Not Telling, Encouraging Stats, Rooting for Pie

Ahh, it's a lazy Saturday morning! I love it. Thought I'd do an update on a couple of things:

I made it through the meeting with the boss yesterday without any inquiries about the outcome of the FET. I was ready, thanks to comments on my previous post, but didn't even need to evade any questions. I had a stroke of luck, actually, and was able to preempt any inquiries by bringing it up first. My boss told me that one our colleagues, a man with a big personality who's always making people laugh, is leaving the organization. This is a big loss for us. I was saying things like, "Oh no!!!! This is terrible!" Well, this guy always conducts a "baby pool" among all staff whenever a woman is expecting. (I have never participated but basically, people bet on when the baby will be born and the person who's closest wins the pot of money.) In the midst of my very genuine "oh no" reaction, something flashed through my mind. My opportunity! So I said, "WHO is going to do my baby pool when I have a baby someday?!" Somehow I knew that my boss, who I know pretty well, would not ask me about the FET after I said this. She just said, "I don't know. I guess someone else will have to do it." And that was it! Ha! I am probably safe until my next meeting with her, which isn't until after the six week ultrasound. Whew!

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I left work a little bit early yesterday because I worked so late Thursday night. I went home to rest a bit and found myself feeling anxious about making it nearly 2 more weeks to the six week ultrasound. This is a whole 'nother 2ww! I pulled up an old email from CCRM's genetic counselor in which she provided me with a statistical summary for people who've had comprehensive chromosone screening (CCS). Here it is, verbatim:

2007-2009 Blastocyst-CCS General Update
N = 154 transfers
Average maternal age = 37.5
Average number of embryos transferred = 1.87
97% survival post vitrification
~61 % implantation rate
~74% clinical pregnancy rate (6 week ultrasound)
~71% ongoing clinical pregnancy

13% of patients who undergo blast biopsy had all aneuploid* embryos. This means 87% of the patients had at least one normal embryo available to transfer. Of the 154 woman who have had transfers (this does not include the patients whose embryos were all abnormal) of euploid** blastocyst embryos, ~110 have delivered a healthy baby (or babies). I calculated this number by taking 71% of 154 (see stats above).

* “aneuploid” means chromosomally abnormal
** “euploid” means chromosomally normal

I wanted to know where I am in those statistics now, so I called her -- and luck was on my side, I caught her! -- to ask a few clarifying questions. I was thinking the 61% implantation rate was a typo but she said it is not, because it is a calculation of implantation of each embryo transferred.

I asked about rates of miscarriage and she said they don't track them at every step of the way. BUT what she did say was very good news -- the miscarriage rate for women in this study after they had positive betas was just 4 to 5 percent!! This is exactly the kind of reassuring information I was seeking. I could, of course, be in that 4-5 percent, but my mind is at peace with those odds.

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Last but not least, today I am thinking a lot about Pie, whose beta is tomorrow -- on Mother's Day! That's just wrong. And to top it off, her husband is out of town until tomorrow. If you have a minute today, say a prayer, send some sticky vibes, or visit Pie's blog and leave an encouraging comment. Pie, I am rooting for you!

Mile High Anxiety

Well, it's not that bad (mile high), but I am having some anxiety, which is pretty unusual for me.

• I think it's partly lack of sleep. Too many long days at work trying to prep for being out for two weeks.
• It's also an inability to pack well -- DH and I checked 4 bags -- yep, FOUR -- and had three carryons. Of course I had a backpack jammed full of meds on ice, boxes of Menopur and Prometrium, and swabs and syringes.... And I had to bring my normal jeans AND my fat pants because I imagine at some point, I'm going to feel a litte bit, well, full. I just wanted to be prepared to be comfortable and now is not the time to insist on not checking bags. So in the name of taking good care of myself, I found myself with DH dragging seven bags -- oh and a tiny purse that I hoped would fit in one of the carryons if they got picky about such things. I miss my big purse.
• It's the fear that someone from work will see me at train station with my husband and seven bags when I'm supposed to be out for a "medical procedure" for the next two weeks. Ha. Thank goodness that didn't happen.
• It's the awkwardness of injecting meds on my the plane because I ran out of time before the flight and didn't want to be three to four hours late.
• It's the feeling of despair when you desperately want to sleep but can't -- that was me on the plane. (However the silver lining to that cloud was that we had free TV on the flight, so I watched the State of the Union address. Not that that reduced my anxiety level -- so many issues, so little bipartisan cooperation in D.C. But I won't go there.) 
• It's the frustration of arriving at the hotel where we'd stayed in November (in a huge room) to find our room much, much smaller. We inquired and may be able to move to a larger one today.
• It's the fact that yesterday I ate Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast, half a turkey sandwich and potato chips from a corporate boxed lunch, a Whopper Jr. from the airport, and a bowl of microwave pasta from the store at the hotel (at midnight Atl time). Ick. That is awful!
• Add all of the above together and that leads to the fear that this stuff has impacted my cycle -- that's the Mile High Concern.

But now that I'm here, things are going to get better.

• I'm going to have a proper breakfast at the hotel restaurant.
• I'm going to walk on the hotel treadmill later today.
• I'm going to get our room changed if at all possible and then unpack and settle in. Making our stay comfortable is really crucial to my sanity for the next 2 weeks.
• I'm going to catch up on my sleep one way or another (I love a good nap).
• I'm going to my first monitoring appointment here in Denver this morning and hopefully get some reaassurance that things are progressing well.
• I'm going to write a LOT in this blog because it is part of my sanity plan -- and with all this time on my hands, the potential for lack of sanity has never been greater.

It's all going to be fine. One way or another. In fact, here is the first evidence of that:  I just read a preview of what I've written here and considered changing all of the "It's" to "It was" in the list of concerns. That is a very good sign. Thank you, Blog!

More later.