Our hearts are broken… this journey is soooo hard :'(

Soooo you are asking, what happened…

Well we got the call, 2 of our snow babies survived, yayyyyyyyyy but as you can tell by the title of this post, it’s not all good news :'(

I was booked in for the transfer on Easter Monday and as I drove in there, I expected a call to say they hadn’t survived the night.. but I got there and it was all good.. they transferred a 6 cell and a 5 cell embryo..

I came home and rested up and took my hormones and hoped and prayed for the best outcome…

I waited and waited till I thought it was long enough to take our first POAS test but of course the ones the IVF clinic gave me were dodgy.. one didn’t show anything and the other one did weird things… but showed negative to begin with but hours later a positive but as we all know you don’t read them hours later… sigh… so then I purchased another pack and tried again a few days later, sadly negative..  that’s when our hearts broke again.. these tests are very accurate and to be honest whilst originally I felt some slight pregnancy signs other than the hormone ones, they were only slight and for a day or so.. I did another test a few more days later just to make sure but again negative..

We are just devastated at this, even though our Fertility specialist assured us to do another cycle with our donor, we were nervous and reluctant to go another time knowing that it was more time again.. sigh..

We just can’t wait anymore, we need to put something into place so we have decided to go overseas for our next donor cycle.  We know there are many wonderful donors here in Australia that would help but its the time and the potential heartache involved and the risk that they may not give us any viable embyro’s.  We just can’t take the time now to go through the donor process here and with the risk of the donor pulling out, which is ok, but it’s always a risk for various reasons.. or to do a cycle to find like this last one that there are no viable or good embryo’s.  If we go overseas the donors are ready to go and we can choose donors based on age and having already donated before…

With my Mum’s passing, dealing with the issues surrounding that and family and of course the grief :'(, our loss and just the ongoing post cancer issues, this is just breaking our hearts..

But we are strong and as we still feel we haven’t had a real chance at this, we are going to give it one last hurrah..

Wish us luck, say prayers for us, cross everything and just send us lots of love, we truly need it..

I will keep you updated on what we are doing and what happens, no matter what..

love from us xoxox

Sigh…..where has the last few years gone… now it’s April 2015

Gosh where has the past 3 years gone!!  Well I got diagnosed in February 2012 with stage 3 invasive and high grade DCIS breast cancer as well as pagets disease (it had travelled to my nipple) and it was in my lymph nodes as well, my tumour was over 10cm, yep that’s right, it was HUGE!! .. my mastectomy was expedited and on the 1st March 2012 they removed my right breast entirely and surrounding tissue and my lymph nodes.. they started me on my first chemo only a few weeks later as they didn’t want to wait any longer.. my first chemo destroyed my veins 🙁

