Candace: Guess who has follicles? THIS GIRL… Lot’s of them too! During my 1000 ultrasounds over the past week, all of the doctors have been ooohing and ahhing about my quickly growing ovaries and the large amount of my many follicles.
Question: What came first the Follicle or the Egg?
Answer: The Follicle. (Latin for for “nest”) Ain’t I smart!
These black blobs on the large screen placed in front of my stirrup throne, houses the precious egg (oocyte) Don’t ask me what the Latin word for that is, I only took 3 years of Latin in High School. If you don’t have an angry uterus like I do, and can pop out babies like a Duggar, then when you ovulate your follicle releases and BAM! There is the golden egg, the shot goes off and the great sperm race to the eggie finish line begins. 9 months later all your baby dreams come true. For us less fertile, it is a much different series of events.
Ideally, you want those black blobs on the screen to be around 18-21mm prior to your “trigger” shot. The trigger shot is also better known as “as crazy women in a syringe” due to the fact you are injected with a high concentrate of the pregnancy hormone HCG. This is what tells your lab experiment of a body to release those eggs! If you are like me and wanted to see what that mysterious never seen positive pregnancy test looks like, you will in fact, test positive for the next few days. For some it lasts for about 10 days in your system. 36 hours after you have taken the trigger shot you will have an IV in your hand and start slurring for your egg retrieval. My advice to the guys who give this shot, do the exact following:
Step 1. Inject already hormonal partner, with yet another big A shot
Step 2. Run like hell
NOTE: If you come back, best bring chocolate, flowers, ice cream, big diamonds (uh hem Chris?) and maybe just maybe you will have a place to sleep that night. I kid I kid
Where do we stand? Last scan I asked the doctor how many follicles I had. The very detailed answer we got, “A lot”. Thanks captain obvious can I have a actual number? Honestly, I love my doctors so it is ok. SOOO the next scan when I asked, I have about 8 follicles on one ovary and 10 on the other. Ranging from 15-18mm. I’m a proud mama of follicles!
Chris: I have gotten to know Candace very well over the past decade +. Over these appointments during the stimulation process, I have become intimately connected to Candace’s ovaries and the follicles that are populating them. Although the jealously has been growing in me towards that damn ultrasound wand, Candace is still always going home with me. So take that fancy Hitachi ultrasound instrument!!
As an aside, these intrusive scans are not truly new for us. Candace has seen every single bit of me. I had full body CT scans when I had my brain tumor. In a hugely humorous moment, we were looking at a CT scan of my abdomen with Candace’s aunt when we realized that the strange shapes on the films were of my business. Talk about getting to know your family 🙂 We learned though and Candace and I would do what we called “Winkie Watch” prior to showing future scans to anybody.
We have watched these follicles grow and with every appointment, we grow closer to the retrieval event. Things seem to be going well and we hope that we will have great numbers and beautiful follicles come retrieval day!
