Hurst Family: A Baby Story

Got my labs back today, numbers went up to 96.  Apparently, that's normal for it to rise, so whatever...don't care anymore.  I go back Monday to get stabbed in my arm again so they can check my HCG level.  And this is ironic, but can I get a negative test, already!?  Mentally, I have moved on.  There are better things ahead for me so I can't allow myself to get stuck in past failures. I'm working out again.  I signed up for this dang CrossFit Open that I'm totally going to blow.  I hope I can do 5 burpees in a row without passing out...  I will say though, I love my mindset when it comes to CrossFit right now.  My gym is running the Open intramural style, which means we split up into teams and compete for "spirit of the games".  I mean, you get points for doing the workouts and being a top finisher, but nobody cares about that.  We are going to dress up like idiots and act like fools to win those Spirit of the Games points.  ...

There's one word I wasn't expecting to hear on the morning of Valentine's Day: chemo. At 8:15am this morning, I arrived at Dr. Jarrett's office.  I really like him.  As I walked down the hall with the nurse, I passed him briefly and he and say's "Hey Jen.  How are you feeling?"  "Good, I feel good," I said quickly as we passed and I walked into the room.  After a few minutes of me changing and hopping onto the table contraption with the red and pink heart covered "foot holders" (that's what I call them), Dr. Jarrett came in to perform an ultrasound.  He looked around and didn't see anything, which made him think that the pregnancy is in my tubes.  During this appointment, he more seriously went over the symptoms of a tubal rupture/ectopic pregnancy and told me that I am to head straight to the ER if I feel any abdominal pain, shoulder pain, or dizziness.  He also prescribed Methotrexate, which is an intramuscular injection of ...

Today, 8 days since my last beta, I went back in to the lab for yet another blood draw to determine my HCG level.  Last Thursday it was at 63.5.  Today, it was back up to 68.  I have no idea what's going on, but this is definitely not a good thing.  Dr. Jarrett wants me to come in tomorrow morning at 8:15am so he can see what is going on.  In my mind, the main thing that sucks about this is that my body is still stuck on this January cycle and we can't move on with the process.  Dr. Jarrett has said that my cycle will not be back to normal until my HCG drops back down to zero.  Hopefully, we'll get some answers tomorrow.  Once things are back to normal, we'll still have to wait 2 full cycles until we can try again.  Still hoping and praying for a natural miracle, but if God wants to use IVF again, whatevs.  :-)

I went to see Dr. Jarrett yesterday at 12:30pm.  Luckily, I had to wait so long in the waiting room that the office received my blood test results back by the time I actually met with the doctor.  My hcg level had dropped from 75 on Tuesday to 63.5 yesterday.  Dr. Jarrett's response was "Oh, thank God!"  We talked with him and listened as he determined this was a chemical pregnancy.  A chemical pregnancy is basically an early miscarriage.  I'm not really sure how I feel about that.   I have to go back in next week to have my hcg level checked again.  They're going to monitor it until it drops back down to zero.   The doctor wants me to wait a full two cycles before trying again.  So, I guess we're looking at April or May.  Oh, this life...

This is totally going to throw you for a loop. One of the nurses at Dr. Jarrett's office called me Monday night at 5:30pm.  You see, I was originally scheduled to have a blood draw on Monday, but after talking to the nurse Saturday and determining that this cycle was over due to the fact that nature had moved on to the next cycle, I assumed the Monday blood draw was no longer required.  On Saturday, I took a home pregnancy test to be certain it was negative.  The test I took was a First Response, which can detect HCG levels as low as 25.  If in fact my number had been increasing (the Thursday prior my HCG was at 45) or even remained the same, the test should have read "pregnant," but it didn't. The call from the nurse was to let me know that I still needed to come in and have my levels checked again.  Even if the cycle had failed, they needed to see those number go down.  This made sense to me, especially considering they only had results showing my HCG...

I had a nurse return my phone call yesterday around 2pm.  It was the same nurse that I mentioned a few posts back [http://hurstbabystory.blogspot.com/2015/01/game-time.html], Courtney is her name.  She has been such a blessing during this process.  I talked to her for nearly 15 minutes and everything she said to me was exactly what I needed to hear. I now feel as though I have a plan in place.  I'm not giving up.  Each month is an opportunity to grow my family, whether it be through IVF or not.  Maybe something will happen this month, if not, we'll try IVF again beginning in March.  My hope and my faith is not in the doctor but it is in God.  Dr. Jarrett doesn't create life, God creates life.  And as controversial as IVF can be when mixed with religious talk, I believe that God uses IVF as a tool just as He has provided many other medical procedures for us. --------------------- What's impossible for me to understand right now is "why?"...