Episode 28: Oh The Health Journey You'll Go On with Mackenzie Soderquist and Alex Leddy - Part 1

Small Batch Sound: Hey everyone, a little bit of housekeeping before we get started. Mackenzie Soderquist ⁓ and Alex Letty are on today and I'll introduce them in the intro. But it's gonna be a long one, so we're cutting it into two. ⁓ because Mackenzie's story is like chock full of a lot of medical stuff. And while that might sound like it it will be like deep in the weeds, like if you're in if you're in this spot in your life, if you are having trouble with conception and ⁓ fertility issues in general, this is the stuff you actually want to hear because it's it's it's not necessarily stuff that you like planned to know about, but once you're in that, you have so many questions and there's so many avenues you could go down. And so I utterly appreciated all of what Mackenzie mentioned. ⁓ and I think it's important to keep it all in. I don't want to gloss over it. We have plenty of people that can gloss over it for you in our lives to say this didn't work for me, this did work for me, but like paint it with a broad brush, you know? So anyway, without further ado, Alex and Mackenzie. Hey everybody and welcome back to Confessions of a Slow Cooker. I'm Ashlyn Blue and today's episode has been a long time coming. If you've followed the show up until this point, you've already met one of my guests, Alex Letty. She is my personal acupuncturist and went on my entire IVF journey with me. And through that experience, which is a gazillion sessions, we became friends. And it was on her acupuncture table that the genesis for the show came about. And that brings me to our second guest, Mackenzie Soderquist. Alex introduced me to Mackenzie. for the purposes of this show, I don't know how I didn't know her because we both live in the valley here in Colorado, but she was saying that. Mackenzie's story is like perfect for exactly what we're going for. And she knew that it would definitely help someone else out there. And that is the point of the show. Alex is right. I already heard the whole story. And Mackenzie has been through it and back again. ⁓ and she's currently big and beautifully pregnant as we speak. 30 weeks. So you all know that there's a silver lining here. I I I led with like the dun dun dun, but she's pregnant and glowing if you can't see her. ⁓ and with that, I'm gonna stop blabbering on here and say hi McKenzie. Hi, Alex. I can't believe we finally made this happen. Yeah. Hi, Ashlyn. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having us. Of course, of course. Okay, so McKenzie, you are the guest of honor because Alex ⁓ has been here. This is our thrice, if you will. So ⁓ where do you want to start? I know you're it's a it's pretty complicated. ⁓ there are a lot of twists and turns and stuff from the past and things in the present. And so I'll let you decide. Yeah. so I will just start, I'll start when when we officially started trying to conceive my husband Riley and I. So that was January of 2022. We officially started trying to conceive on our honeymoon that month. We went to Kauai. It was a disastrous honeymoon, but we decided to start trying there. And that was kind of our plan because We had gotten married. Our our wedding had been delayed a full year. And so our wedding was a casualty of COVID. We were supposed to get married in 2020. And we decided to just push that wedding a full year to 2021. As a result, we decided that we wanted to try to start to conceive pretty soon after that. We waited a couple months because we had some travel and weddings. And so, like January was going to be our start date. And We thought it was gonna be easy and seamless and you know, I had certain valid reasons for thinking that, but also because of that, I did zero preparation leading up to starting to try to conceive. I actually like didn't even know how you got pregnant. That's actually more common than you think. I'm laughing, but like that's pretty common. Yeah. Like I didn't understand the menstrual cycle. I had a couple of apps. I wanna say I was using natural cycles at the time. And so I would look at, you know, when my I was supposed to get my period. I actually wasn't even getting my period and I didn't even realize it, which is a whole nother thing. But it it would be But is that's odder that you just didn't realize it, but okay, continue. I'll get to that in a second. But yeah, we You know, it gives you a window for when you're you're supposed to be ovulating. And so we would try during that window. ⁓ going back to the previous year, because it was, you know, COVID and we were so excited to finally be able to get married, I didn't think at all about like, we need to be collecting data, we need to be working with my OB. I was so excited that the world had opened back up and we were traveling and I had a bunch of friends' weddings and like my own like ancillary wedding events, like bachelorette parties and whatnot. So I really I I think I lost my period. I think I stopped getting it maybe in November or December. And I was so distracted that I I didn't know, which sounds crazy, but Yeah, until we started trying to conceive, I was like, actually, I don't think I'm getting a period. Wait, hold on. Yeah. I think this is pretty important. So we we come back from our honeymoon and it's like apparent that I need to figure this out. I had also had a couple health issues leading up to that. In November of the year before, I mentioned we had like a bunch of weddings and events. We had gone to a wedding in Mexico, and I was like positive that I had gotten a parasite on that trip. And my primary care doctor was really no help. And so I was trying to figure out like which specialist can help me deal with this because I had all the symptoms afterwards. And I actually was seeing a different acupuncturist at the time. Alex is also my acupuncturist, but she had a naturopath in her office that I spoke to and she was like, let's start you with some testing and on a protocol for this parasite. At the time I was thinking those are my main issues, like maybe some other GI issues. I was having some heartburn. And then also, like, we need to figure out this lack of period thing. So we we start with her protocol. The test results come back that I have candida, candida overgrowth, which is like a yeast or like a fungal overgrowth. I also had H. pylori, there might have been a couple other things, EBV, Epstein Barr virus. And so we start with the gut protocol, which is primarily it was like a couple different herbs and and different things, but it was a candida diet to try to starve the candida. And so that becomes my focus. I'm super bummed because this diet, this is the first elimination diet I've ever done in my life at this point. And you can't have Gluten, dairy, sugar, like most fruit, alcohol, caffeine, refined carbs, like you're stripping away basically everything. And this naturopath has said, let's try it for a month and come back and see how you're doing. And I will say, at the beginning, and probably the first couple of years of my fertility journey, I had completely unrealistic expectations about how long everything would take. I was thinking, this'll take a month. I'll come back. And things will probably start rocking and rolling. I'll probably get my period, my gut issues will be resolved, and I'll be all good. And what I ended up learning throughout that year was that my health issues were like way more extensive than just that parasite. So eventually I stopped working with this naturopath. I wasn't really vibing with her. And I found a functional doctor based in, or a functional NP, actually, an FMP. in Fort Collins through a friend. And so I start working with her and I'm feeling like, you know, this this care, this support is a lot more legitimate, but a lot of ⁓ other stuff is being uncovered. The gut stuff came up for sure. And I'm also complaining to her about a couple other things. Of course, the lack of period is a big concern. And then I'm also having pretty significant brain fog and memory issues. And I'm also getting these weird flu like flare-ups. And to kind of explain that a little bit, I'll go back to the summer before to give a little more context. So as I mentioned, I was incredibly distracted that year. I wasn't thinking about my health at all. And I got two pretty significant flare-ups in the summer of 2021. Which is not only when you would get the flu. No. But remember, it was COVID. So I whenever I would get these flares, I always thought I had COVID. And the first flare I ever got was July. I came back to Aspen after like a pretty big bender. it w it was like my friend's wedding. It was my bachelorette the weekend before. And so when I started to get these symptoms, which were fatigue, body aches, dizziness, kind of just like getting knocked out, feeling like I got hit by a bus. I really just attribute it to that, to exhaustion. And kind of forgot about it, slept it off the next month. It's August, and I'm back on the East Coast where my parents live on Cape Cod. And I've got a bunch of different events, again, very distracted, and I start to get a sore throat. And at the time, I want to say the variant was the Delta variant, maybe the Omicron variant, one of those. And I remember looking it up, and the first symptom that you would usually see with onset of that variant was a sore throat. And that's what I started to get. So I'm like, God, I have COVID. I have like a wedding coming up. This is terrible timing. And it just progressed into like a much more severe version of what had happened the month before, where I got like a high fever, chills. malaise, body aches, like the whole nine yards, like the most severe flu I've ever gotten in my life. And I went to an urgent care clinic. I ran a PCR test, and they tested me not only for COVID, but also for, I believe RSV, the flu, and mono. And so I'm thinking, whatever it is I have, I'm gonna find it out because it's gotta be one of these four things. And Then the test results come back and I have none of them. And so I'm like, I don't think I really trust this test because like this has to be COVID, right? Like there's nothing else this could be. We're in the middle of it and it's August. It's summer. So I'm perplexed, but you know, very distracted. My wedding is the next month. My priority is just like get healthy so I can get to this wedding. Yeah. Make it through. Yeah. And I did, and and you know, the symptoms subsided. My wedding went off without a hitch. It was beautiful. I was healthy. And I didn't start to get these same flare ups until the next year, until March. And one thing I will say is on my honeymoon in January, part of the reason it was so disastrous is because my husband and I got COVID on that wedding. I mean, on COVID. Yeah. Yeah. On that honeymoon. Finally. Yay. Yep. So that was the first way I was like fully. Yeah. This is disgusting soundings. Not you, what I'm about to say. ⁓ and this is not the only person I know. Like I went on our honeymoon and I was so constipated. It was miserable. I don't know if it was all the stress that was leading up to the wedding or