7dp5dt: Pom

Dear readers, last night I had acupuncture (she said my pulses were good) and fell asleep on the couch after gorging myself on gluten-free pepperoni and mushroom pizza from an amazing pizzeria near the acu appointment. I did not take the time to practice my guitar (I'll post about that tomorrow).

The purpose of this post is to share with you a piece of art that has special meaning to me. Here it is.

This is a watercolor by my very talented mother. She's lives up in Oregon, but visits often. She's heading down for 2 months in Mexico. I'll miss being able to call her every day like I currently do. Thank goodness for Skype.

Four sleeps until beta day!

~Jem

Genetic Testing

Mr. Jem and I had a long chat with Jean (not her real name), the genetics counsellor yesterday as Mr. Jem has Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) in his family. His father, paternal uncle, and grandfather all had it. His father is currently on dialysis because of it. Obviously this is something we DON'T want to pass on to our child-to-be.

The good news is that Mr. Jem does NOT have any cysts, and at age 46, if he was going to get them, he would have already. Mr. Jem has seen two separate doctors over the past three years, and had two u/s that showed no cysts. None. I'm sure there are some of you out there who know what a happy thing that is.

PKD is not a disease that skips generations, so the likelihood of Mr. Jem being a carrier of the gene is almost zero. Testing takes 8-12 weeks for results, yes, you read that right, eight to TWELVE! Clearly, we don't want to put off IVF for 2 to 3 months. Not happening. If we thought there was the smallest chance of passing on the disease we would, of course, but Jean agreed with us.

The other thing we discussed with Jean was testing for diseases for people of Jewish ancestry. Luckily this only takes two weeks to get the results.

Dr. Wonderful wants to put me back on BCPs and push back starting stims until Oct 16 (instead of tomorrow, Oct 2). I suppose I can live with this.

Mr. Jem doesn't want to do any of the test. If we weren't going through ART, this wouldn't have spoken to a genetics counsellor. I'm scared as it is that I'll have a baby with chromosome issues, which is much more of a possibility than PKD or Tay-Sachs disease.

Arghh. What to do? Dr. W wants us to test. Mr. Jem doesn't.

Yet another reason that IF sux!

Jem

Regrets/questions

Here are my current list of regrets/questions:

1. Why didn't we start ART sooner? - I'm 39 for goodness sake!
   (Answer: because first I wasn't ready and then Mr. Jem wasn't ready)
   
2. Why did I think gleefully evil thoughts when I heard that previous (live-in) boyfriend couldn't have kids because of a childhood accident?
   (Answer: No idea. I know there's no direct correlation between my evil thoughts and our present situation. I can't help think that some twisted karma has me and Mr. Jem facing Male Factor IF.)
   
3. Why did I decide to wait until next cycle (in September) to start IVF? I'm ready to start now!!!
   (Answer: because Mr. Jem and I weren't psychologically ready and we have some travelling to do before the IVF cycle starts. I'm totally ready/impatient now!!!!!!!!)
   
4. How come two of my male colleagues just had babies, but not me?
   (Answer: who knows?!)
   
5. Why isn't this easier?
   (see Answer 4)
   
6. What are your biggest regrets/questions?

Jem