Lots To Think About

For those of you that check this site often I apologize for the long wait between posts. Jim and I finally returned from Canada on Sunday after a long drive. My flight was cancelled out of Buffalo on Friday and I was forced to drive back with Jim. Well, my flight was kind of cancelled...the flight I thought I was suppose to be on was cancelled but in reality I wasn't suppose to leave Buffalo until Monday. Apparently, my sweet sister didn't book my flights correctly...oh well I survived the drive home.

Also, we haven't had internet at the house for most of this week. Jim is in the process of changing our internet provider and hopefully we'll have it up and going by the end of the weekend. In the meantime, I'm using my work computer for all of my internet needs...something I'm not comfortable doing. Anyhow...

Canada was pretty cold the entire time we were there and overall we had a wonderful time. After Jim picked me up from the airport on the 13th we drove straight to Niagara Falls. Since Niagara has been extremely cold we were able to see lots of ice formations in the water. I took loads of pictures but have yet to move them off of the camera. I hope to download those pictures this weekend when we get the internet up and going again. Jim also gave me the grand tour of Toronto and we did lots of walking in the downtown area. All in all we had a pretty good time.

Okay, moving on to our latest infertility news. For those of you that are wondering how Jim and I are holding up we still taking things one day at a time. As for me, I continue to feel devastated at the prospect of not being able to bare children. I feel less and less of a women and I feel very isolated and let down. I've been keeping to myself for the last two weeks not really wanting to talk to anyone...just my way of handling things I suppose. I imagine I'll emerge from this "shell" eventually but I'm not sure when. Today is actually one of my better days and I'm not feeling as depressed today as I have.

We had our "final" appointment with Dr. Thompson yesterday and our options were laid out in front of us. We were told that we could do another round of IVF with my follicles and Jim's sperm using the assistance of ICSI (a process of injecting a single sperm cell directly into the follicle) to see how my follicles reacted. However, ICSI was an option for us but Dr. Thompson seriously doesn't recommend using my follicles....my follicles are that bad. I really didn't get any indication as to why my follicles are so bad...nothing in my past could have given us a clue that this would have happen. A part of me, the part that can't seem to let go, would really like to try ICSI once, but then reality sets in and I know the cards are stacked against us. Not to mention the financials aspects of all of this and financially we can't take that large of a risk.

So where do we go from here? We actually have two other options in front of us....donor eggs and donor embryos. With donor eggs we could either pick a donor or the office could recruit a donor. Recruits typically come from students at the university needing cash and we would be presented with a picture and a profile of the candidate(s) and then Jim and I would chose which candidate we liked best. Or, we could "size" up our young friends (she has to be younger then 35) and use them as a donor. After Jim and I discussed this option we decided that we would rather use a recruit rather then someone we know. Jim just feels like it would be to weird for him if we knew the donor. I will respect his feelings and lean on the side of an anonymous donor.

We also have the option of using donor embryos. These are embryos already frozen in time that former patients have decided to donate to couples like us. This option is considerably cheaper then donor eggs, but the child would have no biological ties to either Jim or I. I'm not sure which option Jim and I will chose but more then likely it will boil down to our financial needs. I'm still secretly hoping that Ed McMan makes a surprise visit to the house, or that the Powerball fairy comes by the house sometime soon. Whichever option we chose it will be a few years before we can afford to do anything....we need to payoff the existing loans first.