Fertility + Cancer = Headache

Today we met with the infertility specialist.


WARNING! WARNING! This post contains words such as eggs and ovaries. If this is not the post for you no hard feelings, just skip it, the next one will be normal cancer stuff again! 


Thank you and goodbye forever. Or till tomorrow.




So.
Infertility.
I just need to let you know, when we first started talking about getting pregnant. Way back when we first got married, I told Dan and a few close friends that I would NEVER do IVF. I wasn't interested in all of that intervention just to get pregnant. I didn't want all those needles and procedures when there are a ton of kids looking for a good home. I told Dan we would adopt if I couldn't get pregnant without IVF and that would be that.


Amazing what happens to your opinion when all your options are taken away.


I was already diagnosed with PCOS the same day I found out about the Lymphoma. PCOS is very treatable and usually women have no trouble getting pregnant if they have it. 


When we talked to our oncologist about pregnancy after chemotherapy he recommended getting some embryos frozen so that if the chemo caused early menopause I could still get pregnant later.  We talked to our fertility specialist today about what that process would look like. 

Dan made this for me to explain what I can expect now for my summer.

It looks crazy. Absolutely crazy.

Instead of doing everything gradually they are putting me on the fast track. I will start hormones next week. Two shots a day for 15 days. I go in for ultrasounds and blood tests every 3 days to check that everything is going well. The week of July 9th I head over to Indy where they will do the procedure. They will put me under using Propofol (Yay, Michael Jackson!) and do a simple procedure to extract the eggs. Then they will fertilize and put them on ice till we need them again. 


Luckily insurance covers this, so even though I am going to be shooting myself up and going to Indianapolis for a procedure with lots of needles and more drugs, I don't have to pay for it! 


And at the end, when I am all done. When the cancer is gone and the chemotherapy is over we can have our own little Hartman.


There is nothing I want more.


Tomorrow is the PET scan. I am a little nervous since I know so much is riding on it, but I will focus on not freaking out in the little tube.


Wish me luck.