Candace-
Turns out steroids have been proven to be effective for those who are in the “unexplained” or “autoimmune” infertile category of not being able to get that bun in your oven. I have had beautiful, award winning embryos and blastocysts over the past 5 transfers that have brought tears of pride in the eyes of my embryologists. So what about people like me? Those who have multiple transfers where everything looks perfect. Let’s do the run down, ideal hormone levels – check, Zen state of mind (well, as much as you can be due to the massive hormone levels) – check, embies that could probably grow in an 80 year old woman – CHECK. If I had a dollar for every time our RE said “Candace, on paper you should be pregnant,” well, I would have $5 but you get my drift.
We decided for this round to do some serious research. What the hell is my problem? I have an angry uterus that hates me, busted plumbing if you will. For those cases like mine that have had multiple transfers without a clear direction as to why I have implantation problems, one line of defense is adding steroids to your already impressive cocktail of medications. What’s another crazy pill? I am already damn near insane anyway.
Chris-
After talking with the RE, everyone thought that steroids would be a good option. Unfortunately, these aren’t the kind that will get Candace ripped at the gym. Sorry Candace. Instead, these steroids are thought to act as suppressants for some of the raucous antibodies floating around mucking up the implantation process. Although originally we through prednisone was going to be the ticket, our RE prescribed dexamethasone. Apparently, it has fewer side effects than prednisone. Fine with me, I am already suffering from battered husband syndrome from Candace on IVF meds as it is. These steroids are supposed to suppress the activity of natural killer cells (NK cells) which have been linked to multiple unexplained IVF failures, aka our situation.
As an aside, if I were a cell, I would want to be an NK cell. Can you picture it, all the cells hanging out at a cellular level saloon … then the doors swing open and in walks a Bad A** NK cell, everyone hushes up as the NK cell takes his seat. The bartender has his usual waiting for him before he is even sitting. The NK cell looks around and says, “What are y’all lookin’ at?!” and everything goes back to a nervous normal. Sounds like an old Western movie, huh?
Back on point, we found an article with a lot of information. The authors are a little braggy about how great they are, but there are a bunch of useful tidbits in here. There is also information about Lovenox and intralipids, both of which Candace and I are trying for this transfer. Happy reading.
Heads up to the faithful and brave followers of our journey, you will see some new and exciting changes to the appearance of our blog in the upcoming weeks. Since the end of the Mayan calendar did not result in the end of the world, we thought the blog could use some jazzing up. Hopefully, it will be user friendly and please give us your feedback on it. Stay tuned …
