Penless!

We were headed to the lake in Kingston yesterday so I was packing up my meds. We were beginning the superovulation drugs tonight, Follistim, so I wanted to make sure we had everything we needed. Medicine, check. Needles for the pen, check. Follistim pen, uh....no.

We searched in every place possible for that pen and it wasn't in any of our other medication bags. I called the Institute for Reproductive Health, our fertility clinic, and left a message on the IVF nurse line. But since it was Saturday and also the weekend of the 4th, I didn't expect to hear back very quickly. We get our regular prescriptions at KMart so we thought we'd call Janson. Funny how we call him by first name. :)

He said he didn't know anything about that kind of medicine (you can't get fertility medicine at the regular pharmacy unless it's Clomid) but when his computer came back up he'd look it up and call us back. In the meantime I called a friend of mine who has twin girls from IVF to see if she could offer any advice.

She looked in her stash for her old Follistim pen. She had some of the needles still but had thrown her pen away. I told her we had my cat's insulin needles. He has diabetes and sometimes has to have shots for it. She said she thought that would work so we were trying to convert 225 international units for usage in an insulin syringe. Not an easy feat.

Janson called us back and he and Brad together tried to convert the units. Brad pulled all the medicine out of one of the viles and it filled up about 55 units on the syringe. So they came up with 41. Not that I don't trust Brad and Janson, but the whole thing started to upset me so I started to cry! I just didn't want to mess this up and wanted someone who was sure to tell me what to do about the measurements. Then I had an idea that I should have thought of to begin with. Call the pharmacy that forgot to give us the pen in the first place!

You can't just get these drugs anywhere. Our's came from a pharmacy in New Jersey that only sells fertility medicine. Thank goodness they were open and we told them what was going on. They said they'd send the pen to me but it wouldn't get here until Tuesday because of the holiday. In the meantime, we can use the insulin needles. Brad and Janson had converted it correctly except apparently the manufacturer puts more medicine in the vile than it actually says on the box. Instead of haviing 300 international units like it says on the front of the medicine, it has 400 international units. So if you convert it with 400 that would mean I would be getting 30 units on the insulin syringe. Not 41. Whew! Now we know for sure that I should be getting 30 units. I felt better and stopped crying.

So Brad gave me 30 units of Follistim without the pen down by the beautiful lake last night. It didn't hurt and only added to the lengths we will go for our child. I know all the agony of this entire journey will be worth all of our efforts one day. And by the way, when I get this pen, I am keeping it forever in case any of you ever need it!