Hi friends, I have taken some much needed time off to focus on my TTC fertility journey but now I feel ready to share what’s been going on. Some of the topics that I cover are my journey, experience with Letrozole, the cost of treatment, Ovidrel Injections and what’s next. I hope you enjoy and find it helpful/hopeful if you are in the same situation. xo
All this medication and hormones running through my body hey everyone welcome back to my channel happy spring the last time i sat down to talk with you we were in the dead of winter it has been a while i have taken a much needed time off um you already know what i’m going to talk about from the title but the past few months have been a roller coaster of emotions
Of ups and downs mostly downs um but uh i want to share my journey as always with all of you and kind of let people in on what i’ve been going through and where i’ve been um and thank you to everyone that noticed and has reached out it has been again a trying season so knowing that i have support and love and prayers has meant everything to me um but it’s all
Good i’m happy i am hopeful um life is wonderful the sun is shining it is spring so today i’m going to talk about our fertility journey so far specifically i’m going to talk about uh my experience with uh letrozole and ovidro also where we’re at and where we’re going so if you’re on your own ttc journey i hope that you learned some interesting information that
Would help you make decisions or just be more knowledgeable i’m not an expert i’m just going to speak from my experience over the last specifically three months and i hope you find this helpful so let’s get into it i have written quite extensive notes i’m actually even gonna give you the price breakdown of some things uh but if you’re new here i’m just gonna
Give you a little overview of the road so far what has led us to today again i’ve got some notes here so two years ago i was diagnosed with pcos we’ve been i’ve been managing it working on reversing it um with the help of a wonderful fertility clinic in the toronto area i have officially been with them for one year in may last summer i went through a series of
Testing which led me into september where i had a laparoscopic surgery to make sure that my fallopian tubes were open that they were not blocked it’s called a fill-in spill they filled and they spilled after that surgery uh we were told like everything looked really good there i don’t even think there were cysts on my ovaries at that point and the doctor said you
Know what everything looks really good we want you to try on your own for three months no medication except for metformin i’ve been on metformin for uh since september and i have seen success with metformin but basically they asked us try uh on your own for three months and if you don’t get pregnant you can come back uh to the office in january so after uh the
Surgery unfortunately we were not successful on our own so january 11th we went back to the fertility clinic i was obviously very um discouraged having to go back i was really excited at the prospect of just not having to go back to a fertility clinic um pretty much from the first day we went back we were told you’re going to do letrozole cycle if you agree to
It and i was not super aware of what all of that meant i felt like things happened really fast they do a great job at bringing you up to speed but it was like we’re back we weren’t successful i’ve had the surgery and now you’re going to try letrozole this should help you and let’s result is um i i believe it’s like a follicle stimulation medication so it helps
Your body produce follicles which are what releases the egg and letrozole is accompanied with ovidrill or some type of shot that basically induces ovulation in your body so we were going to try that we were told you’re going to do this for three cycles and then we’re gonna like reevaluate things so again i was feeling discouraged going into the appointment but
I was really excited because i’m like three months we’re gonna get pregnant no problem we went into the office we were told this was gonna happen um but i didn’t tell anyone i didn’t know my family i didn’t tell my friends because i was really sure we were gonna get pregnant that first cycle and if you are also on this ttc journey you know there’s not a lot of
Mystery there is not a lot of spontaneity everything is very calculated and so i was like this is a way that we can you know get pregnant and surprise my family and it would be like an actual surprise and it felt very exciting i was again so sure that it was going to happen so they gave me and they gave me every single month five milligrams of letrozole for five
Days and i believe it started on the eighth cycle day eight and so i would take that for five days um and they’re just two tiny little like little tablets and you take them at dinner time so my first month uh the one thing that i first noticed was i would get a headache so if i took them around six o’clock about 8 30 9 o’clock i started to get a really bad headache
