IVF #1 4DP5DT - Last Night in Athens

So tonight is our last in Athens, and we're headed home (at 3:30 in the morning ^^;) tomorrow.

The days since our transfer have flown by, as they were packed with tours of all kinds of places. We got a ton of photographs, bought way too many souvenirs, and generally had a great time. I spent most of the long bus rides having serious conversations with our embryos, promising them a great life full of amazing travel adventures if they'll just stick around long enough to join us.

I have no idea if it's worked. We have another week to go before we'll know. There are moments when I am confident, and feel certain that our chances are great; and moments when I'm equally certain that nothing's going to change, that this time will be no different than all the others this year, except we'll be $15,000 deeper in debt.

The clinic confirmed we didn't have embryos to freeze. So this is it, our last shot. If it doesn't work we might be able to save up again... in a year or so... if we wanted to try again. But for right now I'm trying to just focus on the possibility-- the PROBABILITY--that we won't need to do it again. We're even talking over second names if we ended up with boy-boy or girl-girl twins. And I'm actually sort of getting used to the idea, a little, of having twins... but there's nothing to do but wait and see.

This next week may be one of the toughest TWW ever.

But, here are a few of my favorite photos from our trip. You can find the full set on our Greece Flickr album.

IVF#1 CD19 D-Day

Sitting in the Embio clinic lobby right now, waiting for our embryo transfer. Like the first day we were here, seems like they're running behind again. It's been an hour of waiting.

Was so excited last night I couldn't sleep much. Kept having dreams that they were going to tell us we couldn't. Do the transfer now after all, and would have to come back in a month. Ugh.

So how may embryos will we have? Will they be good ones? Will we do one or two?

A big decision that has to be made very soon...

Edit #1: so we finally got called in to meet with the doctor about an hour and a half after our appointment time. We have four embryos, and he says three are very good quality. He wants to put in all three. OMG. So I told him no more than two. He said he'd check on the embryos again, and now we're sitting waiting to go "upstairs". I am guessing that's where their procedure room is.

We may end up with two after all. I am a hundred times more nervous now. He seemed pretty confident that if he put three back "probably it will be only one or two, eh?" NO. No no no to that. Twins is scary. Triplets is just.... Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!

Now we are playing the waiting game again.

Edit #2: we are back at the hotel, and it's done. So here's how it went down:

They called us upstairs where Kaitlin had to wait in a small waiting room while the nurse took me back to "prepare," as she put it. She led me past a room full of women lying on gurneys, which was a little bit of a shock to my system to see about eight people lying side by side on wheeled hospital beds... Up to now when I've been in a US hospital people are usually spaced farther apart, often with curtains between, and this felt a little like some kind of assembly line. Anyway, she took me into a closet-sized room where I had to undress and put on a robe thing. I also went to the bathroom, which turned out to be a very good decision, as I'll explain in a sec...

Anyway, I came out of the room and was led to a stool in the middle of all the ladies on gurneys. And for about ten or fifteen minutes I just sat there, watching the nurses bustle around and a couple doctors come in and out of the nearby operating rooms and a couple of patients get wheeled in and out of those rooms... And then Dr. Thanos showed up and directed me into the room on the right, where they let Kaitlin come in (though she got the feeling they really didn't want her there.) The doctor was putting the speculum in while waving a catheter at me that he said had our embryos in it. I asked how many and he said two. Then he pried me open and started doing all kinds of things that were pretty uncomfortable... Apparently my cervix is small and he had to do something to open it more. Kaitlin said it looked like he was prying it open with tweezers. That was twingey and a little painful, though not too bad. Then he ran the catheter in, which also pinched, and he and the nurse pushed down hard above my pelvis with the ultrasound sensor. Finally they were done, and they put me on a gurney and wheeled me back into that room with all the other women. They slid me into a spot on the end, next to the wall.


