Last Dose!

Hooray! In an hour I will take my last antibiotic dose! The protocol has been to take a full course (2 or 3 weeks--can't remember) of the antibiotic and then take it for the first 10 days of the next seven cycles. It's to eliminate brown bleeding at the end of my period, and both of us have had to take it. It's caused me major digestive issues and a foul taste in my mouth, and Mr. X has had insomnia and nightmares. Needless to say, we can't wait to be finished with it. This is cycle number 8, so this dose is the last dose!

In other news, we've done a ton of work on our house and yard. We have an awful hot tub in the back yard. Neither of us is a huge hot tub person, never mind the fertility issues with hot tubs. I never could get the hang of balancing the chemicals, either. So, we took the lid off for the first time in ages to clean it up. It was so gross! Leaves, crabapples, and water had somehow found their way into the empty hot tub, and needless to say, it smelled to high heaven. We got it cleaned out, ran fresh water through the system, and it's all shiny and clean. We're going to take pictures tomorrow and try to sell it. If no one buys, we'll just have it hauled away.

We also did a lot of weeding and trimming, and my roses and peonies are starting to bloom! My mom has peonies, and I love them. Mr. X got me three peony plants for my birthday last year. I heard that they sometimes take a couple of years to bloom once they're planted, but the middle plant has started blooming already. My mom says they thrive on neglect, which is just right for my style of gardening! Speaking of which, I should go water my vegetable plants before they dry up completely.

One more random note--At the end of my street, there's a hand-made sign on neon orange posterboard advertising "Huge Baby Sale." It makes me giggle each time I pass it. Gee, if I'd known I could just pick one up at a sale, I wouldn't have messed with any of this fertility treatment stuff!

Read the Label, Part II

I had my prescription for T3 refilled this week, and last night, I grabbed my nighttime dose right before we started a movie. And I read the label.

I've been taking the wrong dosage for a month!

I had been on 7.5 mcg of T3 for a long time, and then my doctor increased me to 15 mcg. When that didn't cause any problems, he increased me to 22.5 mcg (the maximum dosage in the protocol he uses). I don't know why--maybe because I told the pharmacy I still had some 15 mcg capsules left when I brought in the 22.5 mcg prescription--but it looks like refilled my old prescription for 7.5 mcg instead of the new one for 22.5 mcg. So, I finished my 15 mcg prescription, and at the beginning of May, I started taking the new prescription, and then I had it refilled this week. But I only read the label last night.

So, it turns out that instead of stepping up to the 22.5 mcg dosage, I stepped back down to the 7.5 mcg dose. This probably explains why I did not notice any difference when I accidentally took a double dose 5 hours early last week, but how annoying! Last night, I just took three pills, since they total 22.5 mcg, but this morning I forgot and just took one. And I'll have to call the pharmacy when they open on Monday and find out what the deal is!

Definitely more ice cream

The past week has been incredibly stressful. Nothing I can talk about in specifics, but just really rough. I'm feeling much better today. Last night was the first night that I really slept well. Between the anxiety I was feeling a month or two ago and the past two weeks of not eating or sleeping well, I've definitely lost too much weight. I can now see my top ribs if I wear a v-neck shirt.

Fortunately, I think things are going to get better, work is going to slow down, and the weather is beautiful . . . which means we'll be going to our fabulous local ice cream place more often. It's a locally-owned business that makes its own ice cream, and it's ridiculously good. I've always liked trying different ice cream flavors, rather than sticking to one favorite, but at this place the black raspberry (ice cream, not sherbet) is to die for. It's even better with chocolate, or the Mexican chocolate ice cream they have. Right now, we have a quart of chocolate and a quart of black raspberry in the freezer, so I'm going to work on rectifying my anxiety-induced weight loss!

I've taken my clomid for this cycle. So far, I haven't really noticed any side effects from the clomid, which is really good. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how it might affect my cycle. We're trying to plan for the summer (travel, business trips, and all that), and trying to project my cycle based on the past few months. I really hope that the clomid doesn't change my cycle too much, or we could get stuck with a business trip at an inoportune time! Anybody know how clomid affects the time of ovulation and the length of the luteal phase and the cycle?

Read the label

After a long day at work yesterday, I came home with nasty cramps. I went into the house intending to take two a.d.v.i.l. I went to the fridge, took out the bottle, shook out two capsules, thought again, put one back, and took one capsule. Twenty minutes later, I was wondering why the cramps still hurt so bad. I was just crawling into bed when I thought maybe I hadn't taken the gelcaps (which seem to me to work faster). I thought about it, and I remembered taking a white capsules, not blue capsules. Then I figured it out. I had taken an extra dose of my T3 instead of the a.d.v.i.l! Not good. I had just eaten a snack, so I figured that would help keep my body from absorbing all of the thyroid hormone, but it still was not good!

Thanks for the great comments on the last post! It's good to know that those results don't seem too weird. I went and picked up the Clomid today. Lifehopes asked why clomid instead of letrozole, and I'm not sure! I asked the nurse, and she just said that the doctor probably thought it would work better, given my test results. And Allyouwhohope asked a couple of posts ago whether the PCOS caused me to stop ovulating--sorry it took me a while to answer that! I don't think so. I've never had a progesterone test low enough at Peak +7 as to indicate that I hadn't ovulated, and when I had my ultrasound series (wow, almost a year and a half ago now!), everything looked normal. When I called for my cycle review today, the doctor also prescribed more vitamins on days 1-10 to support capillary health (for the blood vessels in the uterus, given the brown bleeding I've had in the past).

