Good Morning

We wake up and Jeremy has breakfast - Greek bread with Nutella. I am completely jealous. I am starving, but I'm not allowed to eat since I'm going under sedation today for egg collection. We pack our bags for a road trip down to Athens we are taking after Egg Harvest.

New Life Clinic

We arrive at New Life Clinic around 10:30. We are lead to a private room where I am told to strip down completely naked, except I can keep my bra on. I'm provided this paper thin, see-through medical gown. Thankfully, they give me two so I can layer them, and I feel much more covered. I sit on the bed with the papery cap on my head, double gowned, hospital socks on my feet, feeling so excited for egg harvest. Jeremy sits on a chair next to the bed, holding my hand, as we anxiously wait for next steps.

A nurse comes into the room and takes my vitals, then leaves the room. A few minutes later another nurse comes in and tells me it's time to go to the operating room. Jeremy stays behind, as I walk down a short hallway, go through these double doors, and see this table in the middle of this room with leg holders and foot stirrups. Oh lord, I'm going to be on full display. I'm thankful I'll be knocked out with anesthesia. In the meantime, Jeremiah is pulled from our room to go give the doctors another sperm sample. Though we froze a sample from a few days ago, the clinic prefers a fresh sample if they are able to get one.

I lay on the table, and put my legs in the holders as instructed, spread eagle. Thankfully the nurse covers me up so I'm not just openly on display for everyone until it is time for them to retrieve the eggs. My doctor sits on a stool at the bottom of the table between my legs, patting my thigh, asking me if we went to see Meteora. I tell her all about it as the anesthesiologist comes in. He attempts to put an IV in my left arm, and I hear him go "no, no, no, no, no" under his breath. I knew he missed my vein, but I'm a bit concerned with how panicked he seems. He strikes the vein on his second attempt, and my doctor jokingly waves at me and says "good night". I lay there, staring up at the ceiling. She asks me if I'm okay, and I tell her I'm just waiting for the anesthesia to kick in. I see her glance at the anesthesiologist, but about five seconds later I can feel the affects of it crawling up my face. I tell her I'll be out any second. Then, I'm gone, lost to anesthesia land.

What feels like a moment later, I'm awake, and being asked to move onto the bed in our little private patient room. I stand up and move to the bed, which apparently isn't what they meant. They wanted me to sit on the bed they brought me in on and butt scoot over. Oh well. I wake up easily from anesthesia and have historically never had a problem with being mobile or eating or any of the normal things after waking up from surgery. I should know, I've been under anesthesia ten times now in my life.

The doctor comes in about fifteen minutes later and tells Jeremiah and I that they retrieved nine healthy eggs, all from my left ovary. The follicles from my right ovary were all empty. I'm told I can use the bathroom and get dressed, and she leaves. I, of course, get out of the paper thin robes right away and get dressed back into my normal clothes.

An embryologist joins us some time later to discuss next steps. He asks if we are open to potentially having a multiple pregnancy, and we say yes. He agrees that he would move forward with pairing up blastocysts as much as possible. He explains to us that they will take the nine eggs, inject them with Jeremy's healthiest sperm from the sperm sample he provided today. From there, they will monitor the growth of the blastocysts. Some will continue developing, while others won't, that's just the way it goes. At least, it's very rare that they all keep graduating on to next steps. They will then rate the blastocysts on day five. Any that are rated "A" will be marked as able to be transferred into my uterus. The rest will be discarded. The idea of discarding the rest doesn't sit right with me, but it's how clinics in Greece operate.

We are given permission to leave after the embryologist says goodbye and we sign off on the embryo plan. I thought I was starving before the egg harvest, but I truly am hangry at this point. There's a McDonald's right next door, and while neither of us are proud of this choice, the hangry monster must be satisfied. We pop over there and eat. The food honestly seems a bit healthier than McDonald's in the United States, and they have "chicken bites", which are like popcorn chicken. I don't care that it's fast food, I scarf it down quickly, satiating the hangry beast within.

Athens

After we eat, we hop in the car and get on the highway. We decide to not avoid tolls this time, and just stick to the main roads. Jeremy drives the first half of the trip as I recover a bit more in the passenger seat. We switch about halfway there at a gas station, and I drive us into the city. Driving in Athens is more insane than driving in Thessaloniki. Driving in Athens makes Thessaloniki seem like a breeze!

I carefully make our way to a parking ramp that's right next to our hotel that is reasonably priced. We check into Athens City Hotel, and then go grab a bite to eat at a place called ZaZas. It's pretty late by this point, so we just return to our hotel and relax. I fill out our memo board to show that nine eggs were collected in our IVF adventure. I'm so excited to see how many we end up having that are rated "A".