Egg Collection - Day 12 & 13 - July 21 & 22

Tuesday 

Today was our bum day.  We are both jet lagged and exhausted, so we slept in until noon.  Then we put away all our clothes into the closets so that we weren't living out of a suitcase for the next few weeks.  I felt a bit light headed after so I took another nap.

At some point in the morning, we gave Mom a tour of the place via skype and talked for a bit to catch up on everything.

Once we were up and around we went to the main house and got directions for where everything is around the house.  We even have handy little map to guide us around.

We decided to take a walk to the beach which is about a 10 minute walk.  It was gorgeous.  The water is a beautiful blue and the breeze felt great.  We did forget to take any pictures, sorry guys.  I blame the exhuastion.  I didn't feel like getting in the water yesterday, but Brian went for a walk in there.  It was really rocky and he ended up tripping and falling.  It was funny to watch from the shoreline.  But when he was drying off he realized he cut himself pretty good on his foot.  Nicely done. He now wears my Monsters Inc, Sophia the First and Minion bandaids on his feet.  He rocks them. :)

When we left the  beach, we walked to the market to grab some food to last us.  I have downloaded an app on my phone that is a dictionary where I can scan Greek writing and it will translate it to English for us...but smart us left my phone at the apartment and only took Brian's phone.  Bah!  So we relied heavily on the pictures of the packages.  It worked out in the end.


Once we had groceries, we walked back to the house.  Brian made spaghetti for dinner and we just hung out.  We watched the Avengers to pass the time and skype'd with Brian's mom.  Then it was bedtime because wednesday was a big day!

Wednesday 

It's egg collection day!

I didn't sleep well last night from the anxiety/excitment.  I woke up at 1, then at 3, 4, 5 and 6.  Finally just laid there and played on my phone.  Once Brian was up, we got around.

Our taxi was picking us up to take us to the clinic in Athens at 8:15 and my apt was at 9.  Ruth came down to make sure we were up and ready to go.  I wasn't allowed to eat/drink anything for 8 hrs before the procedure...so when she asked how I was feeling, I said "hungry" - she said "tough!" Haha,  she cracks me up.  At least I follow directions.  :)

Kosta (the taxi driver - not to be confused with Kosta the doctor) picked us up and took us into the clinic.  We were a bit early, so we sat in the waiting room and took a pre-collection selfie.

They came and got me and took me into the room to get changed into the gown.  Went into the procedure room and they put me to sleep.  I've never been under anestetic before, so it was a unique experience! I don't remember anything, and then I was awake!  I laid there for a bit and then got dressed and went back to the waiting room to meet up with Brian.  The whole process took about an hour and while I was in there, Brian gave his sample to them.

Kosta (the taxi driver) came back to get us and took us home.  I laid on the couch and I was awake!  I thought I'd be sleeply all day!!!! We watched a movie, I kept down some sips of water.  Ruth wanted to wait a bit before I ate to make sure I kept down the water...I'm impatient and hungry and ate a piece of beef jerky. :) Then she came down to check on me and gave me the okay to have some bread.    Later in the day I had my mandatory egg white omlet.  I've kept everything down so far.

I'm feeling okay.  I'm really swollen/bloated and that's really uncomfortable.  Ruth gave me some pain pills to help with that.  Apparently when they drain the follicles, they naturally fill back up with blood and that's what causes the swelling - so thats normal.  I did some reading and it should go down in a few days.  I am using a heating pad and that helps tremendously!

So...the results!!!

They collected 19 eggs!!! Holy crap!! That's a lot!!!!
Of the 19 eggs, 12 of them were mature and have the potential to be fertilized
They did ISCI (where they inject one sperm into each egg) on all 12 and we will hear back tomorrow morning on how many have been fertilized!

So thats really good numbers!  Yay!  Hopefully we have some good news in the morning and the little embryos keep on growing!  The plan is to get them to grow for 5 days and then they will take 1 and implant it back in to make the baby.

But...technically - we (with a little help from science) there was an attempt to make 12 embryos today!!!!!!  That's crazy and awesome to think about all at the same time!!!

I do start more meds tonight to prepare my body for the embryo transfer - but I'm excited to keep this process rolling!

Tomorrow we plan to go into downtown Athens and do some exploring for the first time now that the hard part is done!  So lots of pictures tomorrow night, sorry for the lack of pictures today.