Saturday, February 6, 2010

Day 11: Normal

As mentioned in my Day 2 post, when we went in for our baseline testing I got a whole slew of blood work done. The great thing about our clinic is that they have an online patient portal where you can log on and see all of your test results as they are available. The good news is that the information is available to you, 24/7, pretty much real-time. The bad news is that you are looking at this information without an explanation by a Dr. and seeing a data value without any context is confusing and frustrating. We have an appt scheduled with the Dr. to review the results on the 16th, but that is still over a week away!

So what's a girl do? One word: GOOGLE!

I finally took the time to review the results for all 15 tests that were administered. Since I didn't know what any of the tests meant, I researched what each of the tests were evaluating and then looked for info on what normal data values should be. Good news is that based on all of my very scientific Internet research I am very NORMAL.

The one hormone that I see referred to often in the IVF books I've read and the in all of the literature published by the clinic is FSH (Follicle Stimulating Hormone). FSH levels directly correlate to the number of eggs that you have "on reserve" in your ovaries. The term "ovarian reserve" refers to a woman's current supply of eggs, and is closely associated with reproductive potential. In general, the greater the number of remaining eggs, the better the chance for conception. Conversely, low ovarian reserve greatly diminishes chances for conception. As a woman ages, FSH becomes elevated in an attempt to force the aging ovary to respond, so high levels are bad, low numbers are good.

In the data from the clinic we are working with they say their success rates with IVF are highest (65%) in patients with FSH under 12.0. The good news is that anything under 10.0 is normal and my results were 6.0 mIU/ml!!

So it looks like I have lots of eggs ready to go and anxious to meet up up with The Husband's sperm and make a baby for us.

I am feeling hopeful. With my uterus "looking good" and my ovarian reserve seeming plentiful, we have lots of things working in our favor and our chances of a positive outcome are looking good. Fingers crossed.

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