Beatle update, but first...

Here’s the follow-up on Meno.pur: The nurse I talked to yesterday said she’d try to use her “limited knowledge” to answer my question and proceeded to recite the same explanation you already gave me (FSH/LH versus FSH alone, promotes better egg development, etc.). Then she gave me the most salient reason of all: All of the clinic’s standard protocols have been updated since my last IVF cycle to include Me.nopur. It’s just What They Do now. Apparently, the Me.nopur sales rep hit the jackpot with the director of my clinic, either through booze and bribes (always a cynic!) and/or incontrovertible scientific proof (always an optimist!). I explained that I was just hesitant to add anything to a cocktail that worked so well for us before and she said, “I understand but you know what? You’re going to do great. Try not to be nervous. I know you will be anyway, but try not to because you’re going to do really well.” She doesn’t know me at all (my regular nurse is out all week) and has nothing to base her reassurance on, but for whatever reason, it satisfied me. I’m taking a laid-back approach to this cycle (relatively speaking, of course) which leads me to…

We may have a Beatle problem.

We picked The Beatle back in February. We were told at the time that his inventory was low and if we did not buy before they ran out of vials it might be “a couple of months” before they’d have more available. We did not buy any. It felt premature, and we knew were weren’t going to be doing IVF again until at least July or August, so the 2 month wait wasn’t a big deal. Shortly thereafter, his vials sold out. Fast forward to May when our 3-month membership was about to expire. I went online to print off his profile and pictures and… Hmm. He was still out of stock. I emailed our Xy.tex rep who sent me all of his data via email. She also informed me that (1) The Beatle wasn’t scheduled for another blood test until July so his vials wouldn’t clear until “sometime in August”, and (2) since our communication in February, he resigned from their donor program, so (3) the vials they currently have in storage will make up his last release, and (4) we can be added to the waiting list to receive first (well, behind whoever else is on the list ahead of us) right of refusal to his vials once they are available.

I asked her to add our names to the list and went about my day with only the slightest itch of worry that his vials wouldn’t release in time. I’d projected my IVF dates based upon my last cycle and figured my transfer wouldn't be until late September, so as long as he released in August as she said he would, we’d be fine. Over the next couple of weeks, I got my clinic schedule and found they’d tightened up the timeline quite a bit. My retrieval would be scheduled 1-2 weeks earlier than I expected. I also started thinking about who else might be on the list ahead of us, what they were told about the donor’s future availability, and what resources they might have at their disposal to snatch up and store a few extra vials. It was easy to imagine a scenario in which the one or two people ahead of us on the list might buy up all of his vials before we even reached the front of the line, and we’d be back at the starting line with very little time to make our next choice. And that is when panic set in. We already lost KD, and now we might lose our diamond in the rough, too. Where in the world would we find another donor that would so closely fit our KD-shaped hole?

I sat with the worry for as long as I could stand it, and then I wrote an email to our Xy.tex rep asking if she could tell us how many people were ahead of us in line and how many vials they expected to release in August. That wouldn’t give me the answer I needed – are we going to get one or not – but it would let me adjust my expectations appropriately. If she told me they had forty vials ready to release and we were second on the list, I’d feel pretty good. If she said they had six vials to release and there were four people ahead of us, I’d start looking at other options. I challenged myself to sleep on the email before sending it, and the next day, I decided to hold off sending it as long as my obsessive demons will allow. I wrote the email on July 11 and haven’t sent it yet. *deep breath* What will be, will be. Being high strung about it won’t change anything except my anxiety level. I wouldn’t say we “chose” The Beatle anyway. We chose KD, and then forces beyond our control led us to where we are now. Maybe The Beatle was just a stop along the way. If the universe hasn't quite connected us to the child(ren) we’re meant to have yet, well I guess we still have a couple of twists and turns on this ride. Either way, I’m tired of driving. I’m ready to be a passenger for a while.

I explained the situation to the nurse and asked when the absolute latest, drop-dead date they needed the sperm in-house was. She said they prefer to have it there on CD1, or at least by the start of Lu.pron, but could probably stretch it to the day I start stims (September 2nd), given the circumstances. This gives us almost a month before we’ll have to activate a contingency plan, but I’m hoping, hoping, hoping they call me before then to tell me The Beatle is ours.

**Edited to add: Email has been sent; no more scary stories, please. The bottom fell out of my stomach when I read J and DZ's comment, and has yet to return. Way to ruin a girl's Zen, y'all. ;-)  Just kidding, and as always, I am endlessly grateful for your input. Will update again when I know more.