Kaitlin snapped this just before the transfer procedure... I was so nervous, in case the clenched fists aren't a giveaway...  O.o

And here's where I started to get annoyed. Up to this point I had been patient with the three and four hour long office wait times. I had been patient with the slightly awkward, clipped communication from the doctor, and his abrupt and uncomfortable stuff-the-wand/speculum/whatever-up-in-there technique. I had been patient with the fact that while their website advertises a price of 4800 Euro I was charged 5500, and while the site quotes success at 70% the coordinator said pretty clearly that it was 60%. I had not complained when apparently they selected an egg donor for me without giving me choices, even though their site says patients can "choose from their list of 120 immediately available egg donors." And though I had expected more information and more options when it came to the choice of how many embryos to put in, as long as it was less than three I could even live with that. But after they wheeled me out, they said I would need to lie there for 30 minutes before I could get up. Totally cool.

Except I lay there for two hours. And, they had wheeled me next to an older Italian lady (I think she was 51?) who had just had her own embryo transfer done, and who spent the next two hours telling me that she thought the clinic was pretty useless, that she didn't get pregnant her first try and was having to try again, that she met a Moroccan patient in the lobby who was on her tenth try with no success, and that like me, she'd had a lot of hope on her first try but now she didn't believe it really worked for most people. She said the clinic had made her sign a paper acknowledging that their success rate was really only 20%.

Of course, having just come out of my own procedure, having spent a year of my life and probably over $25,000 on this crazy project, this bitter Negative Nancy was the last thing I wanted or needed. I tried to keep her naysaying out of my head, but I will admit that by the time the nurses finally remembered we were still there and let us get up and leave, I was pretty spooked. I still am. The doctor seemed so sure that the chances of triplets or even twins were low. But if his 60% success rate is true, the chances of twins are pretty much 50/50 if I do get pregnant. So either he was downplaying the risk, or the Italian lady was right about them misrepresenting their success rates. I even found myself imagining for a moment that they hadn't actually made me any embryos at all, maybe they just went through the motions of putting them in so they could swindle me out of my money. O.o paranoid much? But, the nurse at the transfer did ask me to confirm my name at least four times to be sure she had the right tube in her hand. And, after he had the catheter and speculum out Dr. Thanos did turn the ultrasound machine and point out on the screen the white area that held the embryos. So I just have to have faith, right?

Anyway, when they finally let me leave and come downstairs, I was feeling pretty down, and frustrated, and hungry.... It was almost 3 PM and I hadn't been able to eat since breakfast. We didn't have to wait too long, thankfully, for the rest. One of the nurses took us in to talk about the meds I'd have to take. Staying on the high doses of estrogen and progesterone, and adding daily injections of heparin. All of which cost 145 euro, or around $180. Then Dr. Thanos came in, only for a few seconds. He did confirm that the embryos he transferred were at the 5-day stage. But, he said he didn't think the remaining two would be good for freezing. He said they'd email me tomorrow if they were, but if I didn't get an email that meant they weren't. He didn't sound optimistic at all, or even really like he cared, but I'm pretty disappointed. If there's nothing to freeze, we won't be able to afford to try again. This is our last shot, and if it doesn't work, it's over.

Which doesn't help my stress level.

But anyway, for better or worse, it's done. There's nothing left to do but wait. Our test date is Christmas Eve, and we'll either be having the best Christmas ever or the most heartbroken one.

All in all, it was not a terrible experience, but certainly not as good as I had expected. I had no idea the wait times would be so long, the office would be so crowded, the doctor would be so rough and brusque, or that the enticing prices and choices promised by the website would not be all that they seemed. This is definitely not the place to go if you want close control over your procedure and embryos. But if I get pregnant, it won't matter. Though if I am pregnant with twins I do think I'll be kind of irritated with the clinic for not engaging more seriously in a discussion about using one or two embryos.

And, if it doesn't work, at least we did get a pretty nice vacation out of the deal.

We took a taxi back to the hotel and I've spent the rest of the day in bed. It's cold and rainy anyway, so at least it doesn't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Kaitlin went and got us food from a nearby restaurant, and we're just hanging out on our iPads until bedtime. I'm going to try and sleep around 8, since we have an early morning pickup for a day cruise tomorrow.

What a day. I don't think I've ever gone to such extremes for anything before. Praying to every power in the universe that this works.