what, but it was or just travel in general. But I we went to ⁓ where do we go? We went to Outside Monterey. ⁓ anyway, it was really far away from any like drugstore, but I was like, ⁓ can someone get me some like, you know, Dokaleks or something like that? And so ⁓ like we didn't have a car and they yeah, it some some guy from the the hotel, it was I can't even I c I can't even remember where we were right now 'cause it all I can remember is like being holed up like in so much pain. So I I feel like there's something to a honeymoon that's like, hey, let's let everything just fall apart right now. Anyway, the real deal in sickness and in health. Yeah. Hey, husband, you wanna see me in my best moments already? There's such high expectations for honeymoons and they're usually let down. And I would say my honeymoon experience was the exact opposite, because I had had the parasite. I was having significant diarrhea and Okay. I now not like the explosive That's going on right now? ⁓ it was yeah, it was something similar to that. It was awful. Like there were several days where we were quarantined and I was like on the toilet the whole time. It was awful. Mackenzie. I know. Poor thing. Yay, yay, honeymoons. Anyway, you survive somehow. And at least he he also got sick. At least you could be like quarantined together during your honeymoon. Yeah, yeah. So we were now at, let's see, like somewhere in late spring of 2022. And I'm realizing I'm getting these flu-like flare-ups and telling my functional NP about them. And she's saying, This sounds to me like Babesia. And I'm like, what now? That sounds like I've never heard this word before. And so she says that Babesia is a tick-borne infection. It's ⁓ a blood parasite that lives in your red blood cells. And it's most commonly associated with Lyme disease. So it's like called a coinfection, a tick-borne co-infection. So when you get Lyme disease, you'll often get Babesia or like Erlichia. There's several. And so she's telling me about this and she's like, it's also cyclical. And so I was seeing these happen every month. Of course, like I said, I wasn't getting a period, but she thought that I was getting it like around the same time that I would have been getting my period. So I'm like, okay, this makes a ton of sense. We're gonna test for this. So she ordered an at-home test, a test kit that you would just go to like an urgent care or like a walk-in clinic and get drawn. So I'm back on the cape. It's the same time of year now, July, August, and I'm waiting for my test results, and I get the same sore throat. And I'm like, ⁓ my God, I'm getting the same exact symptoms that I got the summer before. This is so weird. But at least now I know that I have a name for it. It's Babesia. And again, it was really severe. I think this year it was even more severe than the year before, where I literally feel like I'm dying, like I have never been so sick before. And I get the test results. And sure enough, I have Babesia, Lyme disease, and Bartonella, which is another tick-borne coinfection. It's it's often you often get it from fleas, actually. They another name for it is like cat scratch disease. But what can happen is when you get one tick bite, that tick can carry several different pathogens. And so usually like you don't just get one, you get All of them. and I'll probably when I talk about it, I'll probably just call it Lyme just for like the sake of of ease. But I'm glad you explained that there's more to it. That's good to know. Yeah. And and when I say Lyme, I really mean like all the tick-borne co infections. So I remember at this point looking up, you know, what is the protocol, what's the treatment for Lyme disease, Babesia, Bartonella. And at the time, the CDC's website said. It can be treated by a three-week course of antibiotics. It might still say that that is really about like acute Lyme. When you get a tick bite, you know you got the bite and you kind of like nip it in the bud with antibiotics. But if you have a chronic case, which most people do because they get the tick bite and they don't know that they got it, they never found the tick, which I think was the case for me. You know, at that point your case is chronic, your treatment is going to be significantly more. Complex. So there's no nipping. No, like in there. You're incredibly lucky if you find the tick. Like go to your doctor and get on antibiotics. Even if you're not sure, it's just it's a safer like a tetanus shot kind of thing. Yeah, just like just err on the side of caution, in in my opinion. So at this point I'm thinking, okay, well, maybe this treatment is gonna be. fairly easy. Maybe I'm just taking antibiotics and then this fall I'll be done with the candida diet with the gut protocol. I'll be in a better place. Again, my timelines through for all of this were completely unrealistic. I think at some point in the fall I do realize this is just like trying to conceive is just not happening this year. So let's really focus on treatment. And so treatment looked like antimicrobials. There was a bunch of other like alternative things we were doing. My FMP recommended that I do hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And there's a a place in the valley here in Willetz that has like a medical-grade hyperbaric oxygen therapy facility. And so I started going there. And the idea with that is Like the Lyme bacteria can't survive in really high oxygen environments. It's really good for like cellular and like tissue healing as well if you have an injury. but you know, it's super expensive. So I was paying for all these things out of pocket at this point. And I was like, I really don't care. I just want to get better for this baby. I had a one-track mind and I was like, let's go as fast as we possibly can. So that I can be in a place where I'm healthy to have this baby. Cause at this point, my timeline is all screwed up. I thought that I would have a baby, thought I'd be pregnant in the fall of 2022 with hopes of like having this baby at the end of the year. And so that's not happening. So I'm doing the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The guy that runs that clinic is saying, Hey, why don't you go talk to a local doctor, an integrative doctor named Dr. John Hughes? He's based in Basalt. And so I go and see him. And at least in my experience, his protocol was like IV therapy to try to like detox the body and build up the immune system. And so that's really what we focused on. And I was doing like that in conjunction with the protocol that my FMP had for me. So I would do these IVs and they were not fun. They were like these big bags of vitamin C, glutathione, NAD, B12, and I would get all of that intravenously, and then I would go into the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. In the chamber, I would experience these things called a Herx reaction. And that's basically when Your body is trying to clear a bacterial load too quickly and it's really, really painful. And how how where is it painful? So these specific herxes were like headaches. They were like pain in the chest and then pain in the back. And, you know, it's like maybe concerning to be experiencing that, but I was like, if this is a sign that I'm clearing the bacteria. I don't care. Like I and this was my attitude at the time. I don't care what I'm putting my body through. I don't care what I'm experiencing. I just wanna get to this place where I'm healthy. And that was kind of my attitude throughout most of this process, unfortunately. So we're fortunately no, no, no, no. I say fortunately. I like if you've been through IVF, if you've done anything else, you know, just Yeah, you do what you have to do to get where you want to go. So I feel like that's like shows what kind of mom you're gonna be. So I think it's fine. True. I would say like the experience I had with IVF made me realize that I need to listen to my body and and think about my well being a little bit more than I was, which I'll get to when we talk about IVF. But so Well and I think just to jump in from knowing you, I think that like you had a goal of getting pregnant, which Is a beautiful goal, but then your health was sort of you were like wanting to rush through all of these things and just get to the pregnancy part. But it's like this was the journey of getting really healthy along the way. And it was slower than you thought. And it is like listening to your body and letting it be like, okay, my health first, getting pregnant second, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And I at some point realized that. And was like, I need to put myself first and I need to just let this unfold the way it's gonna unfold. And that didn't happen for a really long time. I thought I could force all of this as fast as I possibly could. And so that's why this protocol I really liked because it felt really aggressive. It felt like we were hitting it hard. And at the same time, my FMP's protocol felt like not aggressive enough. Okay. And So Dr. Hughes is telling me about this. He's actually like a Chinese medicine practitioner MD, also out of New York, and he's got a Chinese herb protocol that's been pretty successful for Lyme and tick-borne coinfections. And so he's like, You gotta talk to this guy. So I set up a call, and I'm kind of feeling like I need to break up with my FMP at the same time. Because again, I had this attitude that was like, whoever's gonna hit this the hardest, I'm gonna go with them. The one thing I will say that my FMP had me on throughout this throughout the fall. ⁓ she put me on DHEA, like a a bio identical version of DHEA. And so in December I get my period back. Still yeah, so very exciting. I'm very excited because she has said once you get your period back, like that could be your body signaling that you might be able to sustain a pregnancy. Like your body is probably ovulating, maybe. And, you know, this might be an okay time to start trying. Regardless, I did break up with her and started with this Chinese medicine practitioner, MD. And so we start on the Chinese herb protocol and my husband and I start trying at the same time. In retrospect, I now know that that was not smart because I should have waited until I was fully healthy, like at least my perception of healthy. But I was like, okay, if my body is signaling this, then I'm I'm not gonna waste any time. Like this was my attitude, like just total desperation. Needless to Is this your normal ⁓ Is this how you are about most things? Are you do you like a y like an attacker? Okay. I was curious because I don't know you very well. And I'm like, I'm super type A, I'm a control freak. That's how I was about everything. So it made perfect sense that I was like, and this is gonna happen and this is gonna happen and it's gonna be great. And then ⁓ you of course, no. ⁓ none of that, none of you. ⁓ and ⁓ w so what what would you say your approach that was the word I was looking for. Your approach normally was outside of this. I'm definitely like more type B. Like I consider myself a pretty type A type B. So like if if if a type if a type B person can err on the side of type A, like that's me. But and I have