Issue 49: Round two, Let's go!
Saturday May 18 2019
OK. Deep breaths. We can pick ourselves up now. If there is one thing we are well practised at by now it is the fail, repeat, fail, repeat cycle. It’s a common side-effect of IVF treatment. Any people going through assisted conception will recognise the inane, actually, the insane repetitiveness of it. That combined with the hope and the belief in the next time (the dangerous bit) motivates you to try it one more time.
If the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then we are certifiable. But guess what? Haha! HA HA HAAAA. We’re doing it again.
That last disappointment was a tough one. Everything seemed perfect, which makes it difficult to understand what went wrong. But that’s the thing I have to keep reminding the ever-logical Mr B: IVF is not an exact science. It’s part medicine, part blind luck.
Still, Dr Fernando has great success rates. We chose to do pre-genetic diagnosis on the embryos to ensure they were chromosomally perfect, which ups the chances of implanting significantly. In fact, he tells us, it’s somewhere about 75-80 per cent success for a live birth under our circumstances.
There are several hurdles to jump before you get to that longed-for end goal. First implanting: the doctor transfers the embryo into the womb, then for the next 72-ish hours it’s up to the little thing to make a home in the lining. The two times that happened to me personally, it felt like sharp stabbing pains, which is amazing considering the embryo is about the size of a speck of glitter.
Once implanted it continues to grow and emit the HCG hormone that gives the positive pregnancy test. After that you need to scan for the heartbeat that comes a couple of weeks later. Then you have the usual 12-week marker, after which you’re up to the high nineties percentage-wise for the successful live birth. We stumbled at the first hurdle. In fact, we ran straight into it and the whole thing fell over. It seems the 25 per cent blind-luck bit was our nemesis.
Dr Fernando wants to Skype with us to have a chat, but he’s very busy (those success rates bring all the girls to the yard), so we have a bit of a wait. Which is fun.
A few days later we do a three-way conference call, me in my Elle office, Mr B in his, and the doctor, in full scrubs, dialling in from America.
“I expected it to work. We don’t have any reason to think it wouldn’t.” (This I assume is supposed to make us feel better, but it doesn’t.) “We should consider doing a further test for NKC; this would be the last such test I would recommend.”
Ahh, one last test. I look at that sentence and I see only flying money emojis. I’m familiar with the NKC theory. It stands for natural killer cells, key to the immune system, and if in the uterus, they might be attacking the embryo as a foreign body. It’s contentious and debatable whether this is a thing for IVF. Much like acupuncture, some doctors believe in it and some don’t. It’s thought that if you have these NKCs, a harmless “intralipid” infusion can help to make them ineffective. But then also, it might not; there is still no concrete evidence to suggest NKC treatment leads to improved IVF success. I had the infusion myself and it didn’t help me, but then there are a ton of other happy-ending stories out there after this treatment. Oh, I don’t know, my suspicion flag is flying at half-mast and I’m reluctant to invest.
Another “but” is that we have only two precious embryos left. What if we don’t do it and the next one doesn’t work? I don’t think I’d forgive myself. There’s that IVF-hope addiction striking again.
After much research and sage guidance from various medical and holistic professionals I’m advised that requesting this test is the gold standard treatment in the States. So we do it. It comes back negative; Lydia doesn’t have the NK cells. It was just bloody bad luck.
The good news is we have now done everything in our collective power to make this thing work, no suspicions or what-ifs left. The bad news is that there is no reason it didn’t happen already so we are firmly in the realm of “unknown”. It feels like falling with nothing left to grab on to. Let’s just hope there’s a beautifully soft landing at the bottom, because as of today Lydia is geeing us up to start again as soon as possible.
She was so disappointed for us, but she’s been amazing. Checking in every day, keeping us positive and reaffirming her encouraging stance. She wants so badly to help us, she wants to do this brilliant thing for herself too, so, here we all go again. Credit card out, medicine ordered and delivered, new plan in place, and woah, transfer number two is tentatively scheduled for T minus three weeks.
I suddenly forget the pain of the failure, replace it with excitable hope and lock my sights on transfer day and all that will come after it. Because that’s the exact pull of the fail-repeat cycle, and I’m as susceptible to these particular endorphins as the millions of other women who continue to batter themselves over the head with their own IVF repetition. Exciting, huh? Weirdly enough it genuinely is. I go to work with a smile back on my face and hope restored in my heart. Ding-ding, round two.