Happy Valentine's Day!

Today I celebrated V-Day by having a date with the good old cooter cam (otherwise known as a pelvic ultrasound). This ultrasound was a baseline ultrasound to make sure everything in the ovary department is suppressed and to see how many resting follicles there are. Last time we had a baseline ultrasound it was through the Edmonton fertility clinic. This time, they just sent me to whichever imaging lab had a time available for this particular date.

The tech was super nice and she mentioned counting "at least five" follicles on the right and "definitely 2" on my partial ovary on the left. Now, I'm pretty sure last time the fertility doctor who performed the ultrasound never told me anything about how many follicles I had, as I don't have it written down in my journal, but I'm starting to panic a bit thinking this number is really low. Also, going against my own advice of avoiding the internet for medical matters didn't help alleviate my fears much.

Of course, I have to wait not so patiently for tomorrow for the clinic to call and give me the go ahead for starting stims and to fill me in on any issues with the ultrasound. I'm trying really, really hard not to think about it too much.

I guess I always assumed having PCOS I would have lots of follicles at this stage... but now I'm wondering if being on the full dose of Metformin for a few months (which I wasn't on last time) has improved the effects of PCOS and that this number is more accurate for the actual number of follicles that grow eggs. PCOSers normally have a lot of cysts on the ovaries as well as follicles, and these cysts don't contain eggs. Last IVF I had something like 20 follicles, but only 5 of them had eggs, and they didn't bother trying to retrieve any from the partial ovary. So given that, then this number would make sense.

The other scenario that would make sense is that being on the birth control pills ahead of time may have over suppressed me. If that's the case, we risk this cycle being cancelled and may have to wait another cycle before proceeding.

Anyways, the remainder of my Valentine's Day was much better, as my wonderful husband took me out for a romantic dinner at the Lighthouse Cafe. We had lobster bisque to start, and I had king crab, and he had chicken with lobster medallions. Dessert was a to-die-for passionfruit chocolate truffle torte for two in the shape of a heart (pictured above).

I will update more tomorrow. Hopefully everything is fine and I will be able to start poking myself in the stomach.