At the moment D is having a wee snooze so I'll use the time alone to summarise how today went. We're both pretty tired but I have been resting most of the day. If I go to bed now I won't sleep well tonight. This entry may be a little graphic in parts!
We arrived at the clinic a bit early but I didn't mind waiting for a while. They have really up-to-date magazines and over the past few visits I have managed to read a few good ones that I wouldn't normally buy! Soon after 10am we were shown into a part of the clinic that we hadn't been to before, the day surgery area. We met with a nurse who took my blood pressure, gave me 7.5mg of midazolam to relax me and put a cannula in the back of my hand. She gave me a gown to put on and also a panty liner to put in my pants for later and then D and I were left alone for a while so I could get undressed. I wore nothing under my gown but I had to put my pants in a zip-lock bag so they could give them back to me straight after the egg collection procedure. That felt a bit weird but thank goodness I was wearing one of my more cheerful Thunderpants designs! While we were waiting, the doctor who was going to do the egg collection came to talk to us. She explained that the eggs would be surrounded by cumulus cells (as in cumulus clouds) which would need to be removed and then they would be kept warm until the ICSI process takes place this afternoon.
I can't remember much about the room that the egg collection was done in. I lay on a chair/table sort of thing which had places to put my legs. I must have looked very undignified but I didn't care that much and I was covered up with a sheet. It was a lot more comfortable than the flat tables that the ultrasound scans are done on! I can remember seeing the screen with the ovaries and follicles quite clearly, but I couldn't see what was happening "down below". Sometimes it hurt, once or twice quite a lot, but only for a second, and I was given more morphine through the cannula straight away. As each egg was removed, it was put in a test tube. From where I was, each test tube had a centimetre or two of fluid in it, sometimes yellowish with a bit of blood in it and sometimes pale red. It was explained to me that there was always a bit of blood when the eggs were removed from the follicles - hence the need for the panty liner later. Each test tube was passed to the embryologist in the next room through a large hatch in the wall and she emptied it into a petri dish and put it under a microscope to remove the cumulus. Six eggs were collected, three from each side, and everyone seemed happy with how things went.
After the procedure was finished I was given my pants to put on and then I was taken in a wheelchair to a recovery area. A reclining armchair had been set up for me with a duvet and a hot water bottle. I was a bit sore so I accepted the offer of some paracetamol, and then I was brought a coffee and a muffin. The coffee was wonderful (I hadn't had anything to eat or drink since a coffee at 6.30am) but it took me a long time to feel like eating and even then I had only a few mouthfuls. I was very drowsy and although I read a few pages of my book I also dozed a bit.
D was in the recovery area with me but first he was taken away to have some anaesthetic applied to his testicles. Then he came back and got changed into a gown just like the one I had. He had to wait for a while but he was taken away again and Dr P extracted some sperm directly from his testes. I asked a few questions when D came back but unlike me he isn't too interested in the gory details. I wish I had been able to be with him but I was just too tired. After D's procedure, he was also given a coffee and a muffin, and then we got ready to go home. Before we left, I was given some utrogestan pessaries to prepare my uterus for implanting in a few days. I have to insert two of them three times a day which doesn't sound like very much fun - I think I preferred the injections! But it will create a good environment for the start of a successful pregnancy.
D drove home as instructed since I was still in no condition, though I think D would attest to the fact that the morphine didn't seem to affect my chatting abilities! This afternoon I have taken things quietly, wandered the garden, played a bit of piano, caught up on Facebook, while D sleeps. There has been a bit of spotting and some very slight pain, but nothing really to speak of. So that is another step taken, a particularly big and important step, and we will have to wait and see what the next few days bring for us. It feels very much out of our hands now.
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