as possible.

And from what I understand, it was something quite amazing. You can read Gordon's blog post here. 

What an amazing development and one he should be very, very proud of. He has created a synergy, he has built a bridge over sometimes hostile/sometimes toxic waters and that is an amazing step, a huge achievement........... So why have I been sitting here in a pathetic state of misery, crying inconsolably since reading it?

It should have been me... and that is not just me saying generally 'it should be me, when is it going to be my turn?'........ it actually should have been me.

On my second visit to SIMS Clinic, during my first full consultation with Dr. Walsh when we were discussing our next cycle (this was before we got the genetic results), I asked Dr. Walsh about acupuncture before and after Transfer and he responded that he would highly recommend it and knowing my connections with Gordon and Aculife Clinic, he suggested that I ask Gordon to recommend an Acupuncturist in Dublin that I can attend before and after Transfer. So... me being me, knowing that Gordon is already in discussions with Dr. Walsh over trying to create some sort of 'synergy' between the two Clinics, and also being of the long-standing impression that if you don't ask - you don't get.... explained to Dr. Walsh the importance of having your own Acupuncturist by your side, not just any Acupuncturist, but the Acupuncturist who has been on this journey with you, the Acupuncturist that you know, trust and respect, but also... the Acupuncturist that knows you, and knows what will work best for you. (Seriously, if I'm not gona let 'just anybody' cut my hair, I'm certainly not going to want 'just anybody' influencing the outcome of the most important procedure of my life...!!!). Aided by Patrick's smirking statement 'if its not gona be Gordon, its not gona happen'.

 - Dr. Walsh agreed to it and thanked me for opening his eyes to the connection between the patient and her Acupuncturist. He told me to have Mr. Mullins contact him about it and they would put arrangements in place for Gordon to be present in SIMS immediately before and after my next transfer. He explained to me that it is not something that is usually allowed, but as they are in talks about it anyway and because of my long-time connection with Gordon and Aculife Clinic, it would actually be a good opportunity to trial and assess how it would actually work in practice.

Reading Gordon's blog post, I wanted to be so happy for him and I so appreciated that he had notified me directly of this blog post - I think it would have hit me a lot harder if I had just casually come across it. I couldn't help but have this be a huge reminder of just how much things have changed for me, Of where I am versus where I thought I would be. Yet again a reminder that I am being left behind and the world is moving ahead regardless. I felt like he was handing me the most amazing ice-cream with one hand, but chopping my arm off with the other. A fantastic step for fertility treatment, but one that is becoming further and further from my reach.

A follow-up email from Gordon told me that he was conscious of how it would make me feel and that even yesterday, as he entered SIMS Clinic to break this new ground, he was very aware that 

'This was supposed to be Anne-Marie'

I am honoured that I even crossed his mind yesterday, and to that extent I guess I do feel that perhaps I was part of the process in some tiny way and I know I will be very proud of that... once the initial blow has passed. 

It really shows the strength of Gordon's dedication and determination that he traveled from Cork to Dublin to carry out Pre and Post Transfer Acupuncture for one patient. He is a true advocate for this and his understanding of what a fertility patient actually goes though is second to none.

Now... I wonder how he feels about travelling to the Czech Republic for Pre and Post Transfer Acupuncture........ ;-)

A Genius And A Gentleman

We had an appointment with Dr. Walsh at Sims Clinic on Thursday, the 5th of September. I haven't gotten around to writing about it yet because my uncle died suddenly and was buried the day after the appointment at Sims, so... with all that entailed, I guess I didn't really get a chance to process what had taken place during that appointment.... I suppose I'm hoping that by writing about it, it will help me in some way to process it.

So... we arrived at the Clinic, had to fill out some forms and were shown to a private waiting room. We didn't have long to wait... for the first time ever... a consultant was early for an appointment...!!! Anyway... even though I was feeling very calm and comfortable about the appointment, I wasn't feeling anxious or anything.... I just could not sit still for the few minutes that we were waiting. I was walking around the room, looking out the window, checking my phone... I guess I was subconsciously anxious or something.

After a few minutes, Dr. Walsh (he is the owner of the Sims Clinic) came and introduced himself... Yep... the consultant himself came to see us in the waiting room and he brought us to his office. This alone was unheard of in our experience elsewhere. What appears to be the 'norm' is to be left waiting in a large waiting room with between five and ten other couples and have your names called out by a nurse, who then brings you to see the consultant in his big important office. This was different, very different.