So, this cycle, I'm taking:

Days 1-10: antibiotics (for the brown bleeding), plus the new vitamins (1g of vitamin C twice a day, B complex, and bioflavinoids)
Days 3-5: clomid
Peak +3, 5, 7, & 9: hCG injections
After period till Peak +2: guaifenesin
Whole cycle: Multivitamin, folic acid, B6, calcium & magnesium

Man, it looks like a lot when I write it out! And I need to keep track of these things so I don't just keep taking T3 whenever I know I have to take something!

Huh?

So, I got the results of my blood draw series. I had blood draws on days 12, 14, 16, and 18 to test estradiol levels around ovulation.

Here's what happened:
Estradiol peaked on Day 14
Positive OPK on Day 16
Peak Day on Day 18

What's up with that? Anyone have any ideas? Now, I did not have a blood draw on Day 13 or Day 15, so it's possible that my estradiol really peaked on one of those days. But, as it is, it looks like the estradiol, LH, and cervical mucus aren't synched up. I'm not sure, though--are estradiol and LH supposed to peak at the same time? I'll have to do some more reading . . .

The upshot of the whole thing is that the doctor is prescribing Clomid for my next cycle, along with another series of blood draws to see how things change. Since I've been taking a higher dosage of T3, I've been taking my temperature, and it dropped quite a bit this morning. Bummer. But not a big surprise if I think about those test results (and interpret them in my amateur fashion!). So, I'm thinking today will be Day 1 and I'll have my first dose of Clomid on Saturday!

Sewing Machine!

This weekend, we bought a sewing machine! I'm so excited. We got it for $25 on c*r.a*i.g's l*i.s*t. I haven't done any sewing in about 10 years, partially because I haven't had a sewing machine. It's very basic, but I don't need anything fancy right now. If I really get into it, then I can always look for something more complicated later on.

I'm looking forward to making some baby gifts this summer! I took up crocheting a few years ago, and I love it, but I think that sewing will be quite a bit quicker than the crocheted blankets and stuffed animals I've been making for baby gifts. We have a new niece or nephew coming in a couple of months (and a couple of friends' babies who have been on my crocheted-gift list for too long), so I'd better get on that gift pretty soon.

Our other fun thing this weekend was going to a town nearby with hot springs. I'm at Peak + 11 today, so we went in the pool that was at 97 degrees, not in the hot baths that were above 100. We also went in the mud room, which was a hoot. We were in a little room with windows, so it was funny to see people peeking in at us from the pool as we sat there all mud-caked in our bathing suits while we dried.

I have two memes that I really should do! Oh my gosh, I don't even want to think about how long it's been since I was tagged. I'll try to come back later this week and take care of those!

Crazy week

So, this week, my husband was on a business trip, my mom came to visit, I had a series of blood draws, my dog had surgery, and I had three big meetings at work. Yikes! Fortunately, poor Wonderdog is doing much better, and it was great to have my mom here.

**Warning--gross dog medical details below**
Wonderdog is getting older, and she's developed some fatty tumor things that older dogs apparently get. We've had them checked, and they're benign. Most of them are round and pretty small, but she had one on her side the size of Mr. X's hand. It was flat, so it was kind of hard to notice at first. Well, last Thursday, Mr. X called me over and showed me that it had gotten enormous! It was like someone sliced a football in half lengthwise and attached it to her side! I brought her in to the vet on Friday morning, and it turned out that it was filled with fluid. The vet drained as much as she could and checked it out under the microscope. She sent us home with antibiotics and said that, if it didn't go back to its normal size over the weekend, I'd need to bring her in to have a drain placed in it! Obviously, it didn't go away, so we got her scheduled for Tuesday, since she had to have anaesthesia and everything. Once the vet put her under, she realized that it would be better to just remove the whole darn thing. Part of it looked really bad, so it's been sent off for a biopsy now. So, Wonderdog ended up with a 5-inch incision on her side, with two drains in it. They had to keep her overnight on Tuesday, and we've had to put a t-shirt on her and then wrap her in a training pad (the big plastic-backed paper pads they use for house-training puppies) to keep her from bleeding all over everything. If I'm not with her, she has to wear a cone on her head, too! She was really pitiful on Wednesday when I brought her home, but she's doing much better now. But it was probably one of my mom's least glamorous visits! Thank God she was here, because it would have been a bit crazy trying to get her cleaned up and bandaged alone.

**End of gross dog medical details**

I'm having a series of blood draws around ovulation this week. I've also been using OPKs, too, just too get a sense of what's going on. It was positive on Wednesday, but sometimes I've had two positives in a row, so I tested again yesterday. I waited the requisite four hours, peed on the stick, and waited. And nothing happened. I mean nothing happened! No liquid moved across the little window. It was the weirdest thing! I started second-guessing myself--I did pee on this thing, didn't I? So I grabbed another one . . . but I had nothing left! I pried the little stick apart, and apparently something was blocking the liquid from the little window, because as soon as I opened it up, I could see it wet the little strip in the window, but it didn't look like it usually does. So, I had to wait another four hours and try again. It's so goofy--in a normal day, I'm sure I go more than four hours without peeing, but tell me I can't pee for four hours, and it's all I can think about!