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pregnancy

The Retrieval & A Long Week Ahead

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The retrieval was a procedure that Toby and I had been anticipating for so long. I had read so many other women’s stories about how they thought they had a lot of eggs and none of them turned into viable embryos. Then I had read a lot of stories about women who only had a few eggs and they were all viable. I was visualizing best case scenario – that we’d get a bunch, they’d all be perfect and there would be no stress going into implantation. 

When we arrived, they quickly called me back to get an IV set and Toby waited by for his call back to make his “deposit.” The doctor was running about 45 minutes behind and I was starting to panic, knowing in the back of my head that my eggs have a “prime” time of being harvested and I had specifically timed out my last shot at an exact time 36 hours earlier so I’d ovulate at the exact right time.

Once my anxiety was basically through the roof, the doctor came in and assured me that everything was going to be ok. There was nothing I could do so in to surgery I went. 

I remember waking up a little while later with a can of ginger ale being handed to me and Toby standing over me smiling. The doctor walked in and shouted “We got 21 eggs!!” I felt so relieved. I gave everyone a big high  five and we shortly left after on our long drive home from Newport. 

The next thing we had to do was wait. We had to wait one day to get the results of how many eggs were viable and how many of those viable eggs were able to be implanted with sperm. I received that e-mail in the late afternoon and found out that 19 of our 21 eggs were successful! We now had 19 embryos!

From here on out was the tougher part. We had to wait five days for our next update on how many survived and were able to be frozen. I again received an e-mail in the late afternoon on the fifth day and found out only three were able to be frozen. ONLY THREE! I could see my worst nightmare coming true. I was crushed. My nurse reassured me that they continue to give the other embryos a chance for a sixth and even a seventh day and she’d call me with those results. 

Day six – we had two more able to be frozen. Now we have five. I was still concerned that wasn’t enough to have a comfortable “cushion” in case of a negative transfer or if those embryos tested positive for abnormalities.

Day seven – no more eggs. Our final number was five frozen embryos. 

I started researching if it was even worth testing that small amount of embryos. Sometimes perfect embryos fail during transfer, sometimes all embryos come back abnormal, sometimes abnormal embryos are perfectly healthy babies. After debating back and forth in my head, I decided against testing the embryos and to just take the chance and have a lot of hope.

If this process has taught me one thing, it’s that some things are out of your control and that’s ok. Trust the process.

Counting Your Eggs Before They Hatch – Beginning IVF..

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The first step to beginning IVF is to get your base-line reading. They basically want to see how many eggs you have without any type of hormone stimulation and ensure that your ovaries are in fact working.

I remember driving to my appointment alone because I was going to go straight to work afterwards. I didn’t know what to expect, but assumed it was going to be awkward as it was day two of my cycle of they were planning on doing a vaginal ultrasound. The only thing mentally getting me through that awkwardness is saying to myself “They do this all the time!” I was also so concerned, thinking in the back of my mind that they were going to give my some shocking, curveball news that maybe my ovaries weren’t working correctly and we would be kind of screwed from having a possible biological child.

I swallowed my fears at the door and just imagined positive news. The ultrasound technician explained what she was going to be looking for – basically counting how many eggs total I had to get an idea of the type of hormone stimulation I would need. After about five minutes and the ultra-sound tech counting quietly to herself, she said, “You have 32 eggs! Thats huge!”

Not knowing what was a good or bad number, my nurse came in very excited and stated we should have no problem getting a good amount of healthy embryos.

The next thing they did was put me on birth control. Pretty ironic considering I’m trying to get pregnant, not avoid it! When I went home and explained to Toby that they put me on birth control, he immediately thought it was a scam. He started googling up a storm, but we found this is pretty normal. The fertility doctor wants to ensure they have complete control over your cycle so they can make sure they start the hormone stimulation at the correct time.

A couple weeks went by and I was told to stop birth control and come back in for the next ultra-sound to count my eggs again.