Then I had to get fluid removed from the wound site and whilst there they realised I had a temperature and wasn’t well, so they admitted me to emergency straight away… With FEC90 you can’t get any infections and your temperature must not go above 38 or you have to go to hospital immediately.. it’s because the chemo kills your cells and your immunity and if you get sick, you could die.. So there I sat in Westmead Public Emergency for hours and hours thinking I would be given some antibiotics and sent home but I was then told I was going to be there for a few days.. so I waited to be admitted to a ward.. whilst poor Shane raced home, grabbed me jim jams, books, toiletries and the bear he got me whilst in hospital for my mastectomy.. poor thing was on a 6am start the next morning and here he was driving back to the Blue Mountains and then back to Westmead and then back home to sleep and go to work..  I spent the night and next day in emergency waiting for a bed in a ward.. with my door being closed as I was highly susceptible but then being left open and of course me going into the toilet all were using from emergency.. no chance of catching anything there lol.. and all with my iv drip attached.. I finally got wheeled to a ward where they spent the next week pumping me full of antibiotics and fluids, where I lost most of my hair, where they had so much trouble finding a vein that they used my feet and anywhere they could to get blood every day to test my counts.. and they recommended I get a port as well..  and so for the week before Easter 2012 I sat in hospital in a shared ward with low white blood cell count and infections thinking I would be better off at home… I met some lovely people but sadly the reality of breast cancer really hit home when the lady across from me had been diagnosed with mets in the liver, her treatment had been similar to what mine was going to be and now she was there as she wasn’t feeling well.. she was surrounded by family and I heard her say to them I don’t want to do chemo again.. sigh…at that time I didn’t get why she felt that way.. then the nurse told the family that the palliative Dr would be in to chat to them soon, now even then I knew that word and I knew it’s wasn’t good.. so the rest of us sat there while the Dr told her and her family that she had weeks to live.. I lay in my bed sobbing for her, her family, friends and for their impending loss.. when she was leaving I gave her a hug and told her to make the most of the time she had left…. I was shattered for them.. and of course I felt fear, that could be me.. what if…  During my stay my hair fell out in clumps, it became a joke with the nurses where they would point out clumps of my hair .. I finally got Shane to borrow some scissors off them so he could cut my hair short till we could get home and shave it.. thank goodness I had gotten him to bring one of my new chemo/cancer hats in so I could wear it… With much excitement they finally released me when my white blood cell count started to rise enough for me to go home.. yayyyyyy I remember walking out of there, the sun was shining and I didn’t care who saw me in my jim jams and bunny slippers.. I was going home and that was the best thing in the world.. that night we shaved my head, I cried not as much as I thought I would and not for my hair but for the symbolism of it..

The next task was to get my port in.. yep I hear you ask what’s a port.. well it’s a device they insert under your skin in your chest that is attached to your main artery and it enables them to IV the chemo and drugs into you without having to find a vein.. which was extremely difficult with me… they can also get blood out of them most of the time…. this was one of the best decisions I made whilst I have an obvious scar there now from it, it made my life and the nurses life so much easier… and oh well what’s another scar to add to the others 🙂

Then it was back to chemo, more chemo, more chemo and more chemo… this first chemo I was doing was called FEC90, OMG that was just awful, it’s the combination of 3 different chemicals and all of them are nasty, they kill your cells but the cancer cells as well…. each one made me very sick.. I vomited, was nauseous, could hardly move for almost the 3 weeks between each one, lost my hair and had trouble with anything and everything… but I did the 4 of them and then started straight away on the next lot of chemo as they couldn’t get me into the radiation therapy..

Sigh, Taxol, well that was fun as well, 12 of these and weekly… every Tuesday Shane and I would drive into Norwest and sit with the gorgeous team at Specialist Services…. the first couple went ok but I was still reeling from FEC90 and then the Taxol started to have it’s own effects… my toe nails and finger nails started to go funny.. I lost most of my big toe nails, I got numbness and tingling in my fingers and toes, my legs and ankles doubled in size at least and I was sooo exhausted I could hardly walk anywhere…  I also started Herceptin as my breast cancer was HER2 positive, up until a few years prior this drug was not available on the free list but I was lucky.. I would have paid the $40k plus if we had to, it increases your chances of survival significantly and even though we already had almost $15k in out of pocket medical expenses and me not working or earning an income, we would have found the money…

I then went on to have over 30 hits of radiation and got fried like a lobster but much much worse.. the pain was pretty bad and the burns continued for weeks after I finished my treatment… I could hardly move, think about really really bad sunburn and times it by 100…

Then early 2013 I had my reconstruction… during my mastectomy, my surgeon inserted an expander and then over the next few months, my reconstruction surgeon filled this with saline to stretch the skin back out and create an area to insert the implant into.. I couldn’t afford the larger size implant so I opted for a C cup and my reconstruction surgeon would do a reduction on the other side… this was cheaper, I know “what the”.. and yes any woman going through breast cancer has to pay significant out of pockets for breast reconstruction surgery as medicare don’t cover it.. you can go public but the waiting list is around 2 years 🙁

