Needed Surgery

My IVF #1 went so badly that I needed to have surgery 10 days ago to remove an ectopic pregnancy that didn't respond to metho.traxate to dissolve it - and they had to remove my left tube as well.

What a whirlwind it was!

After I got the metho.trexate shot (that has worked on me 2x before on suspected ectopics), they told me like normal that if I was having abdominal pain, among other symptoms, to go to the emergency room.

So, 5 days after the shot, at work, I had severe adbominal pain, called my nurse who said don't risk it - go to the hospital. A co-worker drove me and I thought it'd just be a stomach bug or something. 4 hours of tests later, they tell me I need to have surgery that evening to remove this pregnancy... and my husband is out of town.

I call my best friend, who immediately gets child care and comes to spend time with me, and luckily my husband was able to get on the next flight home, in time to take me home from surgery.

I'm still trying to process it all... I'm actually very calm and oddly at peace about all of this. I guess when you're confronted with a somewhat life-threatening situation, it helps put things in perspective.

We're faced with infertility. It's hard. But I guess in general, things are good.

So, I'm taking it all in stride. We have a follow-up with my RE this Friday and I'm sure we'll proceed again with IVF with the two frozen embryos we have (probably one at a time)... though I do keep thinking about maybe a gestational carrier or that it's time to consider adoption. I've had 5 early-on miscarriages - 3 of which have been ectopic, 1 of them with IVF (other two with IUI), so just makes me worried that something is clearly not working in my favor or functioning properly with my body. On the other hand, I'll hear what the doctor has to say as I'm not quite willing to give up with this dream for now...

Road to Recovery

Five days is all it's taken for me to feel normal again. Unbelieveable. Can't believe they can cut me, take out a 4cm fibroid and I'm pretty ok 5 days later. Thanks be to God... or the powers of the universe!

Thursday, the day before surgery was probably the hardest. "De-toxing"  - those laxatives were NOT fun. Nor was not really being able to eat solids. I was hungry by 9:30am!

Friday went ok. The hospital was... hospitable. I only got really nervous as they were prepping me and I tried to throw up, at which time they said 'glad we did the bowel prep'. Ewww. I don't remember anything after that; they apparently gave me some 'calming' medicine.

I remember Friday being all about mor.phine and sleep... one hour at a time because they kept waking me to take my vitals.

Mor.phine was still my friend on Saturday, until they replaced it with its cousin per.co.cet. Turning over was hard, and I considered it a great feat when I went to pee for the first time, and I took a walk down the hall.

I went home Sun afternoon and haven't really needed much pain meds, luckily & gratefully. I've taken per.co.cet before going to bed to make sure I get a restful sleep but I haven't even needed much ad.vil during the day. Yay!

Thanks for all your support, thoughts, prayers and checking in on me!

Here's to positive feelings, a journey forward on this road to recovery!

ps - I also pooped today for the first time, which I'm happy about because it's supposedly a big deal :)

The Size of an Orange, You Say?

Whoa! That's how large my fibroid is! I can hardly believe it. An orange??? In there? And I never knew it?

Yeah, let's get that sucker out of there! Make room for a baby, please. Make my uterus hospitable finally! (They've called this fibroid making my uterus inhospitable!).

Next step is scheduling surgery, which will mean 1-2 days in the hospital, 3-4 days recovery and probably a week working from home. A month total till back to normal.

And because they have to get into the muscle too much, if I do get pregnant later, I'd have to have a c-section.

Oh well... all this doesn't sound fun, but if it gets us to where we want to be then, so be it!

Needing Surgery

After 3 IUIs, 2 that took but miscarrying at 5 1/2 weeks, my doc referred me to a surgeon to recommend I get a fibroid removed. That appt was this morning.

Ugh. No fun. Talked a lot with the surgeon about "what are the chances of staying pregnant if I have this surgery done?" And no real answers. They just can't say.

I need more info but apparently my fibroid isn't huge, but it's grown, and grown closer to the uterine lining, making my uterus 'inhospitable' he said. He recommended doing the surgery.

I'm a big baby. I don't take pain well, so I'm not thrilled about this recommendation especially not knowing how much it would increase our chances of staying pregnant. And because of the incision he'd have to do, I'd likely have to have c-sections in the future... if we get pregnant.

Surgery means 1-2 days in the hospital, 3-4 days recovery and 2-4 weeks lifestyle recovery. I just don't feel like dealing with this. I feel like I've been on such a yo-yo in general with inactivity and recovering from stuff - miscarriages...

Will I gain weight as a result of not exercising and then have to work hard to lose again? Getting bigger has had an impact on me psychologically, and just when I feel like I'm making progress on my weight, I'll bet this makes it worse again. I felt that way at Easter, so close to goal weight, feeling so good again, and we did another IUI, throwing a lot of my hard work away as I gained 5 lbs (I'm small so that makes a difference) again...

So, I'd like advice. Anyone out there had fibroids removed and were successful with pregnancies after? Heard of anyone who has? Anyone know statistics on increasing chances once fibroids are removed? I just want to know - if it's 10%, not sure that I want to do this but if it's 60% , then yes.

So, help me out please :)