moments where I'm type A, but throughout this process, I really surprised myself because I was like, give me the protocol, do it to a T, you know? Give me whatever and I will do it a hundred and ten percent because I was so desperate to have this baby. Yeah. It's interesting what wanting to be a a mom will do to my sensibilities. Yeah. ⁓ I was just curious because I thought if there's someone out there listening thinking, well, if this is how she ⁓ you know, approaches everything in her life, it makes sense. But I'm glad that I'm not glad that y that's not how you are. I'm glad to know that this was separate from from how you typically Live your life. Yeah. No, I listen to no. You know what's interesting? What's interesting too is like ⁓ you know, in my process of trying to get pregnant, 'cause I am also very type A, I think that my lesson along the way was like not being so type A. Leaning into more of the intuition and like you can't just if you do everything by the book, it doesn't mean that it's going to result in what you want. And it's almost just like it's a very i interesting you know, like type A-ness doesn't always make it better. Or like if I follow it to a T or if I do it this way. Right. It it's it's just a wild ride, you know? ⁓ Well and Marcus, ⁓ Mar my husband Marcus, for those of you who don't know who who he is, ⁓ he I keep coming back to it because he said it on an episode on this podcast. He was like, Your body's not a machine. Don't treat it like one. You know, and and I was like, well yeah, 'cause he was talking about for male fertility purposes to say like you know, things could be going wrong even if you're you have the best diet. I was I talked to someone recently and she said I was doing everything. She was she was doing the opposite. Like she was like over the top, ⁓ like so, so, so healthy. ⁓ at least she thought. And she kept on having miscarriage after miscarriage. IBF didn't work for her. She ultimately went the surrogacy route. But ⁓ like she was doing everything to a tea and it didn't really matter. And so I don't think they ever found out why. But yeah, I think I think this whole process, like it really challenges who you naturally are. And you learn a lot through the process, which is which is nice. You know, like it it at least there's something else that comes out of it. You know, you learn a lot about the way you approach life and the way you maybe shouldn't in certain s certain aspects. ⁓ so anyway, back to you, Mackenzie. Sorry. No, I I think that all makes a ton of sense and I was working with a therapist throughout all of this. I actually like changed therapists several times. but this one therapist I was working with at one point, we talked about a window of tolerance. And my window of tolerance was like the size of a quarter where I couldn't think about anything outside of that window besides fertility. And if if you know getting pregnant didn't work, like I didn't want to think about it. And not to give too much of a spoiler alert, but when I finally got pregnant was when I finally let go and like surrendered and was like, it how this is just gonna happen the way it's gonna happen. And it took me years and years to get to that point of like forcing a square peg in a round hole and realizing that this it it just wasn't happening this way. Like the more I forced it, the f the more it like moved further away. So anyways, I'm glad you brought that up because yeah, that was a huge part of my journey is learning not to force it. So let's see, where were we? Now we are at You broke up with your FMP. Yeah. Broke up with my FMP. The Chinese medicine, the Chinese medicine guy in New York. New York. Yep. So so his protocol was really effective and and he broke it up into three parts. for me based on my infection. So first there was a Lyme protocol. I had a huge Herc. So I was like, great, this is working. I had a Baby Zipper protocol next and then the Bartonella protocol last. Somewhere in between all of that, I lose my period again. So I've had my period from maybe December to April. And at this point I'm realizing, like in conjunction with doing this treatment, that it's it's Finally, time to seek out fertility treatment because I had the year of no period, ⁓ which the name they would put to that is hypothalamic amenorrhea. And as a result, an ovulation. So I'm also like while my husband and I are trying, while we're doing this this Chinese herb protocol, I'm finally realizing like I need to start tracking with something with ovulation predictor sticks. And It's not apparent that I'm ovulating. Like it's either some major user error, which is very possible, or I'm actually not ovulating. So it's one of the two. And so I'm kind of like alarm bells are going up, and I'm like, ⁓ all of this is pointing to a fertility clinic. So we seek out help with a big fertility clinic in Denver, and we meet with them maybe in May of 2023, and our Our plan is to start with Clomid and time cycles. And so at this point, IVF isn't really like something we're thinking. My husband, bless his heart, he's incredibly optimistic. And like had he not been, I probably wouldn't survived all this. But one thing we talked about is a little bit too much of like toxic positivity. And so we're at the IVF clinic and we're looking at, you know, here's what we're starting with, but here is like the menu of fertility options. And he's like, we're not gonna have to do IVF. And I remember it being like, okay, I believe you. And then when we did IVF, I was like, damn it, Riley. Why did I believe you? So we we start with Clomit and time cycles. Right around this same time, this Lyme protocol is wrapping up. And I'm finally feeling like, all right, this one chapter of my journey is like Hopefully close. Like hopefully this health stuff is done with and I can finally move on with like just the fertility stuff. So we're starting the Clomid and the time cycles. I want to say we did maybe four cycles. And the more you do, the less effective it gets. So it's starting to become pretty apparent that we're gonna need to move on to IVF. So And you can only do so many where you have to take a break, right? Yeah. And and we did have to take a We did have to take a break in the middle because I had like an abnormal PAP, which I didn't actually have, but they reported it that I had one. And so I was like furious. I was like, Yeah, we're missing one cycle. Time is of the essence. It it it it feels that way. You're not that's out that's totally normal. Any hiccup I had, I felt like it was three years I was gonna have to wait. It was like, yeah, in in retrospect it was only thirty days, but it feels You're you are the desperation is so real. Yeah. So do not let Clomid beat yourself up over that furiousness. Is that a word? And I furious I with with Clomid, it's like one of those things that it can be really helpful for ovulation. But then if you do it multiple times in a row, it does thin your lining. So then even if you get pregnant, your lining is so thin that it doesn't so you do it there's a limited amount of Clomid cycles that you can do for that reason. Yeah. So I didn't know you need your lining to be thick for it to stick. You need your lining to work. So it's like that balance of like, yes, I want to ovulate. It does certainly do that. But then overuse of it and figuring out that when that happens and the lining's too thin, especially if it's not being monitored at that at any point before I BF, the lining can be too thin over too many cycles. So Yeah. There's that. I never really missed health. Why it didn't You know, why it was less effective the more you went on, but that makes a lot of sense. so we we do our one day workup in November, and our plan is to do our first egg retrieval in late late December, early January. And this is right around the same time that I started working with Alex because this clinic recommends that you do acupuncture. So We gear up for the first egg retrieval. ⁓ I wanna say that like the first round was like quote unquote more experimental. We didn't know it was gonna work. So we did kind of like the basic STEMS protocol, like Menipure, Seturtide, Gonel F. Like there wasn't anything like special or unique added because we just wanted to see what would what would work. So We do that egg retrieval and it's pretty unsuccessful. I remember I got seven eggs, which was not great. And of those seven eggs, of the eggs that fertilize made it to blastocyst, we got two embryos. And those two embryos took seven days to culture or mature. And with embryos, you want them to mature in five days. Those are the healthiest embryos. And then of course there's like the rating, the health of them. So I don't think the rating was good either way. And they were day sevens. So my doctor recommended that we transfer both of them, which was pretty unusual considering my age, because I was, I think, 34 at the time. If this was January of 2024, I was 34 at the time. And so we transfer both of them. And it was unsuccessful. So we jump back in right away because that's my go-getter attitude. Like, we're gonna start right up again with plans for an egg retrieval in April. And for this egg retrieval, my doctor is like, we're gonna change things up pretty significantly because we have information from that first retrieval. So we're gonna stick with all the same medications, but we're gonna put you on the highest possible dosage of everything. To really try to stimulate your follicles. Yeah. And that scared me, but I was like, okay, like I I trust, I trust you, you know. And I do remember at the time meeting with a woman in the valley here who had gone through IVF, same clinic, and she was like, wait a second, this doesn't sound good to me. Like you really should push back on this. And I was not great at advocating for myself at the time. I I still is hard for me with doctors, but. I did I did push back and it was so hard to get a hold of this doctor. I mean, this clinic is huge. You mostly communicate via this messaging portal app with the nurse. And I really wanted to have a conversation with this doctor. And unfortunately, it never happened. We like communicated via voicemails because we're missing each other. And eventually I was like, okay, I trust that this is gonna be the best protocol for me. And she also added HGH, human growth hormone, which I guess can be really helpful to help im improve egg quality in poor responders. And then again, the Clomid. one thing that I did not mention about my experience with Clomid when we were doing the time cycles was it made me an absolute monster. I have never been. Yeah, I have never been more out of control with my emotions in my life than when I was on Clomid. And so when she said this, I was like, ⁓ God, I'm I'm really scared. But I'll do it. I'll do anything. You know? I'm putting myself second and I'm putting the success of this egg retrieval first. And my husband's safety. Yeah. And your intuition, like you you were ignoring your intuition or like just overriding it, I guess. 