The midnight call

At my second monitoring appointment, after 5 days of stimulation, my 16 follicles are looking good, and my estrogen is 1,046. They lowered my dose again from 112.5 IU to 75 IU for Friday & Saturday night, then I go back up to 112.5 IU on Sunday night. They are also having me start Cetrotide. It's funny - my intuition about the meds has actually been right so far - I thought they would lower it last time, and they did, and this time I felt kind of okay, I thought they might lower it and might not, and they lowered it for 2 days then went back up on the 3rd. And I thought I would need to start Cetrotide on Friday, since I got some cervical mucus, and indeed I did start it that day.

I had so much trouble with the Cetrotide the first time! And actually, it's still hard. The first problem, that I didn't notice at first, was that the plunger slowly comes back up if you let go of it after pushing it down. Yikes! So you'll suck up air, blood, whatever, if you're not careful! And it's really hard to keep holding on to it exactly in the same place so you don't accidentally squirt any out, or suck any air up. Then, the powder that's supposed to mix with the liquid didn't mix all the way. There was still some stuck to the bottom of the vial. I waited a few minutes, "gently swirled" like the instructions said, then more vigorously swirled, but it still wouldn't dissolve. I saw warnings that said "Do not inject if particles remain", so I thought maybe that one had gone bad somehow. So, I threw it away and got out another one. This time I was aware of the plunger problem and carefully held it, then I carefully kept the needle above the powder in the vial, instead of injecting it directly into the powder, and swirled and swirled. Some was still sticking to the bottom. So what to do?? This was at about 10pm, so I called the emergency number for the pharmacy. They said they would page someone and call me back. I waited a few minutes, but wasn't sure how long I should wait. So then I called my IVF coordinator's emergency number. She called me back right away. All this time I had been holding on to the vial and plunger, swirling. After about 15 minutes, as I was talking to my coordinator, it all finally dissolved. She said it was unusual to take so long, but as long as it dissolved it was okay, so I should go ahead and do it. I felt so bad for calling her so late :( , but I really had to. I just didn't know what to do.

So then, it was also really tricky getting the liquid in the vial back into the plunger! I had to hold the needle so it was just barely in the vial, so it would suck out all the liquid, but of course not let it come out of the vial and lose all the medicine. And of course not let the plunger plunge the wrong way, all at the same time. I messed up and got some air mixed in, and had to wait for it to settle so I could get it out...but in the end, I did get my injection. Whew. That was NOT easy. The Gonal-F was so easy to do, I didn't have any trouble. But this Cetrotide, yikes. Not fun at all. It made my skin turn red too around the injection site. The Gonal-F never did that. I'm glad at least I don't have to take too many days of it.