IVF #1 CD18 Four Days in Athens

So the first couple days in Athens were spent shopping -  we found the famous Poet Sandal-Maker's shop (he's made classic Greek sandals for stars like Sophia Loren, John Lennon and Sarah Jessica Parker) and bought sandals of our own, and wandered a lot of the back-street shops. Apparently, in Athens there isn't such a thing as a convenience store, and if you need something you have to go to a specialty store to get it. Need rope? Go to the rope shop. Need baskets? The basket shop. Plastic housewares? A plastic housewares shop. All of which can be hidden around nooks and crannies among narrow streets with crazy traffic, spread very far apart. Now I get why they call them convenience stores. O.o

We also found a sort of indoor shopping mall, very similar to a US Department store like JCPenney or Macy's, but this one had like SEVEN levels with escalators between each department. Next to the escalators on several floors they had a "wish wall" where shoppers could write little wishes on notepaper and post them up. Here's the one Kaitlin added for us:



The second day, we found the more touristy section of shops, and bought presents for just about everybody as well as something we weren't planning on at all - a couple of nice rugs for the house. The Greek guy who sold them to us kept describing one design as the "Shield of Athena." Which is pretty much bullshit, because it's a Persian medallion design. :P But it sounded nice, anyway, and I think he gave us a reasonable deal on them.

Then, we went to a "Doctor Fish" spa, where we had a pedicure treatment that isn't legal in the US - you put your feet in these clear fish tanks, and all these little fish nibble at your skin and eat the dead skin cells. Which is both gross and awesome at the same time, and it certainly seemed to make the fish happy!

Today was our first day of touring, and we'll have many more to come for the remainder of our stay. We had a half-day tour of Athens this morning, including a trip to the Acropolis and the Parthenon, and the new Acropolis museum. It was so cold and rainy during the driving portion of the tour that we didn't get to see many of the sights very clearly, but we got great photos of the ruins (which are currently being reconstructed) and some nice photos of the relics inside the museum. It was a pretty good day, up until the part where we were 7 minutes late for the return bus, and it left without us, and we had to hire a taxi to get back to the hotel. Ugh. So very glad we didn't leave any of our possessions on the bus, as we would have lost them.

The food here is AMAZING. So, so delicious. We had a huge lunch and probably won't need dinner, though I think Kaitlin's going to want to go out for some sort of sweet dessert in a couple hours. But, we're both pretty tired of being wet and cold, so the rest of the afternoon's going to be spent cuddled in our hotel room reading or sorting through photos or whatever we can think of that doesn't involve going back out in the sloshy streets again.

Right after lunch we walked down through the Athens flea market to a shop we'd seen last night, and spent a ridiculous amount of Euro (about $13 USD) on a little bit of hope - a tiny baby onesie with "GREECE" written on it in Greek lettering. Kaitlin promised I could get one baby thing while we were here, and we knew it when we saw it.

Our transfer is tomorrow. We've already made arrangements for a taxi to pick us up. I woke up at 5 AM this morning thinking about it... no idea how I'll ever sleep tonight. Tomorrow is the day. The thing we've been waiting for, the thing we've spent all this money on. And then it's just a matter of finding out if it will take. If that little embryo will just settle in and grow.

Oh my gosh, we're almost there...

IVF#1 CD15 First day in Greece

Right after stepping off the plane in Athens, we met with our travel coordinator from the Greek travel agency, who gave us the vouchers for our stay and then turned us over to a taxi driver, Dmitri. He took us to Embio, the Greek clinic, and took our bags on to Hotel Attalos, where we'll be staying while we're here.




We had to wait almost three hours at the clinic, because we were almost two hours early for our appointment and they were running about an hour behind at the same time. I must admit, I was so jet-lagged and exhausted that most of the wait time was a blur and I kept fighting to keep my eyes open. the clinic is definitely really busy, we saw so many people coming in and out, and I confess I kept looking hard at the young ladies who were there, wondering if we might not be looking at our own donor.

