The IVF Club

A Personal Blog About IVF Treatment & Infertility

Doing the Colorado Protocol

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Finally, found time to put fingers to keyboard and write about my latest IVF experiences. Actually it is all become a blur. The main thing is that I am doing the Colorado Protocol with an Antagonist Cycle so I have been continually having to keep my mind focused on what I have to do next.

The cycle has started off like any other.  Injections from day 2, followed by blood tests and scans on day 6, antagonist injections from day 6 to yesterday, more blood tests and scans and then finally my trigger injection last night. In between all that I have had to take Astrix from day 2 to day 9 and my husband has been taking Doryx from Day 2 to day 9.  It is nice to see that he has finally had to take some drugs.  I am now all set for egg collection which will happen sometime tomorrow.

Its all been a blur in between moving house, losing my Internet connection and crashing my car into my new neighbours gate!!! Ironically, tThe day I crashed the car I had just finished from picking hubby up from day surgery. He wasn’t allowed to drive due to having anaesthetic whereas I could since I had not been in surgery.   

What a way to make an entrance and meet my new neighbours.  Actually, I didn’t meet the neighbours as I had to run off to a meeting and had to leave my husband to deal with my mess. Poor thing – he is just recovering from surgery and I leave him to clean up the gate, post and letterbox I hit after my foot slipped of the car brake.

Even worse I found out why the gate was there in the first place after I copped an eyeful of a naked man from the vantage of the open gate and front room of the house.  I wonder if this will affect my eggs!   OK – most likely not.  At the moment, my belly is uncomfortable and swollen from my active ovaries.  At the last scan they found 17 follicles on the right ovary and 9 on the left.  I am sure they won’t all have eggs in them but I could be facing a double digit collection again. Oh for a day a rest.

IVF Fertility Specialist Surprises

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I recently went to the effort of booking two appointments with two new fertility specialists in a desperate bid to get a second opinion.  One at a new clinic and the other with a different Doctor at the same clinic I currently attend. I mentioned in a previous post that I had been frustrated that I have not had any success with IVF as yet and that I felt my Doctor had not been proactive in recommending changes in my treatment protocol.

The first doctor I saw told me my chances of getting pregnant were very low but that he would treat me. There was no variation in the treatment in what I had done previously. The only major change was the change from transferring at Day 2 instead of Day 5. The benefit of going to him was that I would have the same Doctor treating me. The downside was that the clinic’s location was more difficult for me to attend and that I would have to go through the process of getting lots of paperwork transferred from one clinic to the next. I walked out of that office quite upset and depressed for the rest of the day.

The next doctor I was intending to see was not available until the end of May works at the same clinic as my current Doctor!   I therefore decided to maintain my appointment with my current Fertility Specialist.  I am stunned. He spent more time with me than normal, reviewed my files and recommended two major changes to what I had before. The first was:

  1. Embryo biopsy to see if there is any reason why I haven’t gotten pregnant
  2. Trying the Colorado Treatment protocol

I am stunned. Just when I was getting frustrated with my lack of success and made appointments to see other specialists, my own makes a change!  Its a big clinic but I wonder if somehow he found out that I wanted to change or whether he knows from experience that women on a mission to get pregnant will stop at nothing.

IVF Over 40

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Whilst IVF can be very a wonderful thing when it works, it can also be a frustrating experience when it doesn’t – particularly if you are over 40 years of age.  The trouble is that your body clock time bomb is clicking away and unfortunately the quality of your eggs declines rapidly at this time.  In fact, while the quality of embryos declines from about the age of 32 (yes 32), the decline is much more rapid at age 40 and above.

How do I know this? I visited a new IVF fertility specialist today. As kindly as what he was in delivering the bad news it was devastating to hear the facts. I had gone to him in hope only to be delivered bad news. At least it was more realistic than what my current Doctor tells me. My current fertility specialist tells me don’t worry you will get pregnant.  Even though I know the odds are stacked against me it keeps me in hope.  Hearing the facts from the new specialist made me upset. My age and the fact that 99% of my husbands sperm is abnormally shaped is a key problem. I had gone to him looking for a solution.  Although I don’t think this is what I got.

On the positive, he told me his clinic did things differently.  For a start, he would be the doctor who treated me – not like the clinic I currently attendwhere I get treated by whoever is scheduled to treat me on the day (a major plus).  He told me that this particular clinic only did Day 2 embryo transfers not blastocysts. He thought the fact that I had lost so many embryos at Day 5 was wasteful. Interesting – a debatable point amongst the world’s experts.

It seems there are two schools of though in IVF – Day 2/3 transfers versus Day 5.  My current clinic does either day 3 or Day 5 but this clinic doesn’t. In any case, I was directed to the patient co-ordinator and we set up some appointments to begin my next cycle.  The first thing that happened was that I was informed that as I was deemed medically infertile, I would not be eligible for the medicare rebate and as such my total costs would be $12,800 with no hope of rebate.  I was shocked.  I went back to the Doctor to check this and discovered he had made a mistake. Phew – was I relieved.  One hurdle down. However my next hurdle made me question why I was changing clinics in the first place.

