Begin life at forty

Tag: Life over 40

  • Failed IVF Cycle 5

    8/29/2023, started with a glimmer of hope.

    Since this was my last cycle in the US, I was very careful to order only the amount of medication I needed to avoid waste. Timing was tricky too. I had to plan ahead to avoid missing doses as my pharmacy didn’t deliver on Sundays. This meant a Monday morning dose could be late, especially with my early injections. Because I only ordered enough drugs, no extra, I didn’t account for possible delivery delays. One Monday, I ran out of Gonal F and freaked out. Fortunately my clinic loaned me a pen. The total cost for medication this cycle was over $6,000.

    My baseline scan showed 16 follicles on the left, 6 on the right. After 1.5 months on birth control pills, I began stimulation: Lupron 40 units on day 1, then 20 units with 225 units of Gonal-F twice daily from day 2 – very high doses. By day 15, 9/15/2023, the ultrasound showed only one at 18.5 mm on the left, and three at 22, 19.9 and 16.9 mm on the right. That was it.

    I triggered with Pregnyl 10,000 and had the retrieval on September 17th. They retrieved three eggs—one was abnormal, two fertilized. By day four, there were no embryos.

    Cycle five had failed. Five attempts, five heartbreaks. I was exhausted, but this failure didn’t surprise me as it had happened repeatedly.

    S didn’t want me to continue IVF. This journey had been more than enough for him and he wanted us to focus on something more realistic. But I had reasons, for myself, for him and for us (…) to keep going. I had already planned to continue in VN if this cycle failed. With top IVF hospitals, clinics and doctors in Hanoi, I was positive I would receive excellent care and with my family there, my overall health would greatly improve, which would lead to better results.

    I bought a one-way ticket to VN in late October, just before my expected period so I could see a doctor shortly after it started. While I was preparing for this next chapter, our relationship had been badly damaged. But I really didn’t have time to think it through; I just knew I had to act quickly since I was turning 40 soon.

  • Moving Day

    November 18th,

    Life is beautiful, but bitter at times. I need to accept that as part of the experience. What really matters is that I stick to my purposes and goals. These keep me moving forward, help me focus on what’s truly important, instead of pain. Life goes on no matter what, and my peace and joy are mine to protect.

    ….

    We woke up at six, made coffee and took showers. Since I didn’t have time to run a load of laundry, I just threw the wet towels and shower curtain into the dryer for 15 minutes – just enough to keep them from smelling bad or getting moldy. At seven, he got Sam to take half a sedative pill to help him stay calm in the car during the trip.

    I packed up the last few things in the bathroom, and threw blankets I had left out, thinking they might be useful for wrapping, into baskets along with a big tray. S kept worrying that the movers might not accept the baskets as they weren’t in boxes and he hadn’t included them on the item list. His concerns didn’t make sense to me and if that were true, the “moving rules” were overly strict. It’s normal for not everything to fit into a box, and listing every single miscellaneous item isn’t realistic. There should be some flexibility.

    I wasn’t home when the movers arrived around 9:30 as I had a doctor’s appointment. When I got back in the afternoon, S told me they’d asked for an additional $1,600, and he felt he was forced to say yes because everything had to stay on schedule. I didn’t ask for the details – I was in a bad mood that day.

    At 5:32 pm, the movers were still wrapping and loading our stuff.

    Waiting around with nothing to do wasn’t fun. They didn’t finish until around 8 p.m.

    After S signed the completion form, it was already too late for us to vacuum, wipe the floors, or pick up the trash. If we had done the move ourselves, we would’ve had much more control. We could’ve loaded most of our things the day before, vacuumed the same day, and left a few essentials to grab the next morning, followed by a quick final clean. That way, we’d have had plenty of time and could’ve enjoyed the drive. With the moving company, everything depended on their timeline. All we did was wait around until the evening. Since we couldn’t leave early, S had to call his boss and ask for an extra day off work, and drive overnight to our new place – no sleep at all.

    Because it was late, we just decided to skip cleaning the house and start driving instead. S would go back the following weekend to clean it, as our truck, 4-wheeler, lawn mower, and some of his tools were still there.

    The trip wasn’t fun because we had to take care of Sam. While Dozer sat quietly the whole time, Sam was a different story. Though we gave him another half of the pill, he still moaned, cried, and moved around in the car. We had to take turns holding him on our laps. Our clothes and the car were full of his hair.

    We arrived at the new house around 5 the next day, slept on a thin mattress on the floor that we had brought with us.

    The moving company called later and said there was an issue with the truck, so they would not deliver until 3 pm the next day. Since we didn’t have much to do, we spent the rest of the day exploring the city, and it was so beautiful.