None of the names or locations are real although they are close to the truth. I really am from a Middle-Eastern-European country, but not from Slovakia. I live in the Midlands but not in Leicester. I am married with one daughter but my husband is not called Puil and my daughter is not called Lily. Yes, you guessed it right my real name is not Rianon either.
This is my secret blog at the moment but I am sure I will tell Puil eventually and he will want to come and write a post. But it is fun to have a little secret sometimes. I don't think any of my real life friends will ever find this blog unless they search for "IVF blog" or "PGD blog" (abbreviations to be explained soon). But nobody searches for such blogs without a good enough reason. So if you are my real-life friend and you found me online please send me a comment saying something like "I think I might know you in real life". I promise I will never ever talk about it.
So who I really am?
I live the happiest life ever with my wonderful husband and daughter not to mention other family and friends. Yet I have already learnt that however wonderful one's life is there is always a tiny little hitch. So what is ours? My husband has inherited a genetic condition called Familial adenomatous polyposis, or FAP for short. This condition will cause him to develop colon cancer by the age of 40 unless his colon is removed.
After careful consideration we decided to stop this condition in our own family. We had and still have more options to do so but at the moment our main focus is on genetic testing. Lucky we live in the 21st century as there is a shiny new technique called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) which coupled with IVF is able to test our embryos for this condition.
Just in case you haven't heard the word IVF before it is a laboratory procedure in which several eggs are collected from a women and each egg is placed with sperm from the man in a Petri dish to achieve fertilization. The embryo is then transferred into the uterus to begin a pregnancy. In our case there is also genetic testing involved before the transfer. In vitro fertilization literally means "fertilization in glass." A child born by in vitro fertilization is sometimes known as a "test tube baby."
Our daughter was conceived by IVF-PGD and although our second attempt for a pregnancy was a failure we are still hopeful.
Hi. Am do pleased you found my blog. It's great the you have had a successful experience of IVF / PGD. was it your first cycle of IVF?
ReplyDeleteThe chances of PGD & IVF success is sadly quite low. I'm hoping we're very lucky. If you read my whole block you will know the challenges were facing. I have waited 14 years to get this far, now my age severely reduces the chances of success.
What hospital do you go to? Sounds like you are having another attempt?
I'm on twitter @tcspgd. There's many on there going through UVF. Ive learnt a lot from them, and it's a great support network.
Keep in touch! I will follow your blog !!
Hi TCS,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. Yes we were lucky enough to have a successful PGD cycle, but sadly we also had an unsuccesful one after that. I will write a long moaning post about our failed cycle at some point.
It seems we are at the same hospital so who knows we might meet in real life if you keep going there for your three lots of egg collection.
Thanks for the twitter idea I will look into it. I am very old-fashioned I am not even on facebook but I might try both with this (not real) identity of mine. I am on a very helpful fertility forum which also have a PGD section called Fertilityzone. I learnt all the fertility-related abbreviations there although I try not to use them in my blog.
I am very much hoping you will get at least as lucky as us and will follow your blog with interest.
love, Rianon