Fourth of July

Well it turns out Cathy left a message for me at work yesterday. I need to let her know that home is generally the easier place to reach me on the phone. I wonder when she called? I left work about 4pm and checked my voicemail before I left. She wants to discuss the profile we used with Lifetime. So I will try calling her tomorrow (I assume she's taking today off). I actually planned on working on our profile some today based on the samples she sent.

A couple of weeks ago a friend (who is in her mid-sixties and she retired as the principal of the Christian school when I became the new principal there in 1996) emailed me asking me if I had considered acupuncture. Her husband has found help from an acupuncturist for his sciatica. She gave me his name, phone, and address. So I have been mulling it over in my mind. Over the years I have read several articles in medical journals which have reported that acupuncture can raise the success rate of IVF, and some women I have known online have told me their RE has suggested they do acupuncture in conjunction with IVF (my friend said her husband's acupuncturist is working with a fertility doctor at a hospital down in Reading). So I finally thought - it's worth a try. The amount of $$ it will cost is SO small in comparison to what we're paying the RE, and if it might help, then it's $$ well spent. SO I did some searching and asked a couple of people around here for recommendations, and finally I picked someone (much closer than Reading).

So July 17 I am going for my first ever acunpuncture appointment. I truly never thought I'd do acupuncture, but I also never thought I'd do IVF. Her first available appt was the afternoon of July 12 and we are headed to Long Island that weekend. She said she's done as few as 2 treatments for a woman with IVF (the day of or right before the transfer and then a few days after the transfer). However she's also done as much as 3 months of treatments (once a week) in preparation for IVF (if the couple has already done one transfer and the first didn't work). She said if we don't have much time (which we won't since we have to wait 2 weeks for the first appt as she's going on a trip to CA in between now and then) we can do more than one treatment a week. We shall see... but at least I think I'll go for 4 treatments from July 17 til after the transfer. She says she often does treatment on the husband as well in preparation for IVF (can help with his count, motility, and morphology she said), but Paul is not open to the idea at this point. So for IVF #1 we'll just stick with only me doing acupuncture. And maybe just maybe IVF #1 will work and more extensive acupuncture for either of us will not be given consideration.

Tomorrow is our next RE appt, and I start the Lupron shots on Friday. The timing of tomorrow's appointment is a little ironic. It was July 5, 2005 when I was given shots of methotrexate (chemo) to end the ectopic pregnancy, and now on July 5, 2007 I am having an appointment on how to have Lupron and Progesterone shots for IVF (I've already had lots of FSH and HCG shots so I don't need to be trained on those).

I haven't heard a response from Lifetime as far as the email I sent on Monday. So I am trying to just consider that a firmly closed door. I don't want to expend any more emotional energy in that direction. I won't write or call them again (unless they give us an extension). I just get too worked up about it. So in my mind Ukraine and Lifetime are closed doors. I am praying that either IVF and/or adopting through Cathy will lead to us becoming parents sometime in the next year or so!