Today was my egg retrieval, or "pick up" as they call it here. We weren't scheduled to go to the clinic until noon, and I was allowed nothing to eat and little to drink before so I tried to sleep in as late as possible. I was trying not to be nervous, but I was nervous. I was about to undergo a medical procedure in a 3rd world country. I think that I had every right to be nervous.
The walk to the clinic was very slow. I am feeling pretty uncomfortable by this point and every step makes my swollen ovaries bounce. Bouncing ovaries don't feel very good.
The clinic is not very busy when I get there. Myself and two other woman got called back for our procedures. On the day of my last retrieval there may have been several procedures that day - I will never know as I was in my own room pre and post procedure. Here, however, space is much more limited, so there was only one pre and post procedure room so I was painfully aware that there were several procedures going on at the clinic today.
We were all given gowns and asked to step into the adjoining restroom one by one to change. We all got to sit on one of the two recovery beds and await our procedure. As we sat there in uncomfortable silence I was observing the other two women.
The one I think may have been a surrogate. She had on a plain salwar kameez and seemed very shy. She was there for her transfer. The other woman was there for her pick up and I think that she was a fellow patient. She obviously had some money - she had on western clothing, painted and manicured nails and a lot of jewelry. She was looking at me with such contempt and distaste it was hard not to notice. I get it I guess - me being a horrible American and all.
It was my turn for my procedure and I went back to the procedure room. It thankfully looked pretty close to the one back home - just smaller. The lab was in the next room which also thankfully resembled the one back home. This made me feel a little better, if only for a short while. Unfortunately the clinic has a small staff and had a lot of clients to take care of today, so I had to wait in the procedure room for a while before things got started. The nurse spoke very little English. She could tell I was very nervous and was trying to tell me to relax. But, I wasn't relaxing. Oh no, I was getting more and more nervous the longer I waited.
At long last, people began to start filing into the procedure room to prep me for the retrieval. The anesthesiologist was a middle-aged man and was very nice. Unfortunately I have very small veins and they only had the normal adult-sized needles which was making the whole IV process very difficult. They finally got a vein to pop and thankfully didn't hesitate. It hurt. It kept hurting. The liquid coming in the IV was burning my arm. I couldn't help myself - I started crying. Thankfully the anesthesia was started soon after that and I drifted off to sleep.
I was awoken by the anesthesiologist who kindly told me that the procedure was over and asked how I was doing. I was OK. I little groggy, but OK. Thankfully my hand wasn't hurting as much from the IV. I was waking up fine and wishing that I would brought something to read back with me. Unfortunately with only two beds I had to start making my way over to the other bed soon. I wasn't feeling too bad and was anxious to see Mark and get back to the hotel to rest so I was happy to comply. I was sitting up fine and wasn't nauseous at all so I was allowed to change into my clothes and go up front to meet Mark.
The doctor saw us and went over the results. She seemed very happy. There were 8 eggs retrieved - all mature. She said that the quality looked fine. This was better than expected. We were given discharge instructions and a few medicines to take over the next couple of days - antibiotics and mild painkillers. The transfer will be on Tuesday. We will be kept up to date on how things progress over the next few days. For now the focus is for me to rest and recover from the procedure.
Wow. 8 eggs. Decent Quality. This all may work out after all.............
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