Care Fertility Chester - just been referred

[ChristmasJumpers]

Me and Dh have been referred to Care Fertility in Chester for IVF. I'm 30, DH 27 and we're diagnosed with unexplained infertility after completing all of our tests at RPH.

We don't have an appointment date yet but apparently should get an appointment within 6-8 weeks.

Has anyone else been referred for treatment recently or is at roughly the same stage of diagnosis/waiting to see a clinic? It would be really nice to start the journey with others who are in a similar situation.

I've been reading IVF boards but it is blowing my mind reading about down regs/stims/egg collection etc. while we're still waiting for our first appointment!

@Spurds , sorry to hear that, are the clinic doing anything to investigate why they're not implanting? My friends have had the same issue (diff clinic) and there clinic just seem to do nothing! I had my first round of IVF with care chester back in jan 22 and it was horrific. I have a consultation with simon wood in a couple of weeks to discuss the next round.

@Smiles8 good luck

@Bl0rnky they haven't done anything extra no. It's hard to trust them when things have gone wrong in the past to be honest but I'm trying to. I'm under Simon Wood now, he's doing my collection and transfer from now on. I do trust him but it does make me uneasy that more isn't being investigated.

I had a blood work pannel at the the GP and they found were anti parietal cell autoantibodies which doesn't seem to have any interaction with ivf/Fertility and that my cholesterol is high which is unexpected as I eat a varied and healthy diet. When I looked more closely my TSH was 3.95 and I've read that lots of clinics want it below 2.5 for ivf but Simon wasn't concerned. Higher TSH can correlate with high cholesterol. If my next transfer doesn't implant I'll be pushing for levothyroxine to lower my TSH ready for the next transfer. That's all assuming I get some embryos from this collection ❤️

How are you feeling about this next cycle? I hope you have a better outcome ❤️ I do really rate Simon, at the very least for his ability to listen and give a s* about how you're feeling. I never feel like I'm asking too many questions with him even when it's clear that he doesn't agree with the issue I'm raising. He just explains so that we understand and feel more comfortable with it.

@Spurds I'm feeling a bit better as I will be under the care of simon wood hopefully and he's the only one i rate. I look back at what happened last time and its easy to see how things could've made it bad. I found the whole covid tetsing very stressful knowing the EC could be cancelled off the back of a test, working from home isolating was horrible for me, my trigger shot the pharmacy messed up and only gave me half the dose, this could be why they only got two eggs. I bled during the 2ww before test day, I then find out only a third of people actually absorb enough progesterone from those pessarys and I think I'm not one of them so will push for shots this time. it's just annoying that I've had to work all this out on my own...I rang the clinic when i started bleeding and they did nothing. I feel they should've brought me in, tested my progesterone and given me the shots to try and help. But they just seem complacent to let it miscarry and not even try. I find this is the attitude of midwives/doctors as well, but that's a different rant!

Good luck with your collection , hope it goes well. I would've said that TSH is to high as well, but I guess it probably depends what you read. I worry about my thyroid, but he must be seeing success with people with the level of TSH.

@Bl0rnky ow man you've had a tough ride there it sounds 😓 you just want them to care as much as you do but they're so blasé about a lot of things. I guess they see everything all day everyday and we're just going through the worst thing to ever happen to us. There's always going to be a mismatch I suppose.

Completely relate to the feeling of being responsible for all these decisions and knowledge and research. I just keep saying why am I the one doing all of the work here. Its really hard.

I've struggled ALOT with some of the nurses at care. Wendy and Sarah are great but I feel that the team are just very stuck in their unwavering protocols.

Unfortunately I got some medichecks results back for the full thyroid work up and it looks like I have hashimotos. My tsh came back at 10 on that test and antibodies high. The clinic have cancelled my cycle and just told me to go back to my gp. I don't even know when my next treatment will be any more.

Again, if I hadn't do the extra work myself they would have just gone to collection and transfer again which with unregulated hashimotos is really not ok for success 😖

I hate this process so much 💔

@Spurds I'm sorry to hear that but it is good that you've caught it now and can get it sorted. Its also good you did medichecks as a GP's routinely don't bother with the antibody test. I would definitely do your own reading around hashi's as I suspect all the GP will do is give you levo for the TSH levels and say theres nothing you can do about the antibodies. it is a heart breaking, lonely disappointing slog isn't it? fingers crossed for both of us for the future!