OHSS

It's been 5 days since my egg retrieval surgery and I've been unpleasantly surprised at how rough the recovery has been.  This weekend I tried to back off my pain pills, so I only took ibuprofen until bed time when I caved and went ahead and took a Percocet.  Meanwhile, I was experiencing some rather uncomfortable symptoms: severe abdominal bloating (like I literally look 3 months pregnant), upper pain in my abdomen below my ribs, and constant side aches (the kind you get when you run).  This all kind of surprised me.  I expected to feel ovarian pain, but it didn't seem to make sense that I was feeling so much discomfort in these other places.

Yesterday was my first day back at work.  And honestly, I think I overdid it.  That aching feeling in my side continued to get worse throughout the day and I was having a hard time catching my breath.  By the time I got home around 6:00, I was pretty much out for the count.  I plopped down on the couch and didn't move for the rest of the night.  When I went to bed, I was feeling awful.  The pain had inched all the way up my right side to my collarbone/shoulder.  Aside from the fact that I felt horrible, I was freaking out that this couldn't be normal and that they were going to cancel my embryo transfer.  Not gonna lie...I kind of just sobbed uncontrollably into my pillow for about 15 minutes.  Luckily I had my wonderful hubby by my side who did a great job of consoling me until I was able to calm down.

This morning I woke up praying that we'd be able to go through with our transfer.  My nurse called around 8:15 and we chatted for a while about my symptoms.  She then had me talk to my doctor for a while who went ahead and diagnosed me with OHSS (ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome).  This was something that I was told to watch out for.  It often happens with women who undergo fertility treatment and can have various levels of severity.  Symptoms can include: abdominal bloating, nausea, diarrhea, excessive thirst, rapid weight gain (sometimes as much as 2+ lbs a day), infrequent urination, chest pain, and shortness of breath.  I have not experience all these symptoms luckily.  No weight gain or problems with urination.  I was feeling really nauseous for the first few days after surgery, but that's subsided.  Mostly, it's just the major discomfort from my ovaries being so enlarged and fluid leaking out and pushing all my insides up into my ribs.

After talking to the doctor she said we have two options:

1. Cancel the transfer and freeze the embryos.  If we did this my symptoms would mostly likely go away with in a couple days...but of course, I wouldn't be pregnant.
2. Continue with the transfer as planned.  Doing this would prolong my symptoms...possibly up to 2-10 weeks.  However, it would not affect our chances of getting pregnant or hurt the baby in any way if we were to get pregnant. 

So, clearly...we went with option number two.  This was at about 8:30 this morning when we decided this.  By 9:30 we were in the car on our way to do the transfer!  Needless to say, it was a very emotional 24 hours not knowing what was going to happen, but I'm very pleased that we were able to continue with things as planned.