'Cause You know, which I think later, because obviously I know your story, then it's like leaning into your intuition took press, you know, took a and here we are. But anyway, this is my time in I like now I know I could have said no, I like there's gotta be another another thing we can add. You know, I'm not gonna make myself crazy because it might help my chances. But I was like, whatever, I'll just do it. And so this is when things kind of got scary and my my health journey took another turn. I was maybe three or four days into STEMs. So I had started on some of the hormones, the HGH, the clomid, and I start to get ringing in one ear one day. And I had gotten ringing it ringing in one ear before when I was doing the Bartonella protocol specifically. And so Bartonella, like As far as these tick borne coinfections, Bartonella is gonna be the more like nervous system, neurological. like when you think about like where the dysfunction happens, it's more in like those systems because this bacteria crosses the blood b brain barrier, it can contribute to nervous system dysfunction. you know, I attribute the Bartonella to my I had pretty bad insomnia throughout all of this. And that was something I had in my 20s as well. Brain fog, I mentioned the men memory issues. And then I did get a little bit of tinnitus, the ringing in one ear that kind of came and went when I was doing this treatment. Okay. So the ringing persists. I remember I was lying, I was lying in bed one night, ⁓ trying to sleep, and I put one ear down. on the pillow and I started to get like a whooshing and a vibrating sensation up one ear. And I'm like, this is really not good. So I I turn over to the other ear and the same thing is happening. And immediately my mind is like, I'm getting a Bartonella flair. And I start to have like incredible PTSD because I thought that I had put all this to bed. I thought that my my treatments were successful. And I'm also thinking about What are the implications of getting a flare at this point? Does that mean that I have to stop IVF, that it's not safe to continue, that I can't do this egg retrieval? And so I'm kind of spiraling. I'm absolutely spiraling. And this is a great time to do it in the middle of the night. Yeah. And I mean, I I was no stranger to that, like spiraling when I was experiencing insomnia while my sweet husband is sleeping. Soundly next to me 10 seconds after his head hit the pillow. Yeah. So annoying. so when you're doing an egg retrieval, also, your doctor will typically say, I want you to stop all medication except for the medication we're prescribing, except for like vitamin D. There are like a couple things that you can keep taking. But at the time, because insomnia was such a big issue for me, I was taking advan on like an as needed basis to be able to sleep. And I now know that like with all these conditions I had, there's like significant nervous system, sympathetic nervous system activation. So I think that's probably also what contributed to my insomnia is like my body was just stuck in this fight or flight state all the time. Yeah. So I didn't sleep that night. And I'm on Clomid and I'm spiraling thinking like I'm gonna have to go back to treating all of these conditions and I'm gonna have to put a pause on fertility treatment again. And the Clomid is making me like spiral out of control. We end up doing the egg retrieval and it actually was pretty successful. It was significantly more successful just in terms of the embryos we got. We only got like 11 or 12 eggs, I wanna say. Three of them made it to blastocyst, this time in in six days. So from day five to day six, as far as like health or like viability, the there isn't a huge drop-off between day five and day six, but there is a big drop-off between day five and day seven. So my doctor was pretty happy with that. They were like better rated, they were healthier embryos. And so once again, I'm like. This nearly killed me, but if I got good embryos, then that's great. Yay. Yeah. and so the the tinnitus persisted, the insomnia persisted, and I'm like, you know, now I have these embryos, but this doesn't feel right. I'm feeling like I absolutely need to start seeking out like medical treatment again. And And I remember I remember you came in after that retrieval and you were like totally freaked out by the ri the tinnitus, the sleep, like everything was flared up and you were like, I feel like my lime is back. You know? Yeah. This and you were emotionally really distraught. This was maybe like when I think about IVF, I associate it with this period of my life in ⁓ in April and May of twenty twenty four. And this experience because the one thing I was doing differently was I was on all these hormones and I was on like the highest level of all of these hormones. Yeah. And for someone like me, who has clearly a very like sensitive system and is is very sensitive to, you know, I now know synthetic hormones, like pharmaceuticals, all of this, like it was way too much for my system and it just got maxed out. And, you know, going back to your comment, Alex, about intuition, like my intuition should have been like, this is not right for my body, but I let it happen anyway. And it just made my system go absolutely haywire. And so I would think back to IVF and I would think about this, this period of my life. And I knew something was not right. So I started seeking out medical help and I met with the the practitioners I had seen before, and everyone was like pretty com. Confused about this. Tinnitus is not, it's really complex. And I remember talking to my IVF doctor, and she was like, I have never seen anyone get tinnitus before from an egg retrieval from the STEMS meds. And I was like, feeling pretty dismissed by that because I was like, Well, that happened. Like, I don't know what to tell you, but like it happened to me. And so I find it go away after all the meds were done. No, I still have it in one ear. ⁓ shit. Yeah. Yeah. it's gotten better and I'm used to it at this point, but at the time I was not. At the time it was like this very, very loud, incredibly destructive thing. It's it's super traumatic to get like a new onset of tinnitus. And I also wasn't sleeping and I was coming down off of the clomid and the hormones, and I was like an absolute monster. ⁓ yeah, like I would I think back to this period of my life and I just like shudder. Sorry, sorry. It's okay. it's in the rear view. Good. I found a different doctor who was recommended to me by someone in the valley, a different function. Okay, okay. I was like, what kind? So continue. Yeah. Yeah. Because at this point I'm like. Okay, I'm in this new chapter of like my health journey. You know, I need to find a new functional doctor that can help that like actually knows a thing or two about tinnitus that can help me, you know, manage it or or treat it. Yeah. And so none of the practitioners I had been working with before were like really particularly helpful. And so I found this doctor. She was a functional doctor with like an MD background. And I go back and forth emailing with her assistant, and there was a certain point where I kind of decided, maybe I don't actually need to see her. You know, it's super expensive. These doctors are out of pocket. And then her assistant says something to me that s kind of stops me in my tracks. And she said to me, Doctor B has seen a lot of tinnitus in vaccine injured patients following the COVID vaccine. Interesting. And I was like, wait a second. I kind of like had a feeling that maybe all of this was in some way connected to either the vaccine or to COVID. But thinking back chronologically to when all of my symptoms started, it was a couple months after I got that first shot. So now I'm intrigued. And I'm like, I I want to start working with you and just hear what you have to say. And can you tell people what vaccine injury? Is. Yeah. So I guess like to back up a little bit, talking about like the way that the mRNA vaccine worked, the mRNA is delivered in a lipid nanoparticle so it can get inside the cells. Once it's inside the cells, it sends instructions to our cells to start building copies of the COVID spike protein. And the the spike protein was the little protein that would attach to it would bind to receptors on cells and and that's how the virus would actually spread and enter cells. And so this mRNA vaccine basically causes like the development of the spike protein to happen. But then in like most people, the immune system would mount a response to those spike proteins and the spike proteins would degrade. In people like me, Who had the hypothesis was people who had like dysfunctional immune systems, they were susceptible to vaccine injury. And so in my case, what they think happened was my immune system was so used to kind of keeping in check the conditions that I had, the pathogens that I was dealing with from Lyme. Babesia and Bartonella, that when there was another like immune disimune dysfunction event, an event that caused immune dysfunction was introduced to the body. That immune system that was used to keeping all of these conditions in check kind of went haywire. It's like, ⁓ God, now we're dealing with this other thing. And that's when my flare-ups started. That's when I started to get those flu like flare-ups. So Like this is all lining up to me pretty well. And Dr. B is saying, you know, we have seen a lot of reactivation of dormant viruses. One of the big ones was Epstein Bar virus, which I also did test positive for, but Lyme disease was a part of it. and so this is all making a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Epstein, it's it's it it sounds like when you are a mystery case. whether a doctor tells you something or they kind of make you feel like that. I would in this particular I'd have been like, ⁓ my gosh, finally some answers. This is great. Like you've kind of had like these little door openings ⁓ throughout, but this seems like the most like like the origin of it. Why? How can this happen? Like dormant things. Cause you had it anyway. But for something to like bring it back to life. I mean, I don't know what kind of I mean, obviously I'm not a doctor. ⁓ I don't know where else in in your life it would it would show up and and rear its ugly head, but it's really something helpful to get an answer or two every now and then. Yeah. And and like I certainly thought about it. I was like, maybe I could have gotten a tick bite and like a fresh infection in twenty twenty one, because I was on the Cape that summer. But when I started to think back to my twenties and some of the symptoms I experienced then. I was like, I think I've had this for like more than a decade. ⁓ there were a couple things that happened. I remember there was one summer. I lived in Boston when I was twenty twenty four, twenty five for like almost two years. And like I said, my parents live on Cape Cod. I would go down there most weekends. And I remember there was one specific weekend where I was supposed to go to a friend's house in Maine and I got the flu and it was July. And I was like, What's going on? The the flu in July, like this makes no sense. And I have like a very, very vague memory of a bullseye rash on my arm. And that's kind of like the the telltale symptom is like when you get a tick bite, it