Um and that was the only really real side effect that i felt except for the raging hormones i didn’t really notice this until after but that for specifically that first um month with letrozole i was more hormonal i think than i was as a teenager i was angry i was crying at anything i was frustrated i would be happy i would be sad i it was horrible i feel terrible
For andrew i was a mess like i would cry like if you dropped a hat like literally if you dropped a hat i could cry i still feel those emotions like the all of this treatment has definitely i’m much more emotional i’m much more hormonal um but that first week was really bad and i was also like slightly depressed i just noticed it was just very strong emotions
And it wasn’t until after i sat down with andrew and i apologize like i don’t know why i’m like this that he was the one that said i think it’s because of the letrozole uh and sure enough every month that kind of happened but thankfully we were both very aware of that and knew what i was going through so knowing that helped kind of mitigate the large swings after
The five days i was fine it was like that medication just was like whoa teenager aside from the mood swings that lasted for each cycle the headaches were really only there for the first two i didn’t notice headaches the third month um and so essentially once i started taking the letrozole i was going back to the doctor every other day and they were measuring the
Size and how many follicles and so the goal was to get a follicle 2.4 centimeters uh to get the overdrill shot um and so for us you know that’s waking up early before work going into the doctors doing all this stuff coming home and going to work so it’s a very exhaustive process um and sometimes you’re going day after day because it’s it’s growing and they’re
You know they don’t want to miss their shot so once i would hit 2.4 then they would give me the shot of ovidrill in my stomach before i talk about that um i never had more than really one lead follicle the second month i had four follicles and they all looked promising and then towards the end really one took the lead and then the rest kind of stopped growing um
And the first month i only had one follicle and then this last month i really only had one there was another one that seemed to be like growing and then the day before i got the shot it actually had shrunk so that was really unfortunate um so the overdrill shot not scary at all i know so many people are scared about getting it in their stomach you don’t feel it
At all the only the only thing i would say is when it’s going in it kind of feels like you’re being injected with icy hot like you just feel it and the area is like i don’t know it feels strange but it doesn’t hurt i would much rather get a shot in my stomach than do some of like the invasive ultrasound stuff like i for me that was like no problem but i know some
People who really hate needles that’s very tough but it didn’t hurt at all didn’t even notice it they would be talking to me while i’m doing it and i barely feel a pinch so that wasn’t that was totally fine um basically i pretty much would start feeling something happening down there so again the overdrill shot pushes your body into ovulation apparently you’re
It’s it’s you’re being given a lot of pregnancy hormones because if you take an at-home pregnancy test basically from the time you get the shot to 10 days after you’re gonna get a false positive so you’re just being injected with a lot of pregnancy hormones so that also makes you very hormonal very moody uh it’s not a fun time but um at about 24 to 36 hours
After you really are feeling this heaviness down in your lower abdomen it’s kind of like a bloating cramp it’s it’s very distinct essentially the same amount of discomfort that you feel around your real ovulation so it’s just i guess for me because my body doesn’t tend to ovulate on its own i’m not used to that feeling four days after the overdrill shot i start
Progesterone and i do that for about 10 days which leads us right to um the blood work to find out if you’re pregnant or not so they schedule that while you’re at the clinic getting your shot so you know again everything is so calculated everything is so timed there’s no mystery um so you know everything that’s happening and that’s kind of what the cycle looks
Like and then you know the 14th day after the shot you go in you get blood work done and then you go home and then they call you unfortunately for us every time was negative the very first time we went through the letrozole cycle i was convinced i was pregnant but i think it was just my body reacting to all the newness of what was going on with the electro’s all the
Overdrill everything so it was um it was very very upsetting for me the very first time they called and said it was negative because i was convinced it was positive um and i don’t test it’s too much of an emotional roller coaster um the second and third month i just knew i wasn’t pregnant so i knew when they called that it was going to be negative but it still
