Monday, August 6, 2012

Adventures in Internet Doctoring

I just realized I never updated all the estrogen weirdness that happened on my last medicated cycle.  Well long story short, when I didn't respond to Clomid the second time around I asked the doctor to prescribe me Femara instead.  I started taking Femara right in the middle of my cycle since my levels were still baseline.  At my first monitoring appointment there was a nice big follicle so I triggered and came back the next day for my second IUI.

But.....as it turns out my estrogen the day of the trigger was only 20.  It should have been TEN TIMES that to indicate a mature follicle.

I scheduled a consult with my doctor after the IUI to talk about what may have caused the low estrogen and he said that he wasn't sure but we would find out in two weeks if I ovulated or not.  I got my period 19 days later so I assumed I had ovulated but I never really found out if it even happened or if getting my period was just a coincidence.
So with all the weirdness of this current cycle I made sure to schedule a progesterone check seven days past my IUI.  Apparently my clinic doesn't usually do this test and people sort of looked at me funny when I explained that I wanted it.  But whatever.  I need to know if I ovulated.

Okay, that's partly a lie.  I wanted to see a HUGE number because I've heard (anecdotally of course) that a high progesterone level 7 days past ovulation could be an early sign of pregnancy.  And a low sign could mean that you didn't ovulate or you don't have enough progesterone to sustain a pregnancy.  I wanted to rule those last two out but mostly I wanted some sort of sign that this cycle would end in a BFP.  I'm already taking progesterone suppositories (yay!) so a low progesterone shouldn't be an automatically scary thing but I would still like to know!

Dr. Google tells me that any level above 5 indicates ovulation; 10 is what doctors want to see on a nonmedicated cycle; and 15 and above on a medicated cycle.  I also read that some doctors would like the progesterone to be at least 20 when you are on injectible medication like I was this cycle but I couldn't find a reliable source for that so I don't know how credible it is.

Anyway, my progesterone level today is 15, which should make me feel relieved but instead I feel bummed.  I was hoping it would be pretty high and would show me I had a SUPER ovulation but it seems mine was plain normal. 

I really need to stop Dr. Googling.

1 comment:

  1. Dr. Google can be a real bastard. 15 sounds pretty good though. Fingers crossed for you!

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