Day 9 - Is it Harvest yet?

Day 9, I've made it. Unfortunately, not a lot of follicles have been pumped out of my ovaries, as readily as I had hoped. I knew going into this, with a low AMH level of 4.8 (anti mullerian hormone - a marker of ovarian reserve) that having eggs to retrieve would be optimistic (and awesome!). I had a scan yesterday, more blood work, and the day prior to that, my 3 monthly hematology appointment was thrown in there. Its been busy, coupled with working full time at my practise and being on the road to get to and from my fertility appointments (3 hours each way). I'm also in the midst of starting up a blood cancer running group to raise funds for related research. That is for another post.

From the beginning of my injections up until now, I have not had a major emotional breakdown or found myself in tears because there was no chocolate left in the drawer (ok, almost). I'm definitely not saying its out of the question. I'm still really looking forward to seeing what happens tomorrow; more bloods and another ultrasound scan. I've got bruises on my abdomen from the multiple injections (2-3 needles a night), bloating and raging hunger. I can't complain though these eggs can happily hatch at any point.

My haematological blood work took a sharp turn where I didn't want it to go, but I'm hopeful that these labs were just an outlier, rather than a new trend. The WBC count (white blood cells) went from 16 to 32 and my lymphocytes (related to my circulating cancerous lymphocytic cells) also doubled from 14 to 28. I had been really shocked and dreading my appointment as a result because I really have felt so well and not able to correlate the biochemical findings with what I was sensing in my body. Luckily, my hematologist is hopeful for the same and wanting to re-test once I finish IVF and return to baseline. If the re-test goes well, we can go back to 3 monthly again. That would be great.

I was thinking a lot today about staying present during all of this. I chatted with the physician the other day, my greatest ongoing difficulty is just waiting...wondering..not knowing. Ive really tried to think how I can turn those nervous emotions into positive enlightenment that enables me to continue living in the present moment. Its hard, harder once you have to "watch and wait" - kind of like going through IVF. Watch, wait, harvest.