Ice packs for TESE

[try9ng]

Hi hoping someone can help. We are due for our egg retrieval in the next couple of weeks and my partner may need TESE. The information from the clinic says he will need to apply an ice pack every hour. The problem is as the clinic is so far away and we will both need sedation we can't drive home and will need to stay in a hotel. None of the hotels nearby have a freezer available for the room,so I'm not sure how I will keep ice packs cool for 24 hours. Has anyone else been in a similar situation and found an alternative way to do this? Thanks

Could you stay in an apartment or Airbnb instead of a hotel?
I don't know if you've had any medication delivered with ice packs, the ones that came with my IVF drugs stayed frozen for hours so when I travelled I brought a few of those and in a hotel asked them to keep one in the freezer and swap it with the one I had.
You could possibly also just ask for ice cubes when needed, you'll be wrapping them or the ice packs in some kind of cloth anyway.

Thanks for reply, I had thought of apartment but finding it difficult to find anything available. That's a good idea I did have fertility drugs with ice packs delivered and they were still freezing cold when it arrived so maybe they would last or ice cubes is a good idea too

My husband had a surgical sperm retrieval in March 2020 (I think they ended up being able to do PESA on the day) and he didn't use any ice packs at all afterwards. He took paracetamol/ibuprofen for a few days, and has occasionally had pain when he has walked too much in the subsequent months. Obviously this will be a personal thing, but it may be that ice packs are not needed!

I wonder if this is a new, or clinic specific thing as my DH had a vasectomy reversal, PESA and TESE (all at the same time) 10 years ago and no one ever mentioned ice or ice packs!

Oh really the notes we got said to apply for 10 mins every hour for first day. Was it very painful? My partner is very nervous about it

What's a PESA? Our cycle has now been postponed as I have a cyst, so disappointed but we are going to try doing another sample and hope we can get something to freeze

PESA is where they try to aspirate sperm from the epididymis. It's less invasive than TESE, but doesn't always work. My DH said it was painful and the bruising was spectacular, but he had a LOT of work down there in one go. It was still manageable with painkillers. Sorry to hear your cycle has been cancelled, that really sucks xx

There are so many terms I don't understand. I don't think I'll tell OH that he's so nervous, praying he gets a sample to freeze. It's so disappointing I suppose I was always focusing on sperm issues and never thought anything from my side would delay things. It really is an emotional roller-coaster xx

It's so stressful, you have all my empathy. We were told on the day there was a 50/50 shot of them finding anything, even with the more invasive surgical procedure so it was a massive (pleasant) shock when they got loads with the aspiration in the first few minutes. I think I 'whooped' in the recovery bay, which was possibly a bit insensitive to the other patients looking back..

I think 'preparing for the worse and hoping for the best' is probably a good idea. That's tricky that you'll both be recovering at the same time, but for both the PESA and my egg retrieval we set up a kind of 'sick bay' at home with lots of comfort food and painkillers and netflix and a sick bucket (neither of us needed it, but it can be comforting to feel like you've got all your bases covered!). Wishing you all the best for your rescheduled procedures! But in answer to your initial question, 100% didn't need ice packs just drugs. (although maybe less drugs would have been needed if he'd been willing to try an ice pack...)

Thank you for the information, our clinic hasn't really told us much, I actually thought it was guaranteed they would get enough through the TESE so I'm hoping it works. I'm sure the other patients would have understood, any good news needs celebrated. We're going down next week to give another sample in the hope there might be enough to freeze, even though we know there's a high risk there won't. We have kids at home and haven't told anyone we are going through ivf and the clinic is a 2 hour drive away so it's so stressful trying to organise a babysitter without telling anyone why and if it the dates change again I'm not sure how we will actually manage to get the time away. If we both didn't need sedation/anesthetic it would be a lot easier to organise