The surgery went well and I was starting to feel like what we call “the new normal”.. and was looking forward to getting the all clear and start using our little snow babies that were waiting patiently for us after my cousin had done another egg donor cycle for us and we had 11 embryo’s in the freezer.. but in May 2013 it all went wrong, I felt some dampness in my top.. of course I don’t feel too much on that side but did feel something to see that I had fluid leaking from my right foob.. yep that’s what we call them… I texted my breast cancer nurse and she said to monitor it and if I got a temperature to let her know.. it continued to leak and I was truly concerned, no one else was but I was terrified beyond words… I didn’t feel great by the Sunday night and during the night declined rapidly and by Monday morning was so sick with temperatures and infections I was rushed to my surgeon at the hospital and admitted immediately…. for days I was soooooo sick I couldn’t keep food down, the pain was excruciating, I was on the strongest of antibiotics and I think I cried a lot…  by the 3rd day after being up since 4am in extreme pain and vomiting up so much bile my Dr decided to do an emergency surgery and remove the foob, the infecitons and see what was going on… I started to get better as such but now was foobless…..

Then about 3 weeks later, I got Shane to check my wounds as they didn’t feel right and we found that they had opened up in several places… argghhhh… we rang our nurse and she rang the surgeon and he said just keep an eye on it.. finally days later we were back to see them all again… they called them radiation ulcers where the tissue and skin were sooo damaged they opened up and were having trouble healing.. so after weeks of daily wound dressings and packing them with no change, my surgeon sent me to Prince of Wales Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy x 5 days a week.. so I travelled into town on the 8am train, caught a bus, did my hyperbaric, had my wounds dressed and came home, that took the whole day and by the end of it I was exhausted.. so 12 weeks of this with a few days off one week to go down to Melbourne and see my Mum…  No change, what the… so they did a CT scan to find I had a rare condition called Osteoradionecrosis… again what the.. my tissue, skin, part of my rib bones and surrounding areas had died from the infections, temperatures and radiation…  My surgeon and radiation oncologist were stumped as to why I had it, it’s so rare these days for breast cancer.. sadly throat cancer patients can get it as the radiation is required around their jaw and often they get it in their jaw etc.  Anywho so I needed more surgery… a “lat dorsi” now many women do this surgery for reconstruction, mine was for the osteoradionecrosis as well as I figure we may as well re-do the reconstruction as well.. so the surgery was done, they took a large flap of skin, lat dorsi muscle and tissue from my back and put it on my front.. so yep I’m back to front…

Then next surgery was to insert the expander and then they weekly inserted saline to stretch the skin out again… and let me tell you that’s not comfortable as well.. it makes all that areas soooooo tight and uncomfortable and painful… but no pain no gain right…  And then the surgery to insert the implant early 2014…  Gosh we must be getting closer to the end of this and getting to use our snow babies..surely..  And this is only a small part of what went on.. I haven’t even gone into the pain and all the other issues… surely this is enough…

So I heal, I get the all clear from my surgeon, I see my oncologist, I get full body PET scans done – these are not much fun either.. and then I get yayyyy the all clear, I can use my snow babies..

So we meet with our Fertility Specialist and we start the cycle… and then we get the call from the scientist.. that our embyro’s have not survived the thaw.. I kept saying to her, but we have 11 and she had to tell me several times that they were all dead.. as I write this tears are flowing as this was just heartbreaking and devastating.. these little snow babies were a huge part of what kept me going through all the treatment…. how can you lose that many embryo’s?? it’s just not possible and it’s not normal.. in between tears I rang the IVF clinic in Melbourne where we had one little snow baby left on ice from the first cycle my cousin did.. we managed to make it happen and I flew down that weekend to do the transfer on the Tuesday… I got to see my Mum as well which was lovely and caught up with my dear and wonderful friends… ok deep breaths, embryo survived the thaw, transfer done and now the 2ww… we get a positive pregnancy result yayyyyyy and my HCG levels are good and continue to rise.. ok tick, tick, tick.. those hurdles crossed.. then the 7 week scan and our world falls apart, there’s no heartbeat and no fetal pole.. the embryo has not grown into a baby, it most likely had chromosomal problems :'( words just can’t describe our loss… we then had to wait 13 days and do another scan to confirm that the baby didn’t have a heartbeat still and was not viable.. this was just cruel.. finally we had that confirmation and organized a d&c…  We had planned to go to Melbourne to see my dying Mum so we did the d&c a few days before driving down there.. I cried the whole way down.. and when we stopped at Jugiong for lunch, this mum with her hubby and family were coming in the door, the little girl was taking her time and the mother said “Mabel” move and she didn’t, I smiled at her and said it’s ok.. the mother then said to me “do you want her” oh my…. she didn’t mean it but it broke my heart and I cried even more if that’s possible.. I wanted to go in and ask her to be our new egg donor.. I almost did…

