Fertilization Report :(

I thought the call we got on Sunday was the worst call possible.

I was wrong.

Today’s call was worse.

Out of my 8 eggs, 0 fertilized. None. Zippo. Zilch.

The nurse (a substitute I have never worked with, because my nurse is on vacation this week) felt badly for me, because she could obviously tell that I started crying since I could barely speak. I asked what next. She said they wanted to try what is called “Rescue ICSI.” ICSI is a procedure in which they inject the sperm directly into the egg in an attempt to force fertilization. It’s actually one of the most beneficial advancements in IVF that they’ve had. It’s especially useful for couples who are dealing with low sperm counts, because you don’t have to wait for the sperm to find the egg in the dish and tire itself out before it does its job. Since both of our miscarriages happened naturally, they didn’t anticipate that fertilization was our problem so they didn’t do ICSI the first day. When couples have shown that as their primary problem, ICSI is done right away on the eggs after retrieval.

On the other hand, “Rescue ISCI” is done the next day after conventional fertilization doesn’t work. I asked if this ever works, and she quietly said “If it NEVER worked, we wouldn’t at least try. But it’s not a guarantee.”

After hanging up, I screamed louder than possibly I’ve ever screamed in my whole entire life. Twice.

Then I had to call my husband, who was at work. He offered to come home, but he just missed yesterday so I told him I would be ok on my own with the TV. (Of course shortly thereafter he just came home anyway, since he had no interest in working.)

Unfortunately for my parents in a 3-hours-behind-us time zone, I then called my mother.

Later on, the nurse who made the call did call back to check on me, because she was worried. She’s friends with my nurse and promised to take care of me. She did a good job. I will say, these are the best doctors and nurses I have ever worked with, and I’ve worked with many.

I hate this. They expect 70% success and we get 0%??

One of the docs called later in the afternoon to answer our questions. (Of course all this is happening while my doc AND my nurse are on vacation!) He was very nice, but very honest in the sense that the chances of this working are very slim. He said the “good” news is that we are no longer under the umbrella of “unexplained infertility” because chances are this is why we haven’t had success on our own.

The wait until tomorrow’s phone call is killing us.

We were supposed to go to the city tonight for a friend’s birthday party, but I can’t face leaving the couch right now. L