Um didn’t sting any less it was still really sad and then painful um but at least i was kind of preparing myself was the first time i was devastated like just i think i spent like most of that day crying so it was it was tough before we move on to what’s next i’m just going to give you a little breakdown of cost so in canada where i am uh some of this like
Going to a fertility doctor is covered under i live in ontario it’s covered under ohip which is our ontario health plan medications aren’t covered usually you get that covered through your work um and sometimes your company doesn’t actually cover fertility stuff fertility medication so that’s something you’d have to talk with your company about uh but a lot of the
Medication that we take is still it’s regulated so you’re not gonna go to one clinic and pay one price and another clinic another price but i just thought for anybody interested or going through and is curious at the cost um for the overdrill shot once a month it was 90 dollars and then for the progesterone suppositories so for uh 10 was 40 where are we going
Now what’s next for us we actually just had a call with the doctor a few days ago and leading up to the call i was terrified i was crying again still like all this medication and hormones running through my body but i was crying and i was just scared and and i you know my thing was like i it’s such an emotional journey it’s also very vulnerable um it’s also
Can be discomforting like all the procedures that you have to do and i’ve just had a rough season and i was like i just can’t do it anymore so what’s next for us is we’re gonna take a month off we are actually gonna go to florida for two weeks and we’re just going to relax and swim and go to disney world and have fun and not think about any of this stuff and
Just be together and laugh and be at the places that we love which we’re both huge disney fanatics um we’re gonna eat good food and we’re gonna walk a lot and swim and be in the sun um and our doctor really recommended taking a break like taking some time you need to mentally reset you need to physically reset i’m going to work really hard to be at disney and be
Relatively healthy i know we’re gonna be exercising there so like as in walking and swimming so i’m not gonna be hard on myself but i just really need a break i need to like emotionally shut off from this um and we feel really good about that the exciting thing is we’re actually going to go from the month off right into a new series of medication i wrote it down
We’re going to be trying gona gonadropin agonotropin so from my understanding it’s 10 injections into my stomach that i will do at home on my own uh for 10 evenings and that’s going to help produce more follicles because i think that’s what they’re thinking for me is a little bit of the issue is that i’m only getting one chance i’m only producing one follicle so
Obviously there’s side effects there’s hypo something or hyper stimulation or something where you could produce like way too many um so they monitor you very closely so again it’s going to be a all-consuming process so taking the month off i’m just really excited about not having to get really early and go to the doctors before work and the emotional rollercoaster
Of it all and maybe my like emotions will level out like maybe if i go to disney and don’t cry that would be great just because i feel like i cry over everything it’s embarrassing and we’re gonna try that for three months uh and then see where see where it goes i feel very hopeful i just have so much faith that this is what’s gonna work but you know what i trust
The lord that whatever his plan is whatever his timing is that’s what is going to be what we need to do and i just have to trust the lord and trust the process i don’t feel hopeless i don’t feel defeated i don’t feel discouraged i feel frustrated sometimes i feel angry sometimes that i have to do this but i know the lord is in control and i have faith and i’m not
Worried um and i feel like i’m coming out of this season of that and so i’m hoping even for youtube like this is such a great outlet for me and i love sharing my journey with everyone i’m hoping that i’ll feel better you know and be able to bring you along more because it’s just been a season of lone being lone lonely is the wrong word just not wanting to open
Up and just being very like internal um but that’s okay too and that’s what i needed so now i’m kind of coming out of that i’m feeling really good happy and hopeful and i hope that if you’re on this journey that you have a great family great friends to support you to pray with you to walk through it with you because it’s not easy and it’s not fun to do it alone
So let me know in the comments section if you’re going through this maybe your experiences what you’ve tried what’s helped you would love to hear and i will keep you posted with what is next so thank you again so much for watching don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and i will see you again for another video bye you
Transcribed from video
PCOS TTC Fertility Journey Update: Letrozole + Ovidrel Injections | Cost of Fertility Treatments By Life of Laura-Lee