The treatment plan proposed by Dana Farber was 4 rounds of every-other-week chemo, followed by 6 weeks of daily radiation with continuous 5-FU infusion, then major abdominal surgery to remove a large chunk of my colon and rectum along with the surrounding lymph tissue, then 8-12 more rounds of chemo, for a total of 10-12 months of treatment. And the radiation will destroy my uterus, so I will never be able to get pregnant at the end of all of this.
The timing of our visits to the infertility specialists worked out perfectly, almost ridiculously so. I had gone off my hormonal birth control as soon as we'd heard that I was going to be infertile, because I knew I wanted to try to squeeze in an IVF cycle if at all possible. After the big pow-wow with all the doctors on Wednesday, we had an appointment with the MGH infertility folks that Friday and they were able to a baseline ultrasound and apply for coverage with our insurance. It turns out that we have the only insurance in Massachusetts that covers IVF before cancer treatment (since I'm not technically infertile at the time of treatment), so that was a bit of luck, since the drugs alone are over $7,000.
We went away for the long weekend to a B&B in New Hampshire, and I got my period on Sunday, much to my surprise! We had an appointment with the Dana Farber infertility specialist the following Tuesday (since Monday was a holiday), and because everything was already in place, she was able to start me on hormones that very day. I even got my first injection in her office. Had my period not started exactly when it did, or our appointment been a day later we couldn't have used that cycle, and my oncologist wasn't willing to wait another month before starting chemo. So we were extraordinarily lucky on that one!! For the next 14 days, my wonderful husband gave me an injection every morning, and for the last 8 or 10 days I got another one in the evening. Somewhere in there I had surgery to install my port-a-cath in my shoulder, but it was entirely minor day surgery. Just made my left arm sore for several days.
Starting on day 8, I had to go in to the hospital every morning for blood work and an ultrasound so they could monitor how my eggs were developing. They took patients from 7:30-8:30, but you really needed to be there by 6:30 if you wanted to make it home before rush hour. So those were some really early mornings. Greg went with me to the first one, but it was so early and so mundane that he skipped the majority of the rest. He still had to get up at the crack of dawn, though, to give me my morning injection (since he typically left for work before I would get back from the hospital).
And then, less than two weeks after we started the hormones, they scheduled my egg retrieval for Sunday, the day before my first round of chemo. My retrieval was scheduled for Sunday at noon, so Friday at exactly midnight, Greg had to give me an IM hCG injection into my butt, which was less than fun. At least all my other injections were sub-q (nice 1/2" needs), rather than the giant 4" IM needles. Apparently the eggs are released exactly 36 hours after you get the hCG, so the timing is really important. And then, off to pre-op on Sunday morning with Greg. They put me under, so I don't really remember much after arriving and changing into a gown. But they got 14 eggs, which turned into 8 fertilized embryos, who are frozen and waiting for us once all of this is over!
