2 wks.. count down!

2 wks away!! I received my protocol the other day. I start taking another pill Sunday for 6 days and will stop taking my BCP pills on the 26th. The Dr. wants to make sure that I start my cycle : ) double the plan.
They are expecting that I will start taking Gonal F injections (150 units) July 1st and I will add prednisone that same day. Lord, please be with Russ. I will be so frumpy and headaches will be coming. Prednisone is to shut my immune system down, sounds scary, but with my auto immune disease, you do what you have to. We fly out on July 5th. The flights still look good and are wide open, so we are still planning on flying stand-by. Hoping they will put us in First Class, would that not be awesome. 9 ½ hour flight with more leg room and the cooler I will have to take to keep my meds cold.

I’ve found great deals on several of my medications:
Prednisone – 1 pill a day for 30 days is $2.97 per month
Estrogen – 3 pills a day for 30 days is $10.00 per month. I start taking right after the egg retrieval
Lovenox – 1 injection daily for 30 days is $31.00 per month. I start taking that after the egg retrieval. (for my auto immune disease)
The killer… is my progesterone pills. The cheapest I can find is $150.00 per month. That’s in Czech. Here it would be over $297.00 per month. Insurance doesn’t cover progesterone medication for “infertility” Not sure why.. doesn’t make sense, but whatever.

Man... I will start looking like a human pin cushion. Haa-Haa, but well worth it.
I will do the Gonal F injections for 6 days, then the 7th day (July 7) I will go in for my first ultrasound. The doctor will make sure I am responding to the dosage and will decide if I need to increase or decrease the dosage. He will tell me when to come back in from there. The Dr. said “estimated” egg retrieval will be July 13. 6 days to grow in the dish after fertilization and that will also include the testing (PGD: pre-implantation genetic disorder) July 18th for egg transfer. I’m hoping that I will produce a good amount of eggs and everything will be okay. Once they are done testing, I will have 2 eggs implanted and the rest will be frozen for later use. :)

So, we have to decide on what sight seeing trips we want to do. We will be in Brno, which is a 3 hour train ride to Prague. $30 each way for the both of us and Mag, My IVF coordinator will arrange for a taxi to take us to and from the train station. I would love to tour the castles and museums. The Charles Bridge is another great destination.
We want to go to Austria too, that’s a 2.5 hour train ride. It’s such a beautiful place to go site seeing.
The days that we are in Brno, we plan on going to the zoo, castle’s, water parks, shopping malls, trying out all the neat cuisines, movies (yes, the most recent movies.. and they are in English)
Russ and I will also do our first ever couples massage. Mag will provide us with a discount coupon, so we will defiantly take advantage.

The day we arrive - our coordinator for 2wks will either be Mag’s mom or Mag’s friend and we will have a personal driver to take us around. Their job is to take us to all the appointments, show us places to eat and visit, and will take us to our apartment where we check in, etc… That evening we will have an authentic Czech dinner planned for the patience that day.

So much to do and plan for, but this will be an exciting trip with lots of memories and hopefully the best memory every… a Baby... or... Two :)

More to come….

Faith

So our dates have changed, thank you mother nature :) We are looking at flying out July 5th and coming back July 20th. It actually works out a lot better for us. Going and coming are direct flights to Prague and that means we can look at "flying stand-by" Do we take that chance? You tell me... $2,500 round trip or $750 round trip for the both of us. Of course I will be stressing out the whole time.. wondering if we'll get bumped? Faith! We must have Faith. Obviously God is in control.

Sunday's sermon was an eye opener for me. The sermon was about "Faith Builders" I prayed my prayer before Paul preached that his sermon would reach someone.. not knowing that someone meant me!
I wanted to share what I got out of the sermon yesterday

How does God build our faith?

• Dream - Let's see.. Russ and I have been dreaming for a family. Dreaming doesn't hurt anyone.. does it? "According to His power that is at work with in us" Eph 3:20
• Decision - We should go for it! We believe that God will bless us with children. We need to Let Go and Let God. "Ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. " James 1:6
• Delay - We've been praying and praying and praying that God will answer our prayers. We are so ready and can not understand why our prayers have not been answered. But they have!! In a round about way. God is teaching us patience, Trust and Faith. We know God is working and His delay is NOT denial. "For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay." Hab 2:3
• Difficulty - We've received a lot of criticism from people around us wanting to know why we chose this route to go abroad to seek treatments and not stay here in the US. Or why we keep putting ourselves through this difficulty journey. I don't know how to answer that.. other than it takes Faith and a lot of prayer and guidance to keep going. I've wanted to give up so many times but I honestly think God wants us to Rejoice in our circumstances and to look past the critics and lay it down at his Feet. "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. " I Pet 1:6-7
• Dead End - Sometimes it seems that we never will get there.. or it's so far out of our reach. I hate to say it, but I even yelled.. "Where are you Lord?" "Why me?" I know God allows our situations for a better purpose. I'm starting to see that. My favorite verse. "I am Lord, God of all mankind, Nothing is too hard for You." Jeremiah 32:27
• Deliverance - We are still trying to "rise up" over our situation. It takes a lot of Faith to step out of our comfort zones and we are doing this together with God in the middle holding our hands all the way there.

Was this not the perfect sermon??

Okay.. so what happens now? I start taking my birth control pills tonight for 19 days. I went this morning to get some blood work drawn. Ouch.. they left a nice bruise on my arm. The results will be sent to my doctor in Czech and I should be receiving my protocol in the next couple of days. More to come...

Mother Nature... blah

This has been my favorite verse for the past 6 yrs, it helps me get through a lot.
You are the Lord, the God of all mankind, Nothing is too hard for you. Jeremiah 32:27
I have to keep reminding myself that God is in control.

I am still waiting on my cycle to start. When you want it to start it takes its time and when you don't want it to start it will come early.. Why? I took Provera, nothing.. met up with my IVF coordinator, Mag with www.myivfalternative.com. She is awesome. She's from Czech and lives in Marietta. She's been through everything I'm going through and understands and is very supportive. She just had her baby girl on May 18th through a surrogate, she was delivered 6 wks early and Mag seems to still have time for me. She was having a baby shower and invited us to come Sunday. She also had some pills to give me to help bring my stubborn cycle on. 5 days of taking these pills.. so hopefully it will help. Russ has been reading up on ways to make my cycle get here. So.. he said you need to eat Hot food.. we got wings.. then said you need to drink Ginger tea.. he stopped by Publix and picked up some Green Tea with Ginger.. hmm .. we will see how that tastes. :) And I need to take a Hot bath. So.. I guess its Hot wings, Hot tea and a Hot bath tonight... :) Russ is so supportive and tells me not to stress, it will come. I'm just hoping it doesn't change our trip dates. More to come...