The Transfer

On Monday, December 8 at 12:00pm, Lisa and I went to Presby Dallas so that Dr. Peng could transfer up to two embryos into Lisa. When we arrived, Lisa jumped out of her street clothes and into her hospital gown, to ready herself for the transfer. I would also be allowed to observe the transfer, and we learned that this entailed me putting on a Tyvec suit over my street clothes. All we had with us was Lisa's phone to capture the image of me in this suit, so hopefully we'll figure out how to upload that soon. For now, suffice it to say that I felt like one of the henchmen working in an underground facility on some futuristic destructive device - as in a James Bond or Austin Powers movie. I was a rookie with respect to all this clothing, and I showed it by not knowing even which way the mask went that I had to put on.

After we were suited up, the embryologist (David, of orientation fame [see one of our first posts]) came in to show us our embryos. He had a picture of a blastocyst (great!) and a morula (good). The blastocyst is what you want to see on day 5. The morula is more like day 4. But those were the two best embryos we had, so we were ready to move forward with them. The bad news was that all four other embryos, which we had previously gotten good reports on day 2, had not progressed well. Honestly, it was a little disappointing to hear that we had three "excellent" and three "good" embryos on day 2 and then end up with only one that had actually made it to day 5 as an ideal candidate. We tried to focus, however, on the two good embryos we did have and remain positive about the transfer.

Lisa was instructed to have a full bladder for the procedure, as this would assist Dr. Peng when transferring the embryos by helping to direct their placement, especially on the ultrasound monitor he would be viewing during the transfer. We all know Lisa is a super-compliant patient (and has been throughout this process), and so you won't be surprised to hear that she had a full bladder by the time the transfer was about to occur. For some reason, however, we were made to wait in our room for probably fifteen minutes before the procedure. During this time, Lisa was miserable because she had to pee so bad. Finally, we asked the nurse if she could at least go a little, and the nurse said that was OK. It probably wasn't two minutes after Lisa returned from that short trip that Lisa was saying, "I should have gone more."

When they wheeled Lisa into the operating room, I was given a specific seat, above Lisa's head. I could see the ultrasound monitor, and I thought I had identified the large cavity on the monitor as the uterus. Wrong-o. I still don't know what the large cavity was, but the uterus was very small, even blown up on the ultrasound monitor. The procedure ended up taking about 20-30 minutes, but Lisa was dying because she had to pee so badly. Dr. Peng even made a comment about how full her bladder was when he saw it on the monitor, so you know it was bad.

Trouble was, Lisa was supposed to lie down for another thirty minutes after the transfer. So it was bed pan city, folks. Not pretty, but when you have to pee, you have to pee. Lisa was a trooper, as usual.

On the way home, it was a whole new world. Lisa is once again a fragile ecosystem. Even bumps on the road are to be avoided if possible. The next step is a pregnancy test at day 12 (counting from removal). We're back to a waiting and praying stage, but hopefully we're right where we want to be.