Step Three: More Pills More Shots.

Now that the doctors decided that the Clomid was not going to work they decided to try Femara, which works similar to Clomid but that I may not be as resistant to. I started the next cycle this time using the maximum dosage of Femara and returned for a transvaginal ultrasound which at this point after almost a year of having them done twice a month, almost every month had become common place. It is surprising what you can get use to but as my story goes on you will find that it is good that I got used to them. The ultrasound results did not show the growth of any eggs.

The next month was another round of Femara with Dexamethasone this steroid would hopefully make me more sensitive to the Medication.This cycle's first ultrasound showed that there was two eggs. We hoped that the addition of Dexamethasone was finally going to be the answer. When I went in for the second ultrasound two days later the eggs were gone. The doctor told me I must have ovulated earlier than expected and that I would need to have the blood test to confirm. The blood test came back negative I had not ovulated. I found out that my body had not continued to produce enough hormones to mature the eggs so they dissolved back into my system. Since the medications had worked I sat down for a consultation with the doctor to see what options there were.  He explained to me that we could try to use injectable medications to try to further the growth of eggs produced by the pills but that following a full injectable path is not recommended for people with PCOS. There is a increased chance of getting pregnant with high order multiples (triplets or more) with PCOS. High order multiple pregnancies are usually very risky or not very successful. He recommended at this time we start considering IVF because it was no longer looking optimistic that we would conceive.

We tried our next round with the Femara and Dexamethasone when there was an egg at the first ultrasound I began taking Repronex to continue maturing the egg. Once another ultrasound confirmed the egg was ready, I took my Ovidrel shot and again hoped for the best. When this didn't work the doctor asked my husband and I to come in for a consultation and to reevaluate my health. The evaluation of my health showed that I was beginning to show signs of Cushing Syndrome from all of the steroids and that we could not continue with the fertility treatments at all. During the consultation he explained to us that because of my declining health the only option really left for us was to take a few months off, get some additional testing done, and prepare for IVF. Turns out this actually ended up be a good time to take off from the fertility treatments because life got crazy over the following months. My mom had surgery and needed me there for help, my sister got married

and my husband and I celebrated another anniversary.

Then in October I ended up in the hospital with a blockage in one of my bile ducts and had to have surgery to have my gallbladder removed. The surgeon told me gallbladder problems are really common in people who have undergone fertility treatments for a long time. During our time off we had our additional testing done this included more in depth blood tests. There were tests for every hormone in the body, S.T.D. tests, and tests to show how many good quality eggs I may have left. I also had a Sonohysterogram which was much like the hysterosalpingogram.

It is preformed the same way except it is done using an ultrasound and they use saline to flood the uterus to check for abnormalities in my uterus. Even though this can be done with the hysterosalpingogram it wasn't at the time and the results of my hysterosalpingogram had expired over all of the time doing treatments and for IVF it has to be current. Once all the testing was finished we made an appointment for the IVF consultation.