It seems Hurricane Irma swallowed up about 2-3 weeks of my life.  Once that baby started pointing towards us, it was ALL I could think about…there was no way I was getting a thing done, work or otherwise.  Then, once it finally hit, it was  the slowest storm ever, it took like 3 days to remove itself from South Florida.  THEN, we lost power for a whole week, guys.  I don’t know how people back in the day lived without air conditioner!  Waaaaah!

Irma really screwed things up for me in terms of my IVF cycle.  The Thursday before the storm hit, I went to see the doctor.  I had been on the stimulation drugs for about 6 days and I was responding so well that my doctor was worried about OHSS (basically where your ovaries get overstimulated and it can be life threatening).  Considering the fact that there was a huge storm looming over me, I didn’t want to risk having to take a fun trip to the emergency room right in the middle of the hurricane; so we decided to cancel the cycle.  It was a really hard decision because 1) the freaking MONEY (those drugs are so expensive and I injected half of them for nothing) and 2) TIME…I have to wait 4-8 weeks for things to calm down (i.e. for my follicles to shrink back to normal) before I can start the whole process over again.  My doctor’s office ended up being closed for a solid 1.5 weeks so it was definitely the right decision but still.  Talk about a disappointment.

[Oliver’s face sums up how I felt pretty nicely.]

In other news, as I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been seeing a functional doctor and she ran a ridiculous amount of tests on me and boy, did she find out some things about what’s been going on with me.  For starters, I have what’s called an MTHFR gene mutation (for those in the know, I am heterozygous for both genes).  I won’t bore you will all the details but it basically means that my body has a difficult time ridding itself of toxins and I can’t absorb certain nutrients very effectively.  In addition, this mutation has been linked to recurrent pregnancy loss (HELLO!).  The issues with pregnancy happen because a) you can’t convert folic acid into a usable form, which is needed in pregnancy and 2) people with this mutation have a tendency to develop blood clots and this is of particular concern in pregnancy.  If you want to read more about it, this website gives a nice summary of MTHFR in general and this website explains the miscarriage thing.  Quite the revelation!

All the tests also found that I have high levels of mercury and I am deficient in so many things (vitamin C, glutathione, testosterone, all the B vitamins, the list goes on and on).  So, I’m on a whole regimen in an effort to get everything back to normal.  For starters, I am now taking a new multi-vitamin that is MTHFR gene mutant-friendly (yes, I am a mother f*cking gene mutant).  And now my diet has gotten ridiculous because I really want to try to fix everything naturally.  So, what’s my diet looking like?

• Gluten free (still)
• avoid dairy
• absolutely NO processed foods
• eat at least 1-2 servings of cruciferous veggies a day
• more celery, parsley, and cilantro to help remove the mercury
• Eat more papaya, kiwi
• Eat gluten free oats that are fortified in vitamin B
• Change my omega-3 to a brand that removes mercury
• one other suggestion was to add wheat germ to my diet but it has gluten.  I did try it to see what would happen and I felt like death after eating it so I won’t be doing that again.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me if I even need to do IVF now that I know about this MTHFR gene mutation and my answer is yes.  For one, I’ve already paid for most of the treatment so I am in too deep, so to speak.  But also, after having 4 miscarriages, I am not taking any chances!  I am going to do everything possible to help me have a healthy pregnancy and I think that IVF improves my chances immensely.

I mean, who wouldn’t want one more of these guys, right???