A Great Start

Sunday, Novrmber 20, 2016

Yesterday morning, I had my first doctor's appointment at the Maria Fertility Clinic.  We arrived at 11:00 a.m. As soon as we got there, the nurse I had from years ago, ran across the building to give me a hug. She made me feel so welcome.  They told us, it would be 45 minutes until the English speaking doctor could meet with me.  So we decided to go to a cafe down the road.  I ordered the mango-yogurt smoothie and Katelyn ordered the white chocolate latte.  After we left the cafe we stopped at our first food cart and bought egg bread, for 1,000 won. It is baked bread with an egg inside. It was pretty good for a dollar.  

For the past month, I have been taking a very high dose of Estrodial to get my body ready for implantation, upon the doctor's in Korea's request.  The medicine has made me feel nauseous at times and also induces many headaches.  On the plane ride over, which was incredibly long, I had to take Excedrin to get rid of a headache. Which is a miracle drug in itself, but has a large amount of caffeine in it to curb problematic headaches.  While it does work, it makes me hot, my heart races, and I get an amazing amount of energy from taking it. I seem to get a lot done, while on it. The plane ride from Canada was so long, close to 11 hours, so then I took a sleep aide.  I had never done both at the same time. I felt like I was in a nightmare.  I honestly did not know if I was going to live through the plane ride.

Back to where we were.  At 11:45 I met with Dr. Ku.  She did an ultrasound to measure my lining for implantation.  Before leaving, I did an ultrasound in Redmond.  The lining was at 6mm.  For implantation my lining has to be at 8-12 mm.  It takes five days from the day my lining is ready to do the procedure.  I was taking a risk, not knowing if my lining would be ready when we got here. But the only way to know, was to take that chance. Since the lining grows slowly each day.  If the lining is not ready, the doctors would prescribe medicine for three more days, check the lining, and then do implantation five days from there.  That would mean, I would either have to stay longer or just go back to Oregon without implanting any embryos. Dr. Ku, measured my lining and I was at 8.2mm!!!!!  Today, I have to start taking a lot more medicine.  But at least, thank the heavens above, I don't have to do shots every day like I did last time.  Wednesday is my implantation day! I am so excited and so blessed all at the same time.

Katelyn and I then headed out to Myeongdong.  This is a shopper's paradise for skin products and makeup.  Along the streets there is a massive amount of food carts.  We also went into the Lotte Department store and the Shinsegae Shopping Mall.  Both were huge!  I wish you could have seen what we saw in the basement. It was a beautifully designed area with different teas, breads, vegetables, and more.  

To end the night, we stopped by the Dongdaemun shopping complex.  They have large department stores and also markets that sell whole sale goods.  However, the whole sale markets are closed on Saturdays, and reopen the rest of the week on Sunday.  They open their shops at 8:00p.m and stay open until 6:00a.m the next morning.  We are going to go back later this week.  There is a stationary row, toy row, and also clothes that I want to get for Hadley.

We hope you are all well!  I am excited for today, as we are going to go to the National Korean Museum, maybe hike or take the tram up to Namsen tower, and end the evening by attending the Lantern Festival. 

Lots of love to all of you!