Saturday, August 04, 2007

Two embryos on board!


I'm back from SLC now. All morning I was dreading hearing the phone ring, fearing it would be the embryologist telling me not to bother coming up because none of my embies made it. But no phone call, and when I got up there the doctor told me 2 out of the 4 survived the thaw. One looked pretty good, one pretty bad, but still hanging in there. When embryos are thawed, they typically lose lots of cells. The hope is that at least one cell will survive and continue to grow and divide. At this stage of development, all the cells are identical, so you only need one to survive. So 2 of the four lost all their cells and didn't survive. Two others lost all their cells down to one (they were frozen at the 7-8 cell stage). Of those, one started growing and had divided once as of this morning, so back to 2 cells. The other was still at 1 cell. By the time we got to transfer, the 2-cell embryo had divided again into 4 cells, so that was a good sign. We weren't able to see the 2nd embryo well enough to know if it divided again or not. The dividing embryo was at a grade 2, which is pretty good. Grade 1 is best, but you never get grade 1 embies after being thawed. The other was at a grade 3, meaning it had fairly significant fragmentation. The doctor said that one didn't have much of a chance, but it was still alive, so they transferred it anyway. With one good embryo, the doctor gave me about a 20% chance of success.
I admit I was disappointed that we didn't have at least 2 good ones, but I was very grateful to have any to transfer at all.
So I'm supposed to be on bedrest for the next two days, which won't happen since I have 3 little boys to take care of! Kent and Jackee are out of town until Monday. But I've also been told by other doctors that the 2 days of bedrest is mostly for the patient's peace of mind, and doesn't really increase the chance of success. I'll try to take it easy, though.
I'm scheduled for bloodwork on the 17th to see if this worked or not. Mama, I'll be hoping I can give you a positive bHCG for your birthday! But I'm also trying to be realistic. 20% chance of success means 80% chance of failure, so most likely this will end in a negative blood test. I think I'll be ok, though. If this doesn't work, when we get back to TX, I'm going to get a new kitten, maybe two, since it doesn't look like Angel's going to make her way home. And I'll just really enjoy my boys and I'll be able to move on with my life without the "what if" of frozen embryos.
But I'm also not giving up. 20% chance of success means that out of 5 women in my situation, 1 will be successful, and I just might be that one! In any case, I won't know a thing for at least a week and a half, so I'm going to enjoy this time and try to think about other things!!
Thank you everyone for your prayers. I'm feeling peaceful, which is probably even better than feeling hopeful.

1 comment:

Kelly said...

Take it easy, Gabby. I'm glad you have it a try.