One wish

Less than 5 days to a new year and I must be lying if I say I am not looking forward to leave 2013. 2013 is by far one of the most challenging years I have encountered so far in so many aspects but I am not going to grieve about those here, I just want to look forward and march on.

Today marked the first day of the 2nd cycle of my fertility treatment. Ok, maybe not truly the first day of the treatment since I have finished a course of Femara yesterday but the first day of at least 4 visits to the hospital in the next 1 week. Today, I had the first scan for follicle tracking and the first dose of Puregon injection (the injection site on the stomach is still painful at this moment!) and I shall be going back to the hospital every other day next week for the same procedures (with daily Puregon injection at my local GP) and hopefully IUI (intrauterine insemination) on Friday.

Why am I sharing this experience openly? Because believe me, it is one overwhelming process to go through and I hope by sharing this, will help those in similar predicament to further understand the process and hopefully will give them enough guts to start the treatment before it's too late. From my own experience, reading blogs and forums on top of the usual medical sites before and during my first IUI treatment did help me to understand the process better, especially the do's and and dont's not normally shared formally by the doctors.

Back to my treatment. I first visited an O&G specialist in 2011, a year after Big Boss and I got married. Initial checks didn't reveal any problems so we were not that bothered. We initially thought of starting the treatment in 2012 but we bought our house last year (hence a new significant financial commitment) hence the plan got pushed aside. This year, after a chain of events, I finally made up my mind to kickstart a more aggresive effort to conceive. I went to see Prof Zainul of PPUKM and almost immediately, IUI as the first treatment option was decided upon. A course of high-dose Clomid was started followed by 3 visits to MAC (medically-assisted conception unit in PPUKM) for follicle-tracking scan and on day-14 of my cycle, IUI was conducted by Prof himself and I was put on Duphaston after that for luteal support. The whole process until then was relatively smooth although juggling between supervising students' clinical clerkships at Hospital Kajang, other tasks at the office and frequent visits to MAC was pretty tiring.

Then came the longest 14-day wait to know whether the IUI was successful or not. I became anxious at times and even emotionally unstable as well as alternating between being indifferent (probably just denial mode) and highly hopeful/ desperation at other times. It was awful. It was awful to me and I am sure to my other half too. I became too anxious as days went by that I did a premature UPT only 7 days post IUI and saw a faint line. But by the second week, I had a horrible flu fever and daily stomach cramps then onwards and beta HCG blood test I did on day-14 broke my heart. It was negative. Prof explained that the stomach cramps that I experienced on the second week probably a sign of rejection although the exact cause remained unknown.

So, here I am embarking on my second cycle of IUI process with a totally different regimen (Femara + Puregon). The scan today revealed good egg sizes and even my ET is thicker than during the first cycle of treatment. Hopefully, I am emotionally more prepared and stronger this time round. I have taken a week off next week just so that I can (hopefully) reduce my stress level although I have to bring home a big load of reports and exam papers to mark. Pray for me ya!