We’ve been plugging along over here. On Monday, we got a
date nailed for the embryo transfer: February 27. I started ramping up on my next
round of hormones to start to get ready for it. Things were going well, and
then I started to feel a little funny. My heart felt like it was pumping kind
of hard and irregular. I feel like I can’t quite catch my breath. I googled it and
saw that a fast heartbeat was one of the side effects of these new hormones I
am on. Great. Since this is one where I start with a low dose and over time,
you take more and more of it, I thought I should call my doctor to talk it
through with her. Well, she freaked out and said that that is not a typical
side effect and wants me to talk to my cardiologist about a possible arrhythmia
in my heart. I guess there is a thing called a “holter monitor” that they have
you wear for 24 hours to measure your heart’s activity to check for such
things, and she would feel better if I did that step before proceeding with the
transfer and pregnancy thereafter.
Sigh. Seriously? This means putting off the transfer date.
Dammit. Here’s the deal: after my dad died this summer, I was encouraged to go
see a cardiologist to have the once-over done on my heart to check everything
out. Heart disease runs in the family, and my dad died early from it, so no
harm in being vigilant from an early age. I did my homework before starting
this whole process, working with a cardiologist to run a ton of tests. I got a
clean bill of health. I thought I had this covered. I called my cardiologist
and asked him about this new development, and he thinks I need to do this extra
test, and has ordered it for me. I will get a call in a few days to go pick up
my holter monitor and get started. Once they collect the data from it, it will
take a couple of weeks to get the results and meet back with him to see how it
all went.
I honestly feel like this is a reaction from the meds. I
have never had these symptoms before taking this drug. So what do I do now? I
have two options:
- Quit IVF for the time being (quit the drugs, and cancel the implantation on February 27), and do the holter monitor test. My gut says that it will come out clean. I will have missed a month on moving forward with IVF. I am traveling a bunch in March/April, so really that means waiting a few months to do the implantation. Insert lots of bad words here.
- Keep taking the hormones and pray that they get the heart test over with in a timely fashion so I can implant on February 27 as planned. I run the risk of testing positive for the arrhythmia, which sends me down a whole other rabbit trail.
And, what if I quit the drugs, pass my heart test, and then take the
hormones a few months from now when we are ready to do the implantation, and
experience the same symptoms? Can’t I have a different drug? I need to ask that
question. Hormones do screwy things to your body. God, I just want to be done
with IVF already. This really sucks.
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