So we spent time with my Mum and I spent the next 3 to 4 weeks after the d&c in pain and discomfort and grieving for our losses… we weren’t ready to give up yet on our dream.. we hadn’t had a chance at all.. so we started looking again for a new egg donor…. you think running this website, I would find one easily but everyone assumes that and therefore they don’t offer.. and I guess I don’t put it out there enough as well as I don’t want to take a donor away from someone else, sigh….  I started our search, I posted on Facebook, I put an ad up on pay it forwards on Facebook, I placed my own ad on here, and another egg donor website even had the audacity to text me and ask me if I really needed a donor or was just doing it for publicity, how could they ask me that… I have always shown such integrity and honesty and to even think that about me was just disgusting….

Then our friend offered and we decided to take her up on it.. she’s amazing for an extremely busy person, she just made all the appointments happen and in January 2015 we were starting a cycle with her.. but sadly we got 6 eggs but none of them were mature 🙁 we all cried… our friend offered to go as many times as we needed… we spoke to the FS and he assured us it was highly unusual and that he was sure if we went again we could do better… we were considering going overseas at the time but after consulting with the FS he convinced us to try one more time..  so we had to wait for a period in between and we went again.. we got 12 eggs but again most of them were immature and/or didn’t fertilise… and we ended up with 2 very poor day 1 embyro’s in the freezer that the scientist said won’t probably survive the thaw…

So I am ready, prepped for the phone call that lets me know if they survived, surely Easter Sunday will be our good luck charm… and you know I created this website one Easter many years ago… so fingers and toes crossed that I don’t get a call tomorrow morning, the scientist said she won’t call me if they are ok… but I’m not holding out much hope for them.. .and then of course as anyone knows having gone through IVF, there’s the will they survive till transfer, will they implant, will I get a positive pregnancy test, will my hcg levels be good, will my hcg levels increase enough, will there be a heartbeat at the 7 week scan, will I miscarry… sigh…  and will I get to the 12 week scan… and then the next scan and the next one … it’s not just yippee I’m pregnant, it’s all the hurdles to get through before that little baby is in our arms…

Well it’s past my bedtime and I’ve already written too much, sorry 🙂 so good night, happy Easter and I will keep you updated..

love from us Dianne and Shane xoxox

D&C all done, yayyyyy

Great news, my d&c has been done, my uterus is clear of all those nasty chemo drugs…. now need to see my reconstruction surgeon on Monday as I am still in lots of pain from the last surgery and I shouldn’t be, hopefully it’s just my body overwhelmed by all the breast cancer surgeries and treatments… 🙁

We are still working towards a late September embie/snow baby transfer…. now I’m getting excited, but a bit nervous as most of us know that it’s not an absolute…
Off to see my wonderful TCM & acupuncturist Kathryn Taylor tomorrow, have been seeing her for years and she’s fabulous, gosh she knows just about everything about infertility. She’s been away for a while so I’ve been seeing her locum but it will be fabulous to catch up with her tomorrow…

Would love to hear how you are going with your journey xoxox

So it’s been a while……sorry :(

Gosh I’m sorry it’s been a while since I have written anything, I hoped to do it regularly but a wee thing called breast cancer just got in my way.. plus all the usual day to day stuff 🙂 I hope to get back into it more soon…

Thank you to everyone for all your support and patience, I have tried where possible to approve ads really quickly and reply really quickly but there have been days where I have just been too sick to do it 🙁 and it’s also been very difficult to do it from a hospital bed.