doesn't happen all the time. Again, like if in a perfect world, people who got tick bites all got bullseye rashes, they would know they got a tick bite. I Do like vaguely remember getting one. And I'm thinking back and like all of these are kind of lining up around the same time. And then I moved to Aspen when I was twenty four. So after I moved to Aspen, I also started to get a whole new slew of symptoms. But I kind of dismiss them as like, maybe this is just me. This is just my life. And well, and and moving to altitude can really bring out some things that are new. My breathing my breathing was bad in Tennessee, but there are different allergens here and I have allergic asthma. And when I got up here I was like you know, yeah. Wasn't breathing at all 'cause we're so freaking high up and the air's thinner. And so yeah, I mean, y you could probably if you don't have any idea, it's not like you're gonna Google or Mayo Clinic like tick bites 'cause you don't know that you have it. So you can just easily it's easy to unless you're my sister or my dad and think you have everything and you're dying immediately. ⁓ yeah, it's easy to say, like, well, it's probably this or it's probably that and kind of dumb ⁓ water down how you're feeling. And that's what I did like most of my life is I was taught in my house my mom is a type one diabetic, and so she's like struggled for most of her life. And like, bless her heart, she means well, but I would get some kind of sickness and she'd be like, Tough it out, you know, like. Not everybody feels great all the time. And so I was kind of used to this like default where I would start to feel bad and I would be like, ⁓ it's probably nothing. And like, you know, that probably hurt me throughout all of this because I was getting all these symptoms and I was kind of like, ⁓ it's probably nothing. Ignore it. ⁓ it's I'm probably fine. But I will say, like, throughout my 20s, there were a couple of things that stood out to me. ⁓ I When I moved to Aspen, I saw a bunch of ENTs. They diagnosed me with non-allergic rhinitis. But what I would later find out it is, is this thing called mast cell activation syndrome, which this new doctor, Dr. B, ended up diagnosing me with. And and those symptoms are like basically chronic cold symptoms. So you might hear me clearing my throat a lot. It's it's a lot of like post nasal drip. It's a lot of coughing and nose stuffiness. Like it's very annoying, but it's it's something you can live with. And that is connected to mast cells, which are immune cells that when you have a chronic condition like Lyme or mold or EBV, and your immune cells are used to be used to being on guard all the time, they kind of just like switch on to staying on guard all the time. And as a result, They'll be hyperreactive to certain triggers that they wouldn't normally be reactive to. And a big thing with MCAS patients, ⁓ me particularly, is high histamine foods. So mast cells react to histamine and they also drive production of histamine. So I would eat high histamine foods, which there are many. It's like, you know, any food that's like a leftover, any food that's like been sitting around. builds more histamine. ⁓ aged meats, actually most meat to be honest. ⁓ aged cheeses, any foods with like vinegars, preservatives, chocolate, vanilla. Good heavens, what can you eat? Random foods like not lettuce right now. Avocado, tomato, like there there's a lot of things that have that have histamine. Yeah. And throughout my twenties, I would, in addition to getting all the like cold symptoms, I would get allergic type reactions to like random things. And it was usually at the end of the day when I was drinking wine. And so with MCAS, you've got this like proverbial bucket that you fill up throughout the day if you like eat high histamine foods or drink, I mean, all alcohol is high histamine, wine and beer specifically. And so, you know, I'd have like fist. High histamine foods throughout the day. And at the end of the day, I'd have that glass of wine and my bucket would overflow and I'd be sneezing and itching. And I thought I was allergic to wine. Like I was convinced. And so I went to an allergist and they tested me, and sure enough, I was allergic to nothing. So with with MCAS, they they say you're allergic to nothing and everything at the same time. And Your body is just more reactive when you're like dealing with certain things and your your system, your immune system is just like stressed to the max. That's when your MCAS is like that much more reactive. So this was happening all throughout my twenties, and I was like, I know something is going on, but I can't figure it out. And also the insomnia star. That's tricky too. That's tricky too, because I see that with people where you're they don't test high for any specific. Allergens or histamine responses, but if you eat all of those over the course of a day, like you're saying, like the bucket fills up. So, but you're you it's hard to point to any one thing, but it's like everything in a day, your body's gonna have an inflammatory response. Yeah. And so it's hard to it's hard to pinpoint, it's kind of hard to understand, it's confusing. Very much so. And it's like it's very poorly understood, but it's often seen. with things like Lyme or with mold toxicity. yeah, it it's also driven by stress. It's driven by poor sleep. And that was another thing I experienced all throughout my 20s. And I would go to my primary care doctor and they would prescribe me, you know, Ambient and Xanax. And so it was like band-aid solutions, but I was clearly dealing with something And then COVID happened and you know it it flared out of control. And I was, I was forced to look at it because I needed to get healthy in order to get pregnant. I I think either way I would have dealt with it. I wouldn't have just brushed it under the rug. But yeah. So I had all these things building, and then they got a lot worse. Unfortunately, right around the same time that I wanted to start trying to conceive and delay that process. So I'm working with Dr. B at this point, and she's telling me. I want to run a bunch of tests just to be sure. Yeah. And so the main test that they that is used for vaccine injury is a spike protein antibody test. And it's not like an active infection test, it's an antibody test. So there's really no way to know your actual infection level. But to her, this gave a pretty good picture of like what she thought my infection level was based on the response my body was mounting to it. And this test, it goes to like 25,000 IU of spike protein or greater. And then it maxes out. Like it doesn't tell you if you're greater than that, what your levels are. And so she's also telling me, you know, I have certain protocols for this, like a spike protein detox. And I've seen ivermectin be really successful with detoxing spike protein. And she's telling me about some patients that she has that are are younger. Like I know there were a lot of guys in their early twenties who had myocarditis from the vaccine. And she said that, you know, she's seen some of these people respond really well in like a really short t amount of time with a course of ivermectin. So of course I'm thinking, yeah, this is gonna be me. We're gonna go super fast and we're we're gonna be able to ⁓ continue with IVF because I'm also telling her, you know, IVF is my priority. Of course, at this point, I understand if this is going to get in the way of my success with IVF, and if I have all these other conditions I need to deal with, we need to deal with that. But she's like, I respect your priorities. Let's just see what happens. And I also want I like I want to set you up for success because I don't want you to be jumping back into IVF transfers, you know, wasting embryos, wasting money. We're paying for this all out of pocket. Yeah. And so, and like, you know, wasting your emotions. Like this whole process is incredibly emotional. So we do like one month of this protocol. And I do have an IVF of frozen embryo transfer scheduled for June. A couple months. How many I'm trying to remember and maybe I just blacked out or something. But how many embryos did you get from the second ⁓ retrieval? We got three. Okay. Yeah. And also remember us talking about that. So yeah, okay. Continue. We got three and they were better quality than the first. So like everyone is feeling good about that in spite of it nearly killing me. Right. So that's minor minor. Minor. Minor. We We do the ⁓ the protocol for a month and our plan is to test with enough time to make a decision if we're going to move forward with this this transfer. And this doctor tested everything under the sun. Like in addition to the spike protein antibodies, she was testing inflammatory markers. Microclotting was also something that was being seen in vaccine-injured people because these spike proteins would kind of bind to receptors everywhere, including the endothelium of cells, the inside of cells, and they're causing micro clotting. Microclotting is not great for fertility when you want a lot of blood flow. So problem. And so we're testing for that. Ton of inflammatory markers, like vitamin D, bunch of different things. I would go to a lab core and they would draw like 20 to 25 vials of blood and I I would leave feeling like really unwell. Yeah. But like I, you know, I felt like, okay, she she's checking for everything. Like, I feel like this is really thorough. And she's also diagnosing me with a couple different things. I talked about MCAS, that came up. She's like, I'm not even gonna test you for that because your symptoms are like so textbook for this. What does that stand for? Mast cell activation syndrome. Okay, thank you. So I go on a low histamine diet to control that while all this is happening. And she's also like, I suspect you have mold toxicity because we often see that Of course you do. Just kidding. We we often see that Pile it on, pilot on all of these things. Like it's it's a giant pea soup of chronic infections to comp complicate, you know, your situation even more and like make your burden and your stack like that much more significant. And so yeah, I I do a test and I come back high for mycotoxins, which is the toxin that mold produces. So I'm like How am I dealing with all of these things that I didn't know about? Like, no wonder I'm not getting pregnant. And I'm saying this to my IVF doctor at the same time. And she's like, you know, there's no research, there's no research connecting Lyme to infertility or to IVF outcomes. And I'm like, okay, maybe that's true, but like we now know like what Lyme. And all these conditions are doing to my body. Like they're causing an incredible amount of inflammation. You know, my gut was a mess. You know, all of those things, if we take them in isolation, like contribute to infertility. So it's like, of course I'm gonna wanna deal with this. We can't just like discard them. Again, like I'm feeling very dismissed by a lot of the things that this doctor is saying. So And also Which is the worst feeling, by the way. Sorry, Alex. I did I did see in addition to Mackenzie, multiple vaccine injured people. And there was