IVF #2

I haven't been training for the last week mainly due to work busy-ness and self lazy-ness, but also because this whole IVF thing is supposedly our last shot, and with my auto-immune inflammation issues, I'm happy to do whatever I can to minimize inflammation, including work out less (read: not at all.)

I've been swallowing handfuls of horse-sized pills every morning... fish oil, vitamins, antioxidants, anti-inflammatories like turmeric and supplements for egg quality like CoQ10.  I'm gluten free and dairy free, as we've discussed.  Though I confess to trying two experiments... I reintroduced a small amount (like, a tablespoon of grated cheese) of dairy to see what it would do, just for one day-- no side effects.  (Then I deleted it again.)  Then I tried a tablespoon of raw cookie dough (for the flour, and for the science of it all, truly).  Uhhhhhh, that might have been where my migraines came from-- about 30 min after eating it, I had a bad headache.  *wry face*  Anyway aside from that I'm eating pretty healthily-- lots of vegetables, lots of lean protein-- so I'm trying to be good even without the workouts.

Unlike the last IVF cycle, I will not be training jiu jitsu and judo right up until the day of egg retrieval.  Mainly because of the inflammation thing, but also because I'm doubling the amount of hormone stimulation on doctor's orders, so theoretically my ovaries will be producing many more eggs (and will be swollen up to the size of baseballs or so.)  I'm told a rare complication is ovarian torsion (basically, they get jostled and twisted and cut off their own blood supply.  This is a bad thing.)  Ergo, no tai otoshi for me this month or next.

I began injections this morning.  Lupron basically shuts off your pituitary and empties it out of stored hormones, in order to put my doctor in the driver's seat.  I really worried about lupron the first cycle I did it, because basically you go into menopause overnight or so I was told.  Lucky me, I didn't have any side effects from it then, so I'm not expecting any now. 

I went to Mass on Sunday and the Gospel reading had a sentence that really hit me.  It was from the Book of John and the sentence was "It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail."  I hope it wasn't just a horoscope type thing where you interpret things according to your own troubles.  But it really seemed to be speaking to me, to us-- our flesh appears to be of no avail in this whole trying-to-conceive thing.  So, while I'll give the flesh all the help I can, I'm also leaning on the spirit.