It’s been a crazy 2 1/2 years, since my diagnosis, I have had a mastectomy, FEC90 chemo x 4 sessions every 3 weeks and that was crap (nausea, vomiting, exhaustion, mouth ulcers, lack of appetite, hair loss and much much more), I was admitted for a week plus to hospital for low white blood cell count and infections after this first chemo, then I had to have a port put in as my veins collapsed in my arm and they couldn’t get a vein for the chemo, I then had another chemo taxol weekly for 12 weeks and that too was crap 🙂 (absolute exhaustion to the point I couldn’t walk or move, I lost my toe nails and my finger nails went extremely brittle, I lost feeling in my toes and fingers and it’s still as bad today which potentially no fix in site.. and again much much more), then I did radiation every weekday for over 4 weeks and that gave me a lovely tan, well actually really really bad sunburn with blisters… I also started a therapy called Herceptin through the port for a year as I was HER positive, I then had my reconstruction and 5 weeks later was rushed to hospital with massive infections and pain and subsequently had to have the implant removed.. then about 4 weeks later the wounds opened up and I had two lovely holes in my side where I could see inside myself :)… so my specialist got me to have them dressed daily for weeks, then sent me to Prince of Wales hospital daily for hyperbaric oxygen treatment to see if that would heal them, that was fun from Faulconbridge in the Blue Mountains on the morning train to Central railway station then by bus to Randwick and back home again in the afternoon… when that wasn’t working after 12 weeks, they did a CT scan to find that I had Osteoradionecrosis, a rare condition where the radiation and infections had caused the tissue and skin and some of my ribs to die… so they I had to have a lat dorsi where they took skin, muscle and tissue from my lower back and pulled it through to my front to give that area circulation and skin to heal…. but wait there’s more 🙂 so then once that was healed I had the expander put in, another surgery, and then they inflated it slowly to stretch the skin out and then finally about 7 weeks ago I had the implant put in… so we are on the home stretch, yay!!

Sorry a boring lot of detail and I am sure I have forgotten lots of extra treatment and stuff…. but that’s the quick snapshot 🙂 of course there were weekly/daily specialist appointments, lots of pain and exhaustion and so much more…

So the great news for me is that my egg donor angel did another cycle whilst I was still going through treatment and we have 11 snow babies on ice waiting for us.  I have just had full scans and yes am cancer free, yayyyyy, we are full steam ahead on doing a cycle and a transfer.

This Tuesday I have a d+c to clear my uterus of all those nasty chemo drugs and other chemicals… then my body will heal whilst we go away to Melbourne to visit family and once we return we will do our first transfer, sometime around the end of September.

It’s been a long, exhausting and emotional journey for us and I hope that our dreams will now become reality and this Christmas I can celebrate knowing that the next one, we will have our own family.

So what about you?? I have had lots of wonderful news whilst going through all of this of babies being born through couples meeting their egg donor angels through here and lots of couples and egg donor angels currently going through the process.  Some sad news where the cycles haven’t worked or the couples have decided to not continue looking 🙁

I am soooooo very excited, every week this site is growing and more and more wonderful egg donor angels are placing ads or contacting couples offering to help, when I started there were so many of us looking and not many angels…. but now we are getting the word out there about egg donation, infertility we are getting many more successes., thank you to everyone for this and please keep spreading the word xox

I was in Springwood at my local shops the other day and typical me, found any opportunity to talk about egg donation and Egg Donor Angels and infertility, that I was chatting to a shop assistant and she said if she had know years ago after having her children, she would have donated her eggs…

But the most important message I had for her was to be aware of her daughters fertility and as they get into their thirties to get themselves checked out and if they aren’t ready yet or haven’t found the right one yet, freeze their eggs…

When we are young, we are told “don’t get pregnant”, “go on the pill”.

At school, we learn the basics of reproduction but no one teaches you about infertility and its conditions and how age affects it and how our fertility starts to decline after 35…. I am not saying all young women should get pregnant or have babies earlier, everyone is different and each person needs to do this when they are ready… but I want every girl/woman to totally understand how it all works, the issues and even the simple thing of how ovulation works…

Well that’s it from me…I would love to hear how you are going..

xoxox

The Big C!