also, you know, evidence with the COVID vaccines that people were miscarrying and, you know, there were fertility issues, people having menstrual issues as a result. And, you know, like that stuff in the beginning was very much being swept under the rug, swept, swept under the rug. Sweeps. Because it was like everybody was just kind of, you know, not to get into anything like overly political, but it was kind of like pushing that whole agenda. But there was a lot of stuff that not everybody, but like people did have with vaccine injuries and inflammatory responses, over production of immune system and and fertility issues for sure. Just to like validate McKenzie story. ⁓ Right. Yeah, that says something. And my little sister, she was pregnant during this time. She got the vaccine. Everything's fine. So it's like I think I don't think it's a is a political thing. I think it's like, no, this is this is this is not every medication at all works with I'm allergic to NSAIDs. I can't have Advil. It it gives me ⁓ I a land in the hospital. And I wasn't that way always, but all of a sudden, it happened actually when I moved here. to the valley. And ⁓ and that doesn't mean that that Advil's political. It's like if just if different bodies with different stuff that you it's different chemistries and all the things that you you bring to the table. Yeah, it makes sense that some stuff is not gonna bode well for somebody's system if they have all these ⁓ especially like McKenzie, she's got a like a a truckload of things working against what is a simplified thing to help one thing. It could like what what are the thing contraindications? Like some drugs don't work well with other ones. They say you can't you can't take this or you can't do that. That makes complete sense to me that people some people will be affected by this. So Yeah. There is there is definitely a lot of like dismissal around this c this pr probably isn't happening to you. Like it there it's probably not from the vaccine and You know, I also recognize that like COVID can be could be contributing to it too. Like long COVID like it it could be so many things because a lot of these things I was dealing with, they have overlapping symptoms. So it's really hard to like delineate which is contributing to which. But if I think those were new things. COVID was new. Yeah. When it came out. The vaccine was new when it came out. Like there's no it's not like they have ⁓ bucks of of studies like they do on other things to say, yeah, there is research. Like It was in real time. So it yeah. Sorry. And it was a new new technology of a vaccine. Like MRNA had never been, you know, trialed in a large population. And so if you were desperate to get pregnant, the country at the time was desperate to get out of the out of the pandemic. And I tot yeah, I totally was like, I trust anything that we need to do. I will take this. And I had no idea I was like compromised. You know, I had I had no idea that I was incredibly sick, which is crazy because, you know, I I was so sick and I was just used to living a certain way. even like when I was having these flare ups, I was like, ⁓ it's probably nothing. I'm I'm fine. It's just it's like you said your mom your mom like had that mentality, you know, like that's something that she was just like, You're good. You know, keep on keeping on and yeah. And then you do. And I do think that that's also like our culture in this country is like everybody just like keep on, you know, don't complain, just keep go to work. You know. Yeah. And, you know, it was during COVID. So I would get flu like symptoms and I was like, I probably just got COVID. Yeah. And these tests are probably wrong. Like, unfortunately, I thought that constantly. I was like, I it's probably just COVID. You know, and it's crazy to think back that that's what my mind was thinking, but yeah. Anyways. It makes sense though. It does make sense. So we get the first round of test results back, the spike protein antibody tests, along with like these million other markers that she's testing for, and nothing has budged. And so we need to cancel this first FET that's scheduled for June. And this This will end up being the story of my year throughout 2024. We would schedule an FET, we would run all these tests, nothing would change, we would cancel it. And that happened probably like five or six times throughout that year. We scheduled an FET for June, July, August, September. And nothing was nothing was moving. And for those who don't know, FET means ⁓ frozen embryo transfer. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm feeling like, you know, I'm I'm back to this place where fertility is on pause and I'm treating like a whole new slew of symptoms. And I have PTSD from it. And nothing seems to be budging. This protocol that Dr. B has me on. And finally we get to November maybe of this year. And we do start to see some movement. There's I I can't remember exactly which markers, but I know some of the inflammatory markers got better. Maybe some of the microclotting, the antibodies were not budging. And so Dr. B is like, you know, I I'm feeling a little bit better about this. There is no research that's connecting spike protein, persistent spike protein to IVF outcomes or property probably to fertility outcomes. So like let's just let's try for another transfer. And at this point, I am eating as clean as I possibly can. I'm taking care of myself. I'm doing everything to a T with the exception of like my mental state. And so I'm feeling like, let's do this. There, there's probably no better time or no no better position I've been in than the one we're in now. And so we schedule an FET for early December. And we start doing the workup for that. I I I forget the name, the the hormones you take leading up to the FET and we make plans to go to Hawaii because you know, when you're doing all of this stuff, you can't like make travel plans. You're really like stuck in one place. And and that's why this whole year was terrible because yeah, it it was like stop, start, stop, start. You know, we think we're gonna do a transfer and then, ⁓ just kidding, it's canceled. And I actually I remember messaging with my nurse on the messaging platform and she said a comment to me that was like she was like, You can't keep stringing the calendar along. And I was like, I'm sorry, like I don't want to. I know, I know, like kind of terrible. It's like you're not gonna do a transfer if you're not if your body's not ready to do a transfer. Like you can't force that. I mean you could, but totally confused by that comment. Yeah. She was just annoyed that I was booking up transfers and not doing them. And I was like imp impacting other patients' ability to book. Well, all that does, if if you get another one that doesn't work, that's just bad for their their success rate. So sorry. Yeah. You're welcome. That was a comment that was made to me. And So I was like, okay, I'm I'm like going to wait until I I know for sure we can move forward with this transfer. And so that that ended up being December. We book a last minute. Yes, we're 2024. We book a last minute trip to Kawaii, ironically the same place that we went on our disastrous honeymoon because we loved it still. And we take we take a I know, I know. ⁓ and we take a red eye. Back to Denver to go right into our first lining check. And the number that my doctor had set for me as my minimum was going to be seven millimeters because that's where I had gotten with my like previous retrieval with like all the meds. So she felt confident that I could get to seven. Even though that's on the lower side, that's what she wanted for me. And I get to this lining check and I'm at like a five point. And so I'm freaking out. The doctor is like, okay, let's up your vaginal estrogen and let's try to get you in somewhere up in the valley on Monday. And so of course it's a Saturday. Like I would be able to only book that appointment when they open up on Monday for that same day. And and we live in a small town. So it's like Yeah. It's already hard anyway to get anything done in terms of appointments just because people are like, I don't work on Fridays. I don't do this. Yeah. And like doing third party monitoring up here is incredibly difficult. Yeah. You know, trying to get an appointment, trying to get like quality of care. It's it's really not easy. It's not like we can just pop into the IVF clinic whenever's convenient for us because we live near it. Like we're three, three and a half hours away from Denver. So I Do I am able to get into this one hospital? And this is the one hospital that I I've had a really bad experience with third party monitoring with a sonographer there. So I get an appointment and I'm like, it is what it is. It's the only appointment I can get. So I'm just gonna do it. And I walk in and it's the exact same sonographer. And so I'm like, great, this is gonna go well. So I'm doing the lining check. And she checks my lining and the first reading is maybe a 5.6. Like nothing has really budged significantly. She then proceeds to check all of my follicles, even though it's not on the order. And I'm telling her she doesn't need to do that. She's like, I'm just gonna do it anyway. And then she goes back and does a yeah, she goes back and does a second lining check and gets an entirely different number. And so I'm freaking out. I'm like, I'm gonna probably the real one. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to hop in my car and drive to Denver and do this check. I'm probably gonna have to cancel this transfer because my lining isn't thick enough. All these things are swirling in my head. When I finally got that report, the number that my lining was was neither of the two numbers. It was I literally think that she averaged the two numbers. And that's the reading. So I'm panicking. I call my nurse and she's like, okay, you know, let me talk to the doctor and we'll come up with a plan. And I'm thinking this is gonna be canceled, which it sh it probably should have been. She calls back and she's like, the doctor doesn't know that you'll ever be able to get to seven. So let's just move forward with the number that we're at. And I'm like, okay, I'm I'm feeling a little I I'm not feeling great about this, but like I'm gonna trust what your team says. If you think that we can have success with this number, then let's move forward with it. Okay. So we make plans for that transfer on that Friday. I I think it was like December 5th. And then they reschedule to Sunday. And then they reschedule to Saturday. And so I'm like. I I should have asked more questions, but I'm thinking, ⁓ this must be because it's like the best possible timing based on my cycle. Okay, that's what I was that's what's my face is yeah portraying how I feel. Because I'm like, wait, this is cycle oriented, so it's not arbitrary. I I would expect if they kept moving it, they would be giving you some explanation as to why. But it sounds like no. They didn't. And yeah, my assumption was, ⁓ they must just try be trying to be really precise and There there really weren't like a ton of like precision-oriented things they were doing