Hopeful. Or not.

Well, I've recovered from the trip, I think. I've definitely eaten and drunk too much, out of tiredness, and have lost the impetus to diet, well, and then there was the whiskey in honor of St. Patrick which turned into 3 whiskies, but I'm trying to get back with the program today. I think things are shaping up for the cycle. I got my official IVF letter from the clinic yesterday, detailing my protocol. At least, I thought it'd detail my protocol, but what it said was:

Estrogen/Ganirelix/6 FSH/2 HMG/Ganirelix

Which is not all that detailed, to be honest, and to the uninitiated may be confusing. But essentially means I will be taking a shit load of drugs. I'm a bit freaked about the 6 FSH/2 HMG part, which means 6 Follistim and 2 Menopurs a day. For a total of 600 units, which is presumably enough to get a 90 year old's ovaries working again. I know it's my local clinic's maximum possible dose, but I don't know if Big New Clinic goes higher. My previous highest dose was 450 units a day. So I'm going to call just to double check before I order the meds, as I thought Dr. S. was putting me on the same dosage, not jacking it up to the maximum.

I've more or less figured out where I am going to order the drugs from - a mail order place that just happens to have a location right by Big New Clinic. Handily convenient, no? Good planning on their part, methinks, to get the captive audience of people staying there for their cycles. So I'll order just enough to get me through the start of the cycle down here, and then will go every day in NY and fill up with whatever I need to get through the next day. That way, it won't be like every other cycle where I've been left with a ton of unused meds in the fridge. Which will hopefully be cheaper overall, even if the prices of each individual vial is a bit more expensive.

And I've made a decision on where to stay, although I expect to vacillate a bit more on this later. But for now I've stopped looking.

So really, all I have to do is order the sperm to be shipped, order the meds, and wait. Another month. Plenty of time to go crazy between now and then.

I'm feeling very Zen and hopeful at the moment, though I know this can turn on a dime. Particularly if I start stressing out about it being my last cycle, but I'm not going to close that door just yet so hopefully I can reign in too much stress. Haha, easier said than done, I know. I just hope that this new fancy clinic with all their great success will do the trick for me. I hope my intake of whey protein will have helped my egg quality, and I hope that the coculture will boost the embryo quality even further. I hope I have a nice, even response to stims. I hope it all goes perfectly, in other words, but I know enough to roll with the punches.

So why then can a sad song or sad thought bring tears to my eyes? Why do I think I feel really hopeful and then have this sadness bubbling to the surface so easily? I think maybe because the end of this dream of motherhood is approaching, one way or another. Either it will end well, or it won't. Either I will be embarking on a huge adventure, or I'll be mourning the loss of my dreams. I guess when we start out TTC we think, "well, there's always IVF if it doesn't work". And then we think "well, if IVF doesn't work locally, I can always go out-of-state to one of the top places". And then after that, there's nothing. Nowhere to go. Only on to donor eggs or donor embyros or adoption. None of which I think I want to do. So it is the end. And can I even do another cycle at Big New Clinic if this first one doesn't work? Can I gear up enough, have enough hope, have enough money and time, to go back again? Just not sure if that is possible. But then again, I don't know if I'm ready to face the end. How do you do that? How do you stop the rollercoaster and get off? Because, you see, I'm hopeful that this will work. If not this time, then maybe another time. I think of my future children, and imagine myself telling them that they would not be here if I had given up after IVF#4. So then, how do I give up after IVF#5 if I still have that hope? How do you balance hope with reality? I just don't know the answer to that one.