There’s no easy way to start this post, so here goes… 4 weeks ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now I have always said cancer scares me but just never thought it would be me. We had just said goodbye to a friend on the 27th January to cancer, she lived with us for over 3 months while renovating her house next door and then within two days of moving into her dream home, she was diagnosed with cancer. It was in her bones, her lungs and her breast and they didn’t know which was the primary and which was the secondary and which one to treat.. sadly she fought it for a while but her body was riddled, goodbye Nellie, you are missed…

We spent the last four months of 2011 doing our donor egg cycle and two transfers where sadly we miscarried. At the same time I had a really bad flu and had a some symptoms that I put down to the IVF drugs. I mentioned the scab on my nipple to my GP at the appointment I had with her re my flu and first miscarriage and she said to come back…. I went back in December about it and another issue and she looked at it, said “hhmmm, it’s probably the IVF drugs” and dismissed it. In the meantime I had googled “scab on nipple” and nothing came up, discharge, leaking etc came up but not this one.. so I thought it must be the hormones and trusted my GP. About 6 weeks ago I felt a huge lump in my breast and immediately booked into my GP to get it checked out. She said let’s do an ultrasound, I said what about a mammogram, she ummed and erred and then did the request. On the day of the scans, I knew they had found something being a Friday I had to wait all weekend, and of course when my GP was calling me Monday morning for an appointment to discuss the scans/results I knew that it was bad news. She said it appears to be DCIS, which was a better one to have…. sadly when we got to meet with our cancer surgeon 10 days later it was worse than that. It was high grade DCIS and invasive breast cancer and probably in my lymph nodes.

So here I am at 1am in the morning with only 9 hours before they operate and do a mastectomy on my right breast and remove all my lymph nodes. Sadly I say a fond farewell to a part of me that makes me I guess a woman but the learning I have is that it’s not me, what’s inside is me. I will start chemo in about 4 weeks for a few months or more where I will lose all my hair and probably grieve again, silly but it’s part of the process….. and then radiation most likely. So this speed hump is putting a pause on our dream of a family but it will not stop us from achieving that dream…

So I now have some work to do, hopefully get some sleep and then up at 6am to get ready for another journey in my life… will post again soon with an update…

Cherish your dreams and make them a reality… xox

Ok… Deeep Breaths

Woke up this morning with a brighter outlook after yesterday’s appointment.

We saw our IVF Dr and after this round of blood tests and ultrasound, he say’s there’s nothing that should stop us from having a successful pregnancy, yay!! Some minor immunity issues but when we do our next cycle, he will give me something to help that.

I still have to do a uterus biopsy, was meant to do it yesterday but stopped my progesterone pessaries last week as they came from a different compounding chemist and I had a reaction to them 🙁

He said my donor has good ovarian reserve for her age, looks like she got my share for the family 🙂

So it’s looking like sometime in March, my donor has a few commitments over the next month or so and we need to get everything sorted at the clinic as well as my biopsy to cover all our bases.

Since the last miscarriage, I stopped talking about having children, it was just too hard and even if I did, it wasn’t “when we have children” or “our children/child” it was “if”. Last night I felt I could have the dream again, might take a few more times to get there but…..

Re this website, I am getting some great feedback thank you xo And thank you to those of you that have advertised and that have enquired about being an egg donor angel xo

As some of you know or have read, I used to charge a small fee to advertise on the site but I have stopped that as I only had a few people willing to pay and in turn I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on advertising for a donor for them. As much as I am passionate about this, I can’t afford this kind of money, sorry 🙁
… so I dropped the charge on my site and now I just promote the site and the potential recipients where I can, the only cost to me is my time and that I am not earning money from my business when doing it, if that makes sense?!
In doing this, the potential organic egg donor angels to the site has reduced and the site is mainly attracting the ones actively searching for this.