Our appointment with Dr. Walsh lasted almost 2 hours (yep... I did say 2 hours...!!!). The only way I can describe Dr. David Walsh is that he is a 'Genius and a Gentleman'  Nothing was rushed, nor at any point did we feel like we were an imposition or were delaying him. He went through our entire history with a fine tooth comb, explained every minute detail to us, he drew labelled diagrams for us (he has this amazing ability to write things upside down so they appear the right way for us to see as we are sitting across the desk from him. Ok... I know this says nothing about his ability to help us conceive, but it means a lot that he learned how to do this to accommodate and make things easier for the patients, the people sitting across the desk from him, the people depending on him to provide one last shred of hope that maybe, just maybe it will work this time.... It was about us, not about making things easier for him.) 

He told us about all of our options, he explained about all of the testing that we could do. He told us about the process of IMSI (Intracytoplasmic morphologically selected sperm injection) which is basically a form of ICSI, the difference being that during ICSI, the sperm is magnified 400 times, during an IMSI cycle, it is magnified more than 6000 times so it gives a much better chance of picking the best sperm, the ones that will most likely result in fertilisation and hopefully, pregnancy. You can read more info about it here.
He also introduced us to EEVA (Early Embryo Viability Assessment) which is basically a system where the embryos are not disturbed in the first few days of life, they remain in the incubator and instead of being taken out every few hours to be assessed under a microscope - they are photographed every 15 minutes to give a time-lapse account of exactly how they are developing, which in turn gives a better idea of which embryos have a better chance of resulting in pregnancy and hopefully, a healthy baby. Dr. Walsh talks about EEVA here.

So... where do we go from here...??? Well, Dr. Walsh is of the opinion that a hydrosalpinx is a threat to a healthy pregnancy even after it has been cleaned and drained, so he is anxious for me to have my left tube removed before we go ahead with any further treatment. He would also like to have the inside of my womb inspected to see if there is any damage there or anything else due to the infection that had been leaking into my womb for so long, that may be preventing me from sustaining pregnancy. So... yeah... It looks like either way.... I need to have more surgery before we can even consider going ahead with any further IVF Treatment. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. I know how badly having surgery knocks  me back and how long it takes me to recover emotionally and mentally from surgery. I'm also not certain how I feel about having my left tube removed... I know it makes sense if it is not working or will be a hindrance to a pregnancy, but gosh.... removing it is so..... final.

We had some blood tests done after the appointment with Dr. Walsh. We are still waiting for  some of the results to come back, but one set of results, the Elastogram - have come back abnormally high, which indicates a high risk of problems with clotting. Yet another blow. It basically means that any future pregnancy, or indeed any surgical procedure - will need to be supported by thromboprophylaxis drugs. I guess... in my head... that is something that is fairly minor, but good to know. When you are going through any kind of an IVF cycle... its just one set of drugs after the next, it can almost become zombie-like. You take what you have to take - so a few more drugs and daily injections and heck, even throwing in a few Intralipid Infusions doesn't really make that much difference. You kind of accept that you are going to feel like crap for about 14 weeks (maybe longer) and just get on with it.

You know what - I've just written that last paragraph and have just stopped to notice the difference in my thinking and how it has changed. When I started the first cycle back in 2010, every injection was a big deal, every tablet that I took was of great significance... It was all so important. Even at the last clinic when they mentioned Intralipid Infusions and high dose steroids and blood thinners... I said 'No way', I was sick of drugs and hormones and steroids and just constant treatment and surgeries, I was fighting everything- I'd had enough. This makes me think that taking such a long break from it all was a really fantastic idea. I guess it has allowed me to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Does it really matter whether I have to inject myself 4 times a day or 10 times a day..... Does it really matter if I have to sit still for a few hours twice a week to have infusions.......... Does it really matter if I have to take 20 drugs a day instead of 10.......... Do any of these things really matter...??? My response right now is 'No', because all of those things are just temporary.... I can go through absolute hell for 3 or 4 months if it means that eventually... I will get to hold my baby. Of course I can.... I've gone through absolute hell for three years and all for nothing..... 4 months should be a dawdle, and even more so with my new-found confidence in a Fertility Clinic. 

All of this is just information right now anyway, I am not planning on going ahead with any of it until next year sometime. Patrick and I were married five years in August so we are going away for a week in October, and also, I am turning 30 in December so am planning the mother of all parties for that :-) I am planning on enjoying the rest of this year as much as I can and being fresh and ready to look at all of this again next year sometime. 

We meet with Dr. Walsh again early in October and hopefully we will have all of the test results back by then............. Now... back to Party Planning :-)