Cycling?

We have to make a decision. Or maybe it's just me that has to.

D has seen his MS-CFG and gone over all his results with her, and updated her on our efforts with the anti-candida, organic, gluten-free, near-alcohol free, near-caffeine free diet.

All good.

She advised him that now since he has a cyst he now has to avoid nuts as well – cysts don’t like nuts.

He was also given the name of another Urologist who has had some success with a ‘binding’ kind of operation on varicoceles. Not that we’re to get our hopes up - since this is a grand total of 1 patient.

D’s options are pretty limited; it’ll be a choice of general or local anaesthetic. We still have 6 weeks before he gets to see the original Dr. Uro.

But… the thing is, for whatever it’s worth D’s morphology has improved to 1%, so the question is does that mean we may have better results if we go through another round of IVF? Given that all our other cycles have been with 0% morphology is the 1% just a standard deviation or is it real? MS-CFG seems to think that it’s promising, and also we had the good news that we didn’t have any significant ‘round head’ forms. Apparently these are the bad ones, round heads can’t penetrate eggs au naturale (guess they just bounce off the sides?) and also there is belief that they contain damaged DNA and don’t grow great embryos even with ICSI.

Our original CFG, who I still see, was very shocked at our results, or lack of, after all we were following her protocols to the letter (literally - A Tea, O Tea, P Tea [the most disgusting], and Y Tea for D]). I still buy her putrid teas for D, because I think that they do have some benefit – it’s just that she neglected other significant stuff. I hate to say it, but I’m thinking of jumping ship to another CFG too, but she is a bit of a ‘hope’ addiction and it’s a tough one to break.

Why am I hesitating about another cycle of IVF?

I don’t know, except that I think if there is anything to be gained from the change of diet and acupuncture (+ teas) we need a little time. MS-CFG believes that if there will be change it should be apparent within 6 weeks.

D and I have decided that we’ll only give IVF two more goes at the most, so I want to make sure when we cycle we’re in good shape.

I want our efforts now to have a significant impact on our next cycle. What with the DHEA I’m taking and all D’s efforts – I want our timing to be right.

I can’t bear the thought of going through another cycle and having exactly the same results.

Our results have always seemed to be great – up to a point. We’ve always had good numbers of eggs, usually had close to 100% fertilisation, but our embryos have never implanted, nor do we get any in the freezer.

I will fully accept that my egg quality is not up to scratch and that is the reason for our failures, if I can rule out absolutely that there’s any doubt about the quality of our sperm.

I mean if we were to take the big next step and look into donor eggs, I would want to be confident that we would be in a better position than we are now.

Whatever we do, we have to make a decision in the next day or so... now - eeney, meeney, miney mo ...



Ooops, forgot to mention, I changed my display name ... never really liked Ace (sounds like a smart-alec boy) I just put it in when setting up my blog because it was a nickname I was given once. From now on my display name will be ... Sparkle (smart-alec girl now)... just so you know when I make my calls.