IVF egg retrieval. They put me under anesthesia and in about a half hour they take out all the eggs in my follicles. This is done using a transvagional ultrasound wand and a giant, giant needle with some sort of suction device on it. Yes, no fun. But better than incisions? Yes. If you want to know the clinical info, go here.Otherwise, observe the drawing.

They collected 40 eggs from me. This is a really big deal. To have that many eggs and without over stimulating is a huge deal.
And of those, 33 were mature. Again, that’s amazing. To have that high of a percent be mature is incredible. 29 of those made it to getting frozen.

I’m afraid that’s where the good news ends. After 2 semen analyses and 14 testicular biopsies they did not find a single sperm. Zero. We are devastated. And shocked. In the past year they have found 7 total, at every biopsy and even that one in the micro analysis. This was unexpected. In our minds, we ruled out the possibility of a zero analysis a year ago. This was not supposed to be an option. We figured our worst case scenario would be only finding 2 again and maybe those not fertilizing or something. Never this.

Now what?  I don’t know. I lost it when Dr Foulk broke the news to us and only caught pieces of the rest of the call. What I gathered? He was shocked too. He “hopes that the last cycle was not the last time Jason would ever produce sperm.” Yeah me too. Thanks for haunting me with that…but…he did say we’re not out of the game yet. There still are a couple more options. He will go over them with us in depth at our next appointment. But he did say they were more invasive. Something about a microdissection testicular biopsy…something about more in depth needle aspiration…something about something comparable to unpeeling an orange…whatever it is, it sounds extreme. And expensive. Since we didn’t catch the actual names over my crying, we don’t have a ton to go off of. But the only thing I could find on google makes me cringe with pain and sounds like it’s over $$$ for that alone…

Like I said. We’re devastated. We still strongly believe in the promises we have received individually and as a couple that we will be parents. Somehow, someday that will occur. But for now, I’m going to mourn and weep and hideout. Christ mourned at the passing of Lazarus even though He knew it was not the end. And I think that’s where we are right now. Keep the prayers coming. We have felt them. They are what’s keeping us sane and semi optimistic in spite of this blinding pain. If you feel like expressing your love for us in  writing, please do. But please keep in mind that I am emotionally not ready right now. I don’t want to talk about it in person quite yet. It will make me cry and on top of everything else, I’m in major physical pain that crying makes much worse. When we’re ready to talk about it, we’ll come to you.  Thank you again for your love and support and we thank you in advance for your understanding.