This is where the saying SHOULD come from, “Don’t count your eggs (chickens) before they hatch.” To my surprise my new egg count had gone way down…to nine eggs! I didn’t understand the method of putting me on birth control when I originally had a good count. I honestly still don’t fully understand the reasoning, however, I wasn’t going to stop the process now.

The next step was starting the fun medications. That’s right! The ones your have to stab into your tummy! We sat down with our nurse and got a quick overview of how to inject the needles, how to draw up the medications and what to expect it to feel like. We were pretty overwhelmed, but luckily they gave us a link to a website that showed a step by step of how to do it when you come home and freak out and forget everything.

The first night, after a bit of anxiety – Toby stabbed the first injection in after checking 1,000 times for air bubbles, then the next one. We survived! Then we repeated this for the next 16 days with multiple ultra sounds in between. So fun…

Baby Making – Are We Doing This Right?

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Within a few months of being married to my sweet husband, Toby, we knew we wanted to start trying to grow our family. We had a few friends that were trying at the time and thought it would be fun to go through this experience at the same time. After a few months at it and no results, we decided to start taking it a little more seriously. We got the ovulation tests, downloaded all the apps and continued to try, but this time with a little more education on timing it right.

After about six months of trying, our friends were pregnant and we were still without the positive result we were wanting to see. I decided to take matters into my own hands and go to an OBGYN. At first, this doctor kind of laughed in my face and said, “You’ve only been trying for six months. Come back to me at 12 months if you still aren’t pregnant and we’ll start running tests.” Um…no, let’s be proactive and look into this today.

With my history of an ovary infection, I always had the idea of a tube blockage in the back of my mind. I pushed for a hysterosalpingogram, also known as an HSG test where they stick a catheter up your hoo-haa and push a liquid gently into it, hopefully flowing all the way though the fallopian tubes. It sounds painful, but it really isn’t.

I was able to see the results immediately on the x-ray screen and to my surprise, no blockages! Although I wasn’t out of the woods for being deemed as completely fertile, this lifted a big weight off my chest. So we kept trying for a couple more months.

With still no positive pee test, I requested the OBGYN order a test for my husband. Again, getting a little chuckle from the doctor, he responds with, “Why are you so worried? Toby is still in his prime! He’s only 40, you’re 29. You’re technically the older fertile one.” Again, um…what? Run the dang test, doctor.

Low and behold – my sweet husband’s semen analysis held the answer to these months and months of questions. Something that we had no idea would cause an issue – the SHAPE of his sperm. He had an issue with morphology. Only 1% of his sperm were shaped normally. Only 1% could implant in an egg, let alone reach that egg first and successfully.

I remember coming home that night from work and Toby just looked at me in front of his laptop and simply said, “It’s me.” He had been researching all day what supplements and vitamins he could take to resolve this issue on his own. A couple days later, Amazon delivered about 15 different supplements and he started taking them all. We continued doing research on what else we could do to fix this. Our choices were an invasive procedure on his manhood to open a vein (ouch!) or In Vitro Fertilization.

Neither of these invasive, expensive procedures seemed realistic, so we waited it out and Toby continued taking the vitamins. A few months later, still no positive result, but I asked if he would get another analysis done to see if there was any difference. He got it up to 2%. Still not enough to give us a good chance of achieving a pregnancy on our own.

Like most people, I like results – and I like them fast. I started doing research on how successful IVF is and how would we ever pay for it. I’m one of the lucky ones that has insurance that covers a large amount of it! Still not cheap, but it was going to definitely help. I told Toby, let’s just go for it and he wouldn’t let me. Never did I think we’d be faced with making a decision to have children or not. We were always a “Yes” vote on children. This was tough, but we had to go through it together no matter what. We decided to make a timeline. If we aren’t pregnant by this date, let’s start looking into IVF.