I would love your feedback on the site and in particular costs, would you prefer it to be free or would you consider paying a fee to advertise on this site, where we can then pay for advertising for your search for your egg donor angel?

I personally in my own search for our egg donor angel paid for ads in many places. The one thing I wanted was a quick and immediate response and something that was quick and relatively easy. I know we all have busy lives and for some of us it’s harder to get online, scouring the internet and sites posting and responding to forums and conversations. While this approach is free and offers some fantastic support networks however it is also very time-consuming. Yes we are focused on realising our dream of having a family but sadly life must go on with or without this dream and importantly we need incomes to pay for the dream as well.

I would love your feedback on this, either comment on this here, or drop me a line at diannej@eggdonorangels.com.au

Here’s to 2012 being the year of realising the family dream for any of us on that journey xox

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Another Christmas without our own family to share it with… when does this heartache stop…

Sorry to start the post on a downer but I know many of you will know these emotions and feelings……

Sadly we had another miscarriage, this time we knew by the second blood test, my HCG levels dropped signficantly so I stopped the meds straight away. The great news is my donor is going again for us but it’s going to be a few months due to personal commitments and we have moved to another clinic. I will do a separate post on this later as finding and researching a clinic is really important and knowledge is powerful in this emotional process.

Since then I have done blood tests and further ultrasounds to help us with the miscarriages before we go again. I knew I had a condition called Adenomyosis but yesterdays ultrasound confirmed it which is not good as mine seems quite bad. Now I am dreading next weeks appointment with the Dr as I suspect he is going to say it’s not good news and our chances are slim or none of holding a baby…. fingers crossed that he has some ideas on how to manage or help it… unfortunately the condition is not fixable 🙁 Normally they recommend a hysterectomy!!

So another Christmas and we still don’t have our dream. How do I feel?? Unbelievably sad but then grateful for what I do have but then overwhelmed by the sadness… How do you turn the corner on this, is it acceptance of your fate and move on with your life, do I keep trying until there is no hope at all?? My TCM lady said to me recently it will happen for me as I am the most determined person she knows in regard to this, however now I am not so sure. Even when the Dr told me 6 years ago things were not good and even when we tried and tried and I came to terms with an egg donor, I was still determined to realise the dream… now I am not so sure it can be realised.

My fear is that while I am putting this in writing, many of you going through the same thing are going to worry that this will be your fate, please don’t xox. As many of you know this is part of the process and I am documenting this as its normal and we need to know that. Surprisingly I am quite a shy and private person and this post is especially hard as it’s not like me to admit some defeat, give in or let it get to me but I feel it’s important as if I am going through this, then many of you have, will go or are going through this and we need to support each other.

The hardest part is to pull myself out of it, normally I am really good at this, like any of us, you have a sad or emotional day and then you wake up the next day, smile and get on with it. This time it’s a bit harder, I bounce back for a day or week and then I have another “ho hum” day….. It may not help that I am on the hormones as the Dr is doing a uterus biopsy next week as part of his investigation into the miscarriages.

So what next for me.. well I need to pull myself out of this, I need to get to next weeks appointment and hear what he says and take it from there. Will keep you updated and please talk to me about this if you want to either through email or here on our Facebook page….

xox

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Here’s to a new cycle………

This week we start a new cycle, exciting but nerve-wracking as well! Thank goodness I am feeling much better, the nasty flu has gone yay…
I have been seeing my wonderful TCM and Accupuncturist Kathryn Taylor since the miscarriage. Both of us are quietly confident that this one will be the one.. fingers, toes and just about everything crossed it is…
What truly amazes me again is just how many people have been through IVF. Every time I talk to someone about it, they have done IVF, know someone etc… How outstanding that the current Govt changed the rebates for IVF almost 2 years ago. How is it possible that they can think its not necessary and the Doctors and clinics are not reducing their fees, so the only ones that are hurting are the couples going through IVF. They have made it out of reach financially for lots of couples. They were also quite sneaky in changing the rebates for donors. If you use a donor, you only get a tiny rebate, prior to the changes your donor made the claim and got the full rebate same as the person doing an egg retrieval cycle. We paid almost $10,000 for our donor cycle and only got back $1,480, yep that’s right! If you do a cycle on your own, it’s approximately $7,500 and you get around $3,000 to $4,000 back….. I even rang Medicare and questioned the description on the web site for that claim and she checked with the assessors and they confirmed that it was right. No reason as to why. Not sure why we are discriminated against for doing a donor cycle. However I do plan to write to the Health Care complaints Commission about it and put in a formal complaint about it.