to to make sure that like my timing was as ideal as possible. So the transfer happens and it's not even my doctor doing it, which you know, at this clinic happens. These doctors have specific days that they're assigned to, but I was always told when it was going to be my doctor or not going to be my doctor. And so I get in there, it's not my doctor, and I'm like. Everything about this transfer has been so just like not precise to me. The transfer happens, and a couple of days later, I'm starting to feel pretty nauseous. I'm starting to feel some symptoms. And I'm trying not to let myself believe that the transfer was successful because the the hormones can mimic pregnancy hormones. But of course, like I'm trying to maintain this positive attitude because I wanna believe that this is gonna work. I wanna believe that this like world renowned clinic is doing the b the best possible things in my best interest. And so like nine or so days go by. I think it's a nine day wait with IBF and at least at this particular clinic. Because I went to we didn't have the same doctor, but I went to the same one. Yeah. And so I go to do my beta, unfortunately at the same hospital I've had this bad experience. And they run their own, at least the HCG test in their own labs. So you get the results like immediately. Within the hour, they were in my portal and I'm opening up my test results and my HCG is like a two. So I know that this transfer has failed. that is devastating. Yeah. And and this one was particularly devastating because, you know, my husband would later say he felt like the first transfer we were just kinda like it was a Hail Mary. Like the embryos were such bad quality. He's like, ⁓ I wasn't expecting it to work anyway. And I was like, I mean, I was, but this one, it was like we had spent the whole year doing everything we could to prepare my body to be in a good place. I felt like I had put everything I had into this transfer. And so yeah, I'm I'm like absolutely devastated. And a couple hours later, the nurse does call to get deliver the news that we already know. And she's telling me that my doctor is going to call me either that afternoon or the next morning to just say like, I'm I'm sorry. Let's, you know, regroup for a follow up. And so A couple days go by and I realize I haven't heard from my doctor. And I'm starting to get like really sucking, by the way. Yeah, not sucking. Not good. Yeah. I'm starting to just feel like a number on a factory line, you know? And again, like this clinic was huge. And this is not my experience with the same clinic. So like that's what's really irritating me. It's like I mean, the whole thing irritates me, but like it didn't have to be this way, is my point. Yeah. And so a couple days go by, I'm sending a message to my nurse in the messaging portal, like, hey, I haven't heard from my doctor. And my doctor calls me a couple hours later, like pretty hurriedly, and she's like, ⁓ you know, the the nurses got their wires crossed. Like the nurses have been really struggling with communication lately. Like I couldn't have possibly called you any sooner than I did. And like fully blaming it on the nurse. And so Wow. There's so that just gives you that gives you like bad vibes too. Yeah. So like I I have the ick. But keep relying on that nurse via your little message app for accurate information. Yeah. And so I like I have such a bad taste in my mouth at this point about everything that has happened with this second transfer and of course with the the second egg retrieval. Yeah. That when I finally do have this follow up with the doctor, like my mind is pretty made up that I need to leave. Yeah. And so at this follow-up appointment, she tells me, you know, there are a couple things we're dealing with. You'd we've we thought the first thing was more so like an egg quality issue and an an embryo quality issue. But now we're seeing like your lining is not building. So it's it's like an endometrial receptivity issue. So you've kind of got issues on both ends. And you know, this might require for you five or six rounds and potentially a gestational carrier. Yeah. So I'm hearing all of this and I'm like, I am out so fast. Like this is this is five or six more egg retrievals or transfers or maybe both. I don't know. But that I think that was the point where I you know, I I had talked about throughout this whole thing where I was willing to put my feelings, my pain, my suffering second. I was like, nope, hard no. I there's no way I'm doing five or six rounds if you can't give me an answer as to why I'm not building a lining and why my egg quality is bad. And I know that that's Well and they've already lost you because they've lost me in your retelling of it. They've already lost they've already lost like The basic stuff that you do when you when you are, you know, paying r lots of money for all of these things. It's not like, well, if it doesn't work, it'll we'll do it do it again at no cost. No, it costs something every single time. I think if I recall, like the first like the first egg if you're gonna do a transfer, you'd you pay for all that, like a one one transfer and and one egg retrieval. But then every time you do a new transfer or a new retrieval, it it costs more and more and more. And so like we're not talking about just like We're also talking about just also all the meds. Those and your body or your body goes. Those are extra. Right. And your body has to reset. And by the way, you have a regular life during the or you don't have a regular life, but you're trying to. And you have to like ⁓ have like a job and and hold down your you know, your marriage, ⁓ or your relationships or friendships or whatever. And so like all of this, the bare minimum they could do was be communicative. The bare minimum. Yeah. And that really that. No, that really wasn't a thing. And there were like so many things that had happened throughout the year that also put a bad taste in my mouth. Like I mentioned never being able to really talk to my doctor about the high hormone stems protocol when I was when I was that summer canceling and rescheduling and and doing, you know, all of that with all of those ⁓ transfers, they had me on birth control that entire time. And lining thickness was a known issue. I remember going for a hike with a friend of mine. She was on your podcast, Ashley Erns. And she was telling me she was struggling with the same clinic at the same time. And she also did not have the same doc Molly Dodge and I had the same doctor. You and Ashley had different doctors. Different doctors, yes. Even than each other, right? Yeah. And so for her, lining lining thickness was a known issue. Everything. Yeah. And she had said, like based on her own research, or maybe the new clinic that she moved to, they were like, prolonged birth control use thins out your lining. And so I was trying to say that to my nurse all summer long. I was like, why am I on birth control this whole time if if like we're not actually moving forward? And she had said to me, It it is true that your lining thickness, your lining gets thinned out with Birth control. That's literally like one of the mechanisms in which it it works. But once you go off of it, your lining will bounce back. That clearly didn't happen. Not for you, no. Yeah. Not for me. So communication was a known issue. There were so many things that had happened with this clinic that I was like Communication though, but also dismissiveness. And so it's like when you d get communication, there's like I don't know, though like a a screen at the beginning, but it just gets thicker and thicker and thicker. And so then even when you do get like and this is just like in any any relationship of any sort, when it's chronically not you had chronic issues, but like when it's a chronic issue, you stop really believing what that person's gonna say 'cause you feel like 'cause you I think I recall you saying that you got a hurried sounding call from your doctor finally after days waiting and no communication as to when or why it hadn't happened yet. And even when she finally called, it was like, blame it on the nurses, but all like so already, not my fault. Like if I feel like, and I'm not I can't speak for you, but when somebody ha does a mea culpa and they say, Hey, this I totally dropped the ball, no matter how important or high on the totem pole they are, I really, really, really think that that makes all the difference because it shows their humanity and their willingness to say Like this is not who I normally am. Let me help you. You know what I mean? Let me do more. ⁓ and and to like if you can't do that, it's to me it speaks volumes. Yeah. Admitting admitting when you're in the wrong is is one of the best things you can do to like really display your integrity as a person. And correct. Especially as and as a practitioner, like as you know, one of the classes I took. in school for acupuncture was ethics and practice management. And one of the things that's always stuck with me that one of my teachers said was, you know, it's people make mistakes. Practitioners make mistakes. Like things happen. And it's about taking responsibility and acknowledging what the patient has been through, acknowledging anything that's happened that's negative, apologizing, figuring out a plan to move forward, like you know Passing off responsibility or being dismissive. It's just not it doesn't make the patient feel good. And this is already like a highly sensitive, especially IBF, the cost of it, the time, what your body's been through, the emotionality of wanting to get pregnant, like it's really should be handled so tenderly. And it's like incredibly not okay when it's not, in my opinion. And you're on a lot of drugs. Yes. Like you're not yourself anyway. Yeah. There's so many factors. yeah. ⁓ I hate this for you. Or that you went through it. I know you're beyond it now, but I hate that you went through it. And I wish I had known you because I would have totally gone on that hike. I know. And you know, I know IVF can be great for some people. Obviously, you, Ashlyn. It's it's what brought you your baby. And I do think some women have great experiences. Like when I was going through this. I had in addition to Ashley, I had two friends that were doing IVF like at the exact same time as me, one in the Valley and then one in Chicago. And they had like first egg retrieval, they both got like a bunch of really healthy embryos, and then their first transfer worked. And so I'm seeing their experience and then I'm having my experience. And I'm like, why does the disputes map so much wider feeling? I mean, you've already gone through it. But then like you're seeing it in real time happening for someone else. That just makes you feel other. And I I I did not feel I didn't have the same thing as you. And I did have a successful IBF, but not right off the bat. And it took me a year to get started because of something that was going on with Marcus. And ⁓ what we ultimately found out was an obstruction. So his count was was nothing. And it took a full year to figure out, okay, we need to go in ⁓ manually and extract. And so for for that whole year I felt that like, why are other people getting beyond this? I can't even get fucking started. Like and I was so I was mad. I was sad. I had a massive panic attack that year and I hadn't had one in seven years. It was in Vegas of all places, which is not where you want to have a panic attack anyway. ⁓ it's so bad. whoa. And I mean, I already don't like Vegas, but like I have kind of a like PTSD about going now because of it. But yeah, just like that that feeling of like, why can't I do it? and what's wrong with me? And will this ever end? 