After a year and a half, still no baby, lots of frustration. I made the phone call to start the process of IVF. This entire time I had been talking to this doctors office, we had a consultation, just weren’t ready to pull any triggers. When I made the phone call, my timing was perfect. It was day one of my cycle and the next day I was scheduled for my first appointment to get a “base-line” ultrasound.

Just like that, we were on our way to making a baby…

Hello, I’m Lauren..

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I wanted to start this blog by introducing myself and telling you a little bit about my story. Through this blog, you’ll learn about my process and battles with two different types of cancers, as well as how my husband and I are beating infertility, one day at a time. I was most inspired to begin this blog because I’ve searched high and low for someone who has been through everything that I have, but have come out with little luck. I know there’s women out there just like me – I’ve read the several hospital studies, but to put it lightly, the writing and descriptions of what the women are going through is just overwhelming. I wanted to write my story so other women know that they aren’t alone. There’s a face behind the case studies being done, a personality, and most importantly – a success story.

So first and foremost – the cancer battle.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Ever since I was six years old, I had complained to my parents that my heart hurt. This was a daily issue, getting sent to get EKG’s constantly and every result came back normal. Doctors refused to take a deeper look into my complaints and blamed the pain on being a stressed out child. Are you serious? What does a six year old have to be stressed about? I had a happy childhood, but the doctor is the expert – so life continued on.

These “heart pain” complaints continued until the age of 19. I had other symptoms during this time as well, but never put the symptoms together because they were so random and didn’t seem to have a noticeable correlation. These symptoms included severe constipation, sweaty hands and feet, and at times I had high blood pressure. These symptoms were all given to the doctor that blamed my diagnosis on stress. He did not take the time to put the symptoms together either. If you do a quick Google search with all of these symptoms, I guarantee you could be a better doctor than mine and diagnosis me.

One day after working out, I became very ill and starting throwing up. I went to the hospital and was told “You’re not an athlete. Why are you pushing your body so hard? You are giving yourself an anxiety attack.” With that, he held out his hand and said “Here’s some samples of Zoloft. I’ll write you a prescription.” After two days on this fine little drug, my symptoms became worse. I cried to my mom to find me a female cardiologist who would not blame my symptoms on stress. She found me one of the best who happened to be 10 miles from our house. We called her office and she had an exam room waiting for me. As I walked in throwing up, feeling like my heart was going to explode, she ran the EKG. She saw no issue with my heart, but wanted to take a further look into it. She asked for all of my symptoms again and said “I doubt it’s this cancer, but let’s rule it out. Have you heard of Pheochromocytoma?” To which my mother and I replied, “No, but let’s check.”

The next day she had her ultra-sound technician take a look at my abdomen. It was in those short two minutes, the ultra-sound tech said “What was she looking for exactly?” My mom and I shouted “PHEOCHROMOCYTOMA!” To which this technician replied, “She hit the nail on the head.”

I cried. Not out of sadness, but because someone finally listened to me. I had a diagnosis.

The cardiologist also happened to know the only surgeon in all of Southern California who had done surgery at the time on this disease. He happened to be only about 20 miles from our house. Everything was falling into place. We drove straight to the hospital thinking that we would go right into surgery and I’d be fixed.

From there, I was told that I had two tumors, one on each adrenal gland. One tumor was five pounds – the size of a softball, the other was six pounds, the size of a grapefruit. Wow. A lot more serious than anyone thought!

Fast forward about three weeks, my blood pressure and pulse were at a level of nearly stroking out and surgery was too dangerous of a situation to put me in. I was on life support during this time and put on a morphine drip. My heart had grown to rely on the production of adrenal pumping from the cancerous tumors growing on them. The cancer board at the hospital was concerned that as soon as they removed the adrenal glands, my heart would stop. The cancer board voted to put me on a morphine drip and let me go peacefully.