There are so many unjust causes I wish I had money to fight for them including Child Support Agency and IVF recipients.

Anway off my soapbox now.. time to take the doggie for a walk, now it’s cooled down here…

Take care and baby dust to those of you that are dreaming the dream and thank you to those whom support us going through the journey.

xox

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Where do I start…..

Hi everyone,

Sorry it’s been a while, it’s been a rather hectic few months.  We renovated a house, were going through the process of starting our Egg Donor Cycle, had work commitments, went away for a well-earned break (I worked throughout the holiday but still relaxed!) and had the usual day-to-day stuff going on.. you all know how it is 🙂

So where are we at?…. well we did our first cycle with our Egg Donor, yay.. we ended up with 6 snow babies, we had 2 transferred and have 4 still on ice.  That was about 8 weeks ago… the day after we came home from the cycle I came down really sick with the flu and for the next 6+ weeks, couldn’t do anything but get out of bed to do work for my clients and then go back to bed to rest.  During that we found out that we were pregnant, we were so excited and as you do when you are an IVF’er, were a bit nervous, then got excited and started to plan.. sadly a few weeks later I miscarried the baby, my HCG hormone levels started to drop and within days I miscarried.  It’s an awful thing and my heart goes out to every couple that have gone through this, apparently 1 in 3 women have a miscarriage, some don’t sadly know, they just have a really really bad period.  For over a week I battle the bad flu as well as the extreme pain of the miscarriage and in between dealt with the sadness of it all.

But the one thing that keeps us IVF’ers going is the plan, what’s next… as hard as it is.  So my plan is to have a period in about 2 weeks and then start a new cycle and fingers crossed, lots of hope and prayers, this one will stick and we can tell the world that we are going to be a family.

An update on my website as well, I have removed this cost for the time being. I have spent thousands of my own money creating this site and paying for advertising for previous ads but at the moment going through our own journey and with work commitments, I have decided to remove the charge to advertise on this site for the moment… Good Luck with your search for your Egg Donor Angel and we will keep you updated on our journey…

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Update

Ok, so I have been a bit slack, I am just not very good at “blogging” and we have been away for our holiday.

Had a great time, we relaxed, stayed in lots of free campsites, over half the trip was done free camping.  Some of the rest stops we camped in were just great, one of our favs was about 24kms out of Longreach.  There were dirt tracks behind the main rest stop area that you could park in, light a campfire and look at the stars – it was just wonderful, oh and we had mobile phone reception, not that we really had time or used it that much 🙂

We got all the way to Darwin, through outback QLD and up the main highway, stopping at some of our favourite places, Mataranka, Daly Waters and Litchfield.  We swam lots and the warm weather was wonderful.  At Litchfield, Wangi Falls were closed due to the high rainfall and the late wet season but we found a couple of new places to swim, one was Walker Creek – WOW.  We bushwalked about 3kms to get to it, it was a plunge pool at the bottom of small cascading waterfalls and we swam with fish and water dragons etc.  It was just wonderful.

We have been back a couple of weeks but it’s been rather hectic, catching up with stuff which we are still doing but getting there.

The most exciting news is that we have started our donor cycle – Yay!  I am calmly excited if that’s possible 🙂  The trip away gave me some time to truly think and reflect and let go of my demons and regrets, so now I am ready for this journey and the next phase of our wonderful life together. 

I love Shane very much and so glad that we are doing this together, he is a wonderful person.  I love my donor and can’t wait to also share this exciting journey with her xox

Will keep you all updated, thanks for your support, thoughts and wishes xox