Wednesday, September 08, 2004

HPTs Are The Devil

I'm totally messing with my own head, all because of those evil little plastic sticks we all love to pee on. You're not supposed to test at home after an IVF cycle, because the HCG injection you're given before egg retrieval contains the same hormone that HPTs detect, and it can stay in your system for up to two weeks. Plus, REs usually schedule the beta test early enough that an HPT might not be accurate anyway.

Even so, I couldn't resist peeing on one yesterday. And what do you know... negative. That's the only result I've ever seen, so I wasn't shocked, and I knew it was still very early, so I didn't lose hope that I could still be pregnant. I decided not to test any more and exercise a little bit of good old fashioned self control until Friday.

But predictably, I broke down. Today I used a First Response test, which detects very low levels of HCG.

It was positive. Instantly positive.

So now, I'm even more confused than before. Is this test just picking up residual amounts of HCG from my injection 17 days ago that the first test wasn't sensitive enough to detect? Or is it really detecting a pregnancy? And in the name of all that's holy, why do I do this to myself? Why?!?

5 comments:

  1. I've never thought of hpts as fruits of the devil, but you may be onto something here. I am cautiously, tentatively, only a little bit hesitantly agreeing that the trigger should be out of your system if it was 17 days ago. How you're resisting the urge to call your doc and throw a hissy until you get a beta is beyond me. ;-)

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  2. I'm over here hoping it's a real positive! Good luck! :-)

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  3. Thanks Laurie and Milenka!

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  4. Anonymous1:30 PM

    Well, I think that if the first one was negative, and then you got a positive, then the trigger shot should be out. I know I'd be trying another pee session with said stick that was first negative, just to see if it went positive this time or not. :)

    Good luck on your Beta's.

    Fingers crossed for you.

    Kris
    http://icantbebrokencani.typepad.com/

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  5. Kris, That is an excellent suggestion, and I actually thought of it myself, but I couldn't find another test that was the same brand as the negative one. I do know that it wasn't as sensitive as the other ones I used... so basically I know nothing more than I did before. ;)

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Give it to me straight!

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