Obviously, this didn’t happen because I am still here today. My surgeon refused to allow this without trying to save me. He and his anesthesiologist started looking through their old textbooks and came out with the idea in the middle of the night to put me on an epidural. I’m no doctor, but from what my surgeon tells me looking back on the surgery is that the epidural would stop the shock of the adrenal removal on the heart. It’s just so crazy, it may work – and IT DID!

I woke up from surgery, looking for my mom who was sitting next to me every second of every day and she had gone home. I asked my nurse why she finally went home and she replied, “Honey, don’t you know? You’re out of surgery?” I survived.

We’ll fast forward a bit through the rest of my battles.

The next worry the doctors had for me was that the cancer possibly spread. They wanted to remove my thyroids. Pheochromocytoma attacks the entire endocrine system. If it’s on your thyroids, they’re concerned of lymph-nodes contracting cancer as well. We were proactive and decided to remove the thyroids before that became a possibility. While in surgery, the found more cancer nodules on the thyroid, as well as the right side of lymph-nodes in my throat. They removed everything in there. I dodged another bullet.

A year later, a small tumor was found on the lower area of my right lung. They did a laparoscopic surgery to remove it. Easy peasy. Let’s move on.

A year after that, they were tracking a small tumor on my liver that began to grow. Another laparoscopic surgery in the books.

Another year later and we get a little surprise. An adrenal gland grew back. This doesn’t just happen. It was the pheochromocytoma again. My surgeon opened me back on, a much smaller incision than my first, and removed the adrenal gland. A few days later and things were starting to get back to normal. I cooked my boyfriend at the time a delicious, comfort food packed dinner one night (we’ll get into why diet is so important and helped me finally kick cancer’s a$$ in another post) and I had the worst stomach ache after. We hadn’t been together for that long, so the idea of sitting on the toilet in his house just felt humiliating and wrong. I tried though and got nada. I figured maybe it was heart burn, but holy moly – it really freaking hurt. We both went to sleep that night and after a couple hours I couldn’t take the pain anymore. Not wanting to go back to the hospital, he took me to CVS and bought me something to help the stomach ache and we walked a few times around the block. Nothing was helping. I finally said we need to go to the hospital.

We arrive and I start vomiting, a lot. My surgeon comes in (in the middle of the night, he’s the best) to see what’s going on. He says to me “Say the word and I’ll open you back up and see what’s going on.” As much as surgery sucks, I said “Do it.” He opens me and can’t find any issue. Possibly just a bowel blockage which looked like it would clear itself. A couple days later, still in agony, I said look again. More exploratory surgery found that during that short time, my colon had completely deteriorated inside of me. My surgeon went to lift it out and it fell apart in his hands. They had to remove about 10 inches of my colon and clean up all of my insides to prevent infection. They stitched me back up and I woke up feeling much better, and shocked at what was actually going on. How did I bear that much pain? The human body is amazing and has quite a will to survive.

I began healing and they found from all the internal issues, I grew an infection in my right ovary. They attached a drain tube from my outside hip and had to flush it a couple times a day for a few weeks. This was a minor issue, but honestly freaked me out, especially being sent home after a couple weeks and my mom having to be the one to stick a syringe in a tube connected to my insides of flush it. That healed and luckily the ovary is fine. Oh yeah, and during all this time in the hospital, I forgot to mention that a CNA came in to help me use the restroom and dropped me. I slammed my face into the wall, then the ground. Broke both my front teeth which were moved backward and roots broken and a concussion. Fun little bumps in the road leading to two root canals and some expensive Invisalign to fix my grill.

This all happened over a five year span. It’s been over five years now and I’ve been cancer free since. I’ve done a lot for myself to live and sustain a healthy life. I’ve stayed positive and work hard to keep healthy.

As my blog begins to grow, I plan to share with you everything I’ve done to make sure cancer doesn’t show it’s ugly face again. I hope that even though I’ve been through the ringer, you can see that I’ve come out on top. I want to help other’s beat this disease. I also want to shed some light on infertility and how to beat that as well. That will be my next post, so stay tuned…