I spent about 3 hours agonizing over my stims tonight. Not about the needles (don't bother me at all), but what pen to use. I'd collected a couple other 900IU Gonal-F pens from the IUI cycles I didn't do in Feb and Mar, so I debated and debated whether I should use one of them instead of the one I just picked up. My insurance will be changing as of July 1st, and my Gonal-F will no longer be covered, so I wanted to stockpile a little.
The stuff is supposed to be good for 2 years from the date of manufacture if stored in a fridge at 2-8C. I want to use up the older stuff first, as its expiry date is 05/2010 vs the 07/2010 that my new pen is labeled with. And then I started to panic about whether my fridge was too cold or too warm, and brought in our outside thermometer to measure the temp. It's slow to adjust, so it was initially measuring at 6C, and then slowly kept on dropping to about 2.6C over the next couple of hours. The package just said keep in fridge and don't freeze. Well, I've never put it in the freezer, but I do know that sections of our fridge get really cold (it's an old piece of crap), because occasionally a can of Coke will have ice crystals floating in it, or a bunch of celery (which I always put in with the bottom to the back right of the fridge) will have its bottom end frozen. The end towards the door of the fridge is never frozen. Certainly none of my meds have ever come out of their location at the front left frozen.
DH even went out and bought a meat thermometer (that he's been dying to get now that he's started cooking) so that we could measure the temp with another tool. It told me our pickles are floating in 3C fluid, and our grapefruit juice and strawberry jam are also 3C. Which must mean our fridge cools things to about 3C. So now I've used the old stuff. I'm praying it'll work like it's supposed to. On the one hand, I feel bad that I'm not using the most recently bought stuff to be sure this cycle works, but I've also stored meds for a month or more before and used them for IUIs with a good response. I'm pretty confident things will be fine. And then there's that nagging little voice in the back of my head that worries I've made the wrong decision, using meds I've stored for almost 3 months. (The package insert says I could store at 2-25C for 3 months, so I think all's good).
What do you think? I probably won't feel relieved until I go for my monitoring on Monday and find out that something's starting to happen.
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4 comments:
From what you have said it sounds good to me I would do the same too use up the older medication first, send you an offline message on msn last night let me know what you think. Hope to chat with you soon have a good weekend
I think you're ok, and I would've done the same thing.
Picked up my meds at Glen Shields, and was happy about how much $ I saved.
There's always going to be the question of what would have happened had you done the cycle differently. For all you know, the most recent dose of injects could be ineffective. Then you would have been kicking yourself for not using the older stuff.
I know how badly you want a healthy pregnancy and I certainly know how much you and your husband absolutely deserve it. All my hope is stacked on this cycle being the one that works for you Kate!
I want to think they are okay. Your next visit to the clinic will tell you. I'd be worrying too.
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