Surgery Follow-Up

I went for my surgery follow-up on Friday.  Dr. H said everything looked good and that I had a large follicle on my right ovary.  I'm pretty sure what she saw was an empty follicle from ovulation last weekend... Does anyone know if you can ovulate twice in a cycle?  She said sometimes older women can, which I knew, but what I read said that both eggs ovulate within a 24-hour period.

I do have a strange pattern to my bbt chart this month.  I'll try and paste it in later, but basically I have the first rise Saturday/Sunday, then a big dip (could be estrogen fall-back pattern), then up again and then two descending temps (from 98 to 97.7 to 97.6), then back up again to 97.96 and holding.  The lowest temp, 97.6, was taken an hour earlier than I normally get up, so maybe that impacted things, but not the 97.7.  So looking at that, if it's possible to ovulate twice (NOT within a 24-hour period), maybe I did?  The first ovulation was so early, by several days.

Other issues the doc and I discussed:

• She had her last child when she was 44!  How cool is that?  Her advice to me is to get fit and relax - hmm, I never heard that before!  I feel pretty fit for me, but maybe I'll amp up my health habits and try to lose a few more pounds.

• Regarding the fibroid, I asked her what she would do if she were me (someone recently suggested asking this question and I thought it was a good idea).  She said if I want to pursue donor eggs, she would go forward with the fibroid surgery.  But if I want to try with my own eggs, she would forgo the surgery at this time, which would cause me to lose three months of trying. 

• She said she took out several polyps.  I was under the impression there were just two or three!  She wasn't sure how many exactly, but definitely more than three.  She said my uterus is now "perfect." :)

• I asked about protocol considering my past responses.  She said she would definitely not have me take lup.ron, as I did in my first medicated try, as that shuts down my system (at least for older women).  She would also not recommend using Fem.ara first, since last time I was only able to fit in one day of stims after taking several days of Fem.ara.  She would also increase the dosage of Meno.pur.

• She reiterated that no one had gotten pregnant at my age on a medicated IUI cycle... But.  They had gotten pregnant on the cycle FOLLOWING a medicated IUI cycle, trying naturally (and also with IVF of course).  Isn't that interesting?  They don't know why but there seems to be a positive boost gained from doing the meds but not until the following month.  So, we still plan to do a medicated IUI.  She told me about two lower cost IVF programs, which I intend to look into.  I'm not holding my breath, however.

• Our Cobra was unfortunately just discontinued.  We signed up for plans which allow us to stay with the same doctor, though.  We'll just be paying more out of pocket for the fertility-specific procedures.  S is making a good salary now, though, and says we can afford it (my increase in hours helps too).  We will either be going forward with injectables this coming cycle or the one following, depending when this cycle starts.

In other news, I attended a community college conference last week from Wednesday to Friday and had some co-worker bonding time, in addition to learning some new assessments and counseling tools, etc.  Everyone is kind of mad at one of our co-workers/counselors.  I'm not, as it doesn't really affect me, but I guess he's been complaining a lot and has not been thinking of impacts on other people.  I don't love gossip, but it does make you feel included when someone confides in you.  Also, it's nice to go to dinner and talk about things other than work and get to know people on a deeper level.

Apparently when I'm in one of these events, I'm pretty "immersed" and find it hard to focus on other things.  S felt a little neglected and scratchy about it, especially coming out of our romantic wine-tasting weekend.  We went to a fun Stop Key.stone XL activist training in SF yesterday, though, and reconnected.