Anyway, we got to meet Sotiria, the IVF coordinator I've been emailing back and forth with since the beginning... She's younger than I expected, and very pretty, and speaks English really well (though I kept having to try not to giggle at the way she pronounces "vaginally".) We met with Dr. Thanos who talked with us a little about my early menopause and said he would do an ultrasound to check my uterine lining. On the way to the scan room I had to use the bathroom. The locks in Greece and Rome are seriously old-school... Like, keyholes and big brass keys. So I had a bit of a conundrum getting myself locked in the bathroom, because the key kept turning in the lock but the door wasn't opening...
Finally Sotiria and another nurse got me out, though, and sent us to their ultrasound room. The little napkin they gave me to cover myself with was wayyyy tinier than the paper blankets at my doctor's, so that was awkward.... Dr. Thanos came in to do the scan himself (also awkward) and holy hell... He just grabbed the wand, stuffed it up in me, wiggled it around for all of about 30 seconds and pronounced that my lining, uterus and ovaries looked good, and left. After giving me a picture of the scan, by the way.


Kaitlin snapped a pic of me while we were waiting for the ultrasound...

The second he was out of the room Kaitlin busted up laughing. I suppose I am spoiled by my own doctor's office and their gentle, slow, somewhat laid back approach to ultrasounds, where they take a second or two to work the wand in, then take their time snapping shots from lots of different angles.  That was the most abrupt and sort of weird experience... Anyway, after I got dressed again we met Sotiria back in the doctor's office, where she instructed me to increase my dose of estrogen and start taking loads of progesterone too... And set our embryo transfer date for Friday (the one day where we didn't have any tours or activities scheduled, yeah!) and said that our pregnancy blood test date would be Christmas Eve. Seriously, people, we get to find out if we're pregnant on Christmas Eve. If the results are positive it will be the best Christmas present ever. At the same time I think it's going to be awful if the results are negative and we have to make it through Christmas trying to smile and be happy.... Sigh. So thinking very, very happy thoughts right now.

Anyway, we find out on Friday how many embryos we have and have to decide how many to put in. I think that's the decision that scares me the most out of all of this. Until then, we have several days inAthens all to ourselves. We called the taxi driver back to take us to the hotel once all was said and done, and got checked in.... And went up the street just a little to get food... The most delicious gyros and pita I have ever had EVER. Then went back to the hotel where I took a lovely hot shower and went right to sleep. Woke up super early this morning, just waiting for breakfast time so we can go down and get some food, still trying to work out the dosages of these meds they want me on... And looking forward to starting the day. We have three days entirely to ourselves in Athens before all our activities start, and I intend to get most of my shopping done early. Also I am so excited about the food here. I will probably gain like 20 pounds on this trip alone, everything looks so delicious!!

I still kind of can't believe we're really doing this. Praying to every power in the universe that this works for us and we get our healthy baby at last.

IVF#1 CD14 - We are here!

So after several long flights and a lovely afternoon/overnight in Rome, we are now sitting in the office waiting room for the Greek clinic. So far so good, though we're here about an hour early so we may have some sitting around to do. Once we finish here it's a matter of figuring out how to get to our hotel... I guess we'll probably call the same taxi driver who dropped us off to come back and get us.

So nervous now. I haven't had a good night's sleep in about three days, since we got up at 4am on Saturday, slept on the plane to try and ward off jet lag, and then had an overnight in Rome in an unfamiliar bed. Also, I have had a lot of nausea the past couple of mornings, and I don't know if it's the high dose of estrogen they have me on or what, but it has somewhat dampened the excitement of travel. Basically I've been feeling mild to moderate carsickness for the last three days. Yuck.

Anyway, we're here. Finally here, and about to find out (I hope) how many embryos we got and if they're any good, and decide how many to use. And then pray that one sticks.

Here goes....

IVF#1 CD11 we're leaving tomorrow

This week has been a whirlwind of preparations, from wiring money to Europe to packing to trying to get things at work squared away to minimize what my boss is going to need to cover for me and dealing with a staff member who has resigned and having two vacancies to fill... I am exhausted. But it's done now. The only thing left is some house cleaning. We're getting up super early tomorrow morning in the attempt to start preparing our bodies for the dramatic time change, so we'll do more cleaning before our ride comes to take us to the airport.

