Gonal-f

So Friday started my 2nd daily shot, gonal-f. The gonal-f is in a very convenient prefilled pen. I just dial up my dose (225units), pull the plunger out until the arrow lines up with the 225 mark, inject it into my belly and then push the end until it clicks 6 times. A pen holds 450units so it only lasts 2 shots. After my blood work on Monday my dose may go up or down depending.

Gonal-f is a gonadotropin hormone, it consists of recombinant human follicle stimulating hormone (r-hFSH). FSH is necessary for the recruitment, growth, and maturation of the ovarian follicles.

I will be on this shot for 10 days with the goal of around 20 mature follicles, a mature follicle is 18-23mm in diameter. I am still on the lupron shots to prevent ovulation of all these nice big eggs until my medical team is ready to go in and extract them. Although 20 is the goal number, the minimum number of mature eggs to go ahead with the egg retrieval is 5. Hopefully I will have much more than that since not every follicle will have a mature egg, of the eggs you get around 70% will actually fertilize and of those that fertilize maybe half will continue to divide normally. So starting with 20 follicles you might actually only get 5-8 good embryos, then they would pick the 2 best and put those in me.

Here is an action shot of me injecting the pen. As you can see I have 1 really big bruise from a lupron shot and about 3 little bruises. Seems like every other day I give myself a bruise on injection! My belly is starting to look crazy.