Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Testing

Well, it snowed here. And iced. And sleeted. And freezing rained. As my state requires me to teach my seven year old students, there were many forms of precipitation.

Seriously, the standards include my students understanding the concepts of: precipitation, condensation, evaporation, weathering, erosion, weather vane, blizzard, tornado, hurricane, drought, and flood. Kind of crazy? Yep.

So we missed three days of school, and I rescheduled my appointment for today.

I was mildly annoyed by Obama's comments about the DC schools being closed. Those rural county roads do not get cleared well, and people down here just don't have the experience with snow/ice that midwesterners do. Luckily, I think Obama is otherwise brilliant. :)

The best thing to come out of my appointment is that Dr. Wonderful does NOT think that our prognosis is dim. He said that it is good that I was able to conceive, twice. We just have to figure out how to keep me pregnant.

He did not do an ultrasound today, which sort of surprised me but I was OK with that, being I didn't really want to be probed.

He did get a blood HCG test. I had to go to the lab across the street because my new insurance ANTHEM HEALTHKEEPERS SUCKS!!! I will have to go there from now on, unless it's IVF related. Oh, and I've had to pay a copay and stuff for the last three appointments because the diagnosis is Missed Abor.tion. Yep, the lab slip said I was a Habitual Abor.ter. Should I put that on my resume? I'm so NOT proud.

The RE said that I could still have HCG in my system, and that it sometimes takes a long time for it to clear out. Nice.

He went through all of the tests that I'm going to get, which can happen any time AFTER my HCG is back to zero. There are 15 tests. I wonder if they can get that with one vial of blood, or will they need multiples?

Here are the anal tidbits:

• They aren't going to test Luteal Phase Defect because that's a non-issue with IVF.
• I don't have any uterine abnormalities, because they already did a hysteroscopy and removed the one oddity that I had - a polyp.
• They won't do the chromosome imbalance test YET becaue insurance won't cover it until I have three losses. Please God, let me not get there!!!
• They don't really think it's bacterial. I had that Ci.pro and that should have knocked any of that out.
• So they ARE testing for APA, Lupus, blood clotting disorders, diabetes, and thyroid. I don't get why they are doing the thyroid, because they already know I'm hypothyroid and have it under control with synthetic hormones.

The RE said that there's a very good chance they will find nothing, but that it's good to rule out any of these, since we are doing IVF and all. My insurance cover it all, thank goodness!

My new thinking is to wait to try again until after spring break in April. So a late April, early May FET? The RE seems pretty optimistic about that one frozen embryo. It seems like a nice baby step to me. And that seems like a nice amount of "break" time from infertility treatments too.

Every year we usually spend our tax refund on a vacation. The tradition has been Ft. Lauderdale, but I've been researching other places and am thinking about San Francisco or Santa Fe. Let me know where your favorite vacation spot is. We're going in April and will have probably five or six days. It'll be good to get away before another cycle.