Then it's off to Rome, then Athens. Our embryo transfer is scheduled -- get this -- TWO HOURS after stepping off the plane. Yeah. And I did get the profile for our egg donor... Much less info for her than for the sperm donor, but I know she's 26, with fair skin, light brown hair, and blue-green eyes. She's 5'7" and apparently has a clean health history. This is her first egg donation, though she has had one successful pregnancy of her own. Combine that with our red headed Danish sperm donor.... And we see what we get.

We also find out if we got any good embryos, or have enough to freeze, and have to decide then how many to put in.

Then we wait, and wander around Athens, and take some tours and other neat stuff, and keep every possible appendage crossed that we get a positive pregnancy test...

IVF#1 CD8 International Money, AHH!

So the last few days have been a very interesting exercise in learning how international money exchanges are done....

The travel agency finally got back to me with a figure - 1440 Euro for several tours and nine nights' accommodation as well as airport transfers. Of course, because it's so late in the game I had to pay them via credit card, and of course, they don't accept my American Express that would have kept me from having to pay any currency conversion fees. I scoured the internet to try and figure out how much it would *really* cost in USD after charging it. According to the Wells Fargo site, my fee is 3% of the transaction; and according to the Visa calculator site, the total conversion rate including the 3% comes out to 1.288 USD per Euro, or about $1854. But I won't really know what exactly was charged to my card until the charge goes through, which could take a couple of days.

Add to that the roundabout necessity of wiring money to my Greek clinic's Swiss bank... the clinic sent me their bank info, and I signed up for an account on USFOREX.com (which was actually pretty easy). Then USFOREX had to call me to set my account up... then I had to create the transaction online for the 5500 Euros, and got a rate of 1.26 USD per Euro (not too bad, better than my bank which would have been at least 3% plus $45 wiring fee) for a grand total of $6913.89. Then USFOREX called me again to confirm, and they've sent me instructions to wire my money to their US bank (still going to be about a $30 wiring fee, I think). I have to go to the bank on my lunch break and complete the wire, but they assure me that as long as I wire them the money today, the Greek clinic should have the funds by Thursday or Friday.

All of this adds up SO DAMN FAST. And, if we have enough embryos for freezing, I'll owe the clinic another 1000 Euro for that and will have to go through the whole wiring process again. Except I don't know that I will be able to do that until I'm back stateside. I might have to use my Traveler Visa at an ATM ($5 plus 3% for the transaction) and pay them in cash for the freezing.

In terms of my "Costs of TTC" page, I'm only going to include 630 Euro ($806.40) of the travel agency's total - because that's the cost of the hotel. The extra tours we want to take while we're there really aren't part of the TTC expense. But I'm waiting to update these figures until I know exactly,
in USD, how much everything is going to cost.

Add to that the absolute insanity at work as I try to get ready to leave AND try to figure out how to replace my clerk (in my boss's words, "creatively") AND try to get packed at home AND try to help Kaitlin get ready to leave (she's starting to feel the pressure too) and it's just crazy. I'm so afraid I'm going to miss something vitally important.

One thing at a time, I guess. Now to cram some work in before I run to the bank and the grocery store - I need to pick up some travel sized toothpaste and some Airborne, because a bunch of the ladies at my office are sniffly and sick and I CANNOT CANNOT get sick on this trip.

If it does turn out that we need to do a second round with our frozen ones, I will have them put back two embryos for sure. The cost should be a lot less, because I'll travel alone - $1300 for a plane ticket, maybe $60/night for 2 - 3 nights in a hotel, and $1000ish for the FET, so something like $2500 when it's all said and done. After spending SO much on this already, how sad is it that I'm thinking Pshhh, $2500 is NOTHING? X.x

I would give anything for this to just work the first time. For us to be able to come back from Greece, after an amazing vacation, and find that we're pregnant... and, of course, for the pregnancy to stick and be full and healthy. That's really all I want right now. That's all I want. Please, universe??