Foreign bodies pt. 2 (Or don’t tell me I can’t)

Well hello again!

I can hear you asking yourselves right now, “What could that girl possibly have to write about now that everyone knows there is no chemo in her future?” Can’t we just get back to normal already?! Well, dear readers, I am am with you! I’d love nothing more than to be most worried about where we will be for Thanksgiving and what to make. We are on the home stretch though I promise.

One of the sort of strange things about this cancer is that it has made me realize I want to have kids. Not soon, not tomorrow or really even next year but it’s a journey I want to take. For some reason, the idea that it might not be possible for me to have children of my own made the choice crystal clear. It is again the rebel in me. Tell me that I can’t and I’ll show you that I will. With the uncertainty of whether there’d be chemo in my future we decided to contact a fertility specialist about freezing some of my eggs.

We met with Dr. B for the first time the Friday before my surgery. I was expecting a quick chat about options but instead was put on the fast track to egg production. I was poked, prodded, questioned and examined. I was put on hormones to begin the process and oh what a process it was.

First they put me on birth control pills to stimulate a period which, as we all learned in our high school health class, is the beginning of a menstrual cycle. A couple of days into that cycle they began me on hormone shots in my belly twice per day. These were to stimulate the follicles in my ovaries that house eggs to begin enlarging. They also began to ramp up my estrogen levels. During this 10 day period with the belly shots Jake (the best chauffeur a girl could ever want) and I had to drive the hour and a half or so to Portland every other day. It would take about half an hour each visit to get an ultrasound to measure follicle size and to get blood work to check on estrogen levels. From there it was off to eat good food in Portland. Some recommendations would be Olympic Provisions (duh, and especially for brunch), Sweedeedee (almond poundcake), Dick’s (even though they are a little paleo-preachy), and Melt for mac-n-cheese.

When my follicles reached appropriate size and my estrogen level was just right I was given a trigger shot which caused me to produce a ton of eggs. Two days after the trigger shot we went back for egg retrieval. They put me into twilight sleep and (I’ll spare you the really gory stuff here) removed 32 eggs. 25 of which were the right candidates for freezing! Not bragging here but they told me the average is 19!

And here they are! Well, some of em anyway. I’ll be needing help naming all these little things….

That was last Thursday and I am still feeling bloated, crampy and uncomfortable. I have to be very careful not to feel like this whole bit was for naught since I don’t have to go through chemo. Chemo would have ravaged my ovaries so this was to give me a little insurance. Now I will just be able to stop taking the Tamoxifen (anti-hormone therapy) for a while and should be able to naturally conceive. I guess insurance is still insurance and I’m glad we are covered just in case…

I want to say some quick words of thanks to JoAnn, my nurse liaison with Project H.E.R. for getting me in touch with the Livestrong foundation and their Fertile Hope program. They, in conjunction with Walgreens covered the cost of all of my meds and appointments. Oregon Reproductive Medicine put me on the fast track program and are storing my eggs for me at a pretty ridiculously discounted cost. I am so grateful to these organizations for helping me through this process. Lastly, I am grateful for football. I know, I never thought I’d say it but poor Jake has got to get his testosterone from somewhere cause the estrogen in this room is even making me want to wear pink. (Not really…)