When I analyzed the treatment protocol what I discovered shocked me.  What shocked me the most was that he was recommending an Antagonist cycle with the same medication as what I had previously been on.  He was also not convinced on the Colorado Treatment protocol. As far as I could see, there really wasn’t any major difference between the treatment protocols which clearly was not working for me.  The only difference was the day the embryo got transferred.

With this in mind, I had to question why go through the heartache of change. The steps I would need to take to change clinics would mean I would need to get all the paperwork on police record checks and child protection checks from my current clinic. My husband and I would also have to go through counselling all over again. The clinic locations were not as easy and accessible for us to get to. All these steps would mean another delay to my treatment.

On reflection, I don’t think this clinic is offering me anything different. I can choose to transfer an embryo on day 3 instead of day 5 at my current clinic. Personally, I am not convinced that there is a hell of a lot of difference between Day 2 and Day 3 embryo transfers.  Ours all seem to survive to Day 3.  So I think I should just save myself the heartache and continue with my current clinic but still explore another doctor in that clinic who I know will offer a different protocol to what I am currently doing.  Heck I might as well even try a day 3 transfer. At 40, I might as well try and preserve what embryos I have.

The IVF Colorado Protocol

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I recently learnt about a technique called the Colorado Technique which is geared towards older women and those women with multiple failures. It is used to improve the lining of the uterus to aid implantation of the embryo.

Sounds like this technique was made for me. I am older, have had multiple failures and implantation seems to have been an issue. In fact, a work colleague who did IVF swears by it.  Using this technique helped her conceive her baby boy at age 43!

The protocol varies by stage and individual Doctors may vary it slightly but in the general protocol works something like this:

STAGE ONE
1. Commence Baby Asprin (Astrix, Cartia, Cardiprin) when you commence Syneral / Lucrin.

STAGE TWO
2. Your husband commences Doryx 100mg twice a day for 7 days when you commence Gonal F / Puregon.
3. You stop Asprin on the day of your first ultrasound.

STAGE THREE: The day after the Trigger Injection (Pregnyl)
4. Commence Prednisolone 25mg at night for 5 nights.
5. Commence Augmentin 500mg orally twice a day for 5 days.

STAGE FOUR: The day after egg pick up.
6. Crinone (Progresterone gel) one application each morning.
7. Apply two Estraderm mx patches 100mcgm to the buttock (one on each buttock). Change alternative days.
8. Recommence Baby Asprin.
9. Have intercourse the night before embryo transfer.

OTHER

  • Continue Asprin, Crinone/Estraderm Patches until the pregnancy test.
  • If the test is positive, treatment continues to 6 weeks.
  • If the ultrasound shows a viable pregnancy, continue all tyreatments until 13 weeks are completed.
  • The Asprin continues to the 34th week of the pregnancy.

I can’t guarantee the accuracy but this seems to be the general idea. I guess I will find out more when I see my new Fertility Specialist next week.

IVF Forums

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IVF can be a long and lonely journey and while I find writing this blog very therapeutic, there are times when it is hard to write about what I am going through. Sometimes I find reading other peoples blogs inspiring and reading their journey navigating their way through infertility means that I can take some comfort in the fact that I am not alone in this journey.

Interestingly I have steered away from forums. The main reason being is that some of the information I have read is just plain incorrect. However, I recently joined a paid membership forum where only other people experiencing IVF are permitted to join. How enlightening! Joining this forum puts a very different slant on things.

Some of the stories the women share are amazing. I’ve also learnt more about alternative treatments from these forums than from Googling the term “IVF.” And here I was beginning to trust Dr Google that he contained all the answers – well at least not on the first few pages where I looked.

Anyway, I digress. One of the great things about this particular forum that I have joined is the fact that I have been able to have access to the opinions of many women who are actually going through the process of IVF – not those who heard this or that from a friend who has done it. It has also been interesting learning about different treatment protocols and also whether it is worth changing either clinics or fertility specialists.

From this and also from some of the comments from readers of this blog, I have decided to get another opinion and see a new fertility specialist. I have two doctors in mind – one at another clinic that my Chinese Herbalist / Acupuncturist has been begging me to see . The other at the same clinic that I currently frequent but who tries new alternative treatments and that a woman on the forum recommended I see.

To test my theory out, I thought I would ask my nurse when she phoned in with my negative blood test result today a question. This question was so specific and could even be considered leading. I framed it in the manner that stated I was considering changing Doctors. I told here that as I had now have had eleven IVF cycles and each of them have been a failure, I was considering changing my doctor to see if there was another treatment protocol worth pursuing.

I asked my nurse a leading question – my question was “What doctor would you see if you were in a similar position to me?” She then told me about two doctors at the clinic that were more willing to try a few more alternative techniques. Bingo – one of them was one who had been referred to from the lady in the forum! Yeah – so whilst I may or may not get pregnant with a new fertility specialist it will at least put my mind at rest that I have tried something different.