'Cause at this point, if one cycle feels really, really long, what does years what do years feel like? Centuries. You know, and the more time that goes by, you're getting older. And you're feeling older because you're being told, ⁓ you're geriatric now. And then it's like, you know, what what's the end of this process for me? And you start to feel helpless and hopeless. And that does not help you get pregnant either. No. And I was experiencing all those emotions because IVF is what you do when you have fertility issues. That's the natural next step. You try for a certain amount of time. And you know, obviously that wasn't our exact path where we tried for like a year and then moved on to IVF, but we found our way there regardless because things were not working out naturally, cloma didn't work, IVF is the natural next step. Like that's what people are like known to do, or that's what our like healthcare system says is the next step. And that's why I'm really excited to get into my next chapter because that is not how I ended up getting pregnant, was not through IVF. And I also want to say, like, ⁓ go ahead. ⁓ sorry, sorry, sorry. I just want to say that just from hearing multiple working with multiple patients who are in the IBF process that I would agree that you you know, I've heard of great experiences and I've heard of challenging experiences. And what I would say to people is like just that piece of really advocating for yourself along the way. You have every right to like speak up for yourself, push back when it doesn't feel right. push for a different doctor if you're not happy about it. You're ultimately the client. You get to decide and make some calls. Cause I think it's intimidating, but it is really true that ultimately you're a client who's spending a lot of money and you should be able to feel comfortable. And then also like the piece about intuition, like if it doesn't feel like the right path, again, it's not the right doctor, you know, really listening to yourself. ⁓ because I think there are really not all d IVF doctors are created equal, not all clinics. I mean, it's just a mixed bag, but really we're also talking about personalities. Like you said earlier about the vibe, you had like a vibe thing with one doctor and you didn't have with like that is important because like you're going through this thing that is that is a l like it's it's costing everything emotionally. Literally figurative like it's doing everything. You need to feel comfortable. And if you do feel like like I don't know, like try not to dismiss yourself in that process because you do know more than you think you do, even if you're not the doctor in the situation or the practitioner in the situation. You are in this body that is trying to get pregnant. And so at the very least, and I did not necessarily always feel this way during, so I'm speaking from the other side. So I mean Take it. Don't don't think that I like knew what the hell I was doing either. ⁓ you learn in retrospect. But the reason that this show exists is to try to give agency to people going through stuff and being like, I didn't think about asking about that. I didn't think about ⁓ you know, saying this or or or questioning this. And that's why all these details I think are critical for you to be giving. And not just like an overview of well, I I did IVF and ⁓ broad brush, it didn't work for me, didn't love my experience. Like, why didn't you love your experience? That is really important to know because in real time, when you're going through this part, these are the these are the little decisions that could make the whole thing work or not, or make you quit entirely because you're overwhelmed and you don't know what to do next and no one's telling you and no one's talking about their experience because it's just It's too much to unpack. And ⁓ I yeah, anyway, I and also IVF, by the way, people like you said, it's normally not the end of the road, but it's it's one of the end more the closer to the end of the roads. And everyone has a different idea. Most of the time they think it's like a a fix-all. You know, you go in, you do the thing, they hijack your body, great, and you're gonna get pregnant. And the amount of times I've heard just like offline, people be like, I didn't know that this was this is this is what it entailed. And that's even when it went well. You know, so imagine you don't have to imagine, you live through it, when it doesn't, you know, it's just like I didn't sign up for this, but I did. And now I'm in it, you know, and like you said, you're like, I'm gonna do this and it I'm I don't care. So I IBF is not for the faint of heart at all, no matter what it is. Fertility is hard, no even if it works well and ⁓ or quickly, or when you think it's it's still hard. And this is just a perfect example. Invisible perfect, just kidding. of how it can take a toll on you and you feel like like throw up your hands or whatever. So anyway, I'm gonna get off my soapbox. ⁓ can we move on to the chapter that you want to talk about? Yeah. Just like quickly wrapping up this this whole IDF discussion. ⁓ yeah, I I remember when we first started, I was like in a lot of ways really relieved because I was like, okay, this is gonna work. Like I just I felt like it was gonna work. I remember the numbers they were giving me, like the the percentage of success. They it just seemed really good on paper. And so I was like, this is gonna be like a an expensive workaround to an issue that wasn't working. I eventually did we we ended up shipping our embryos to a different clinic because that was kind of like our backup plan. Like I after that call with my IVF doctor in I think this was January of 2025 where she was like, you need to do five or six rounds or find a surrogate. I was very much thinking, I want to explore other options, but I also do feel like maybe we should look for a different clinic just in case. I don't want my embryos in your babysitting care anymore. Yeah. So we we shipped our embryos to another clinic and we did end up having a consult with the lead doctor there who founded this clinic. It was also in Denver. It was a much smaller clinic and a couple of friends had had success at that clinic. Same one that actually went to. Mm-hmm. Okay. And so this doctor like listened to me and heard me when I told him about my conditions. Like I remember telling him about my vaccine injury, about my Lyme, and he was like, interesting. Okay. And he like, he thought about that in the context of like how it would work with IVF. Like how would my success be impacted, my chances of success be impacted by these conditions? Like he actually listened to me. And so I think that was the reason why I was able to to fully like delineate between that clinic and the one that I had had the terrible experience with. So anyways, we that was just like a backup insurance policy that we did. We actually did end up having a call with a surrogacy agency too, because at this point we're like, we're gonna, we're just gonna have like these backup plans in our back pocket. I'm at this crossroads again where I've just had this bad call with the IVF clinic doctor and I'm realizing that I need to I need to go in a different direction. I don't know at the time if it's going to be another IVF clinic, or if it's going to be an entirely different approach, or if this is just the end of the road for me and I'm just never going to be able to get pregnant. And so I take a beat and I start to think about what my options could be. I started thinking about all of the practitioners I've worked with up until this point. And it's it's been a lot of different functional practitioners. And so I start to think, why don't I look into a functional fertility clinic? Up to this point with Dr. B, I had asked her, do you ever do fertility protocols? And she said, no. And so I do a Google search and I find a handful of different clinics. One that really stands out is this clinic out of Houston called the Holistic Fertility Institute. And I also I also come across this like spiritual medium lady who is based in Denver who specializes in fertility. And so I'm kind of intrigued just to see what she's gonna have to say. Cause at this point I'm like, I'm exploring any other options that I haven't explored up until now. So I have a bunch of consults. That's pretty much what the month of January is. is just reaching out to these different places. And I did have the with the call with the surrogacy agency this time as well. And that call I had with HFI, the the doctor, she's a naturopathic reproductive endocrinologist. Her name is Dr. Amotma Simmons was the best call I had ever had throughout this process. And so I go to her and I'm saying, you know, here is my situation. from a f ⁓ from a fertility lens, here is what I think my problems are. And I'm talking about the egg quality. I'm talking about the the lining thickness, the irregular cycles. Like there's obviously a lot of hormonal imbalances going on. I had that year of a menor and ovulation and ovulation. And at this point too, I had also purchased an inido device. And so an inido is it's like a mirror, if you've heard of a Mira. Okay. And it It helps you track your hormones and get like a pretty clear picture of your cycle. And it it'll show you like your LH, your estrogen, your progesterone, and your FSH. Amira does that too. So I'm having this call with Dr. Amatma and I started to track my cycle. Of course, I'm coming down off all the hormones. So I'm kind of like January is gonna be. A weird month, but like let's continue to look at what my cycle is doing from here on out. And I'm actually seeing that I am ovulating. My cycle is totally weird. It's like anywhere from like 35 to like 50 days. And I'm ovulating on like cycle day 28. And so I'm telling her all this information and she's like. Yeah, I I definitely think like there's some kind of hormonal imbalance going on, like potentially from all the chronic conditions you have, but I also think your prolonged birth control use is contributing to this too. Like you your body really has not had the time to like maintain that connection between your brain and your ovaries to really establish like a healthy, normal period. And so we're talking through what I think all my all of my issues are. And she's telling me, like validating that, yeah, Lyme, vaccine injury, long COVID, all of this really messes with hormones and all these symptoms overlap. So it's really hard to delineate which is from which. Right. But let's let's do a number of tests and like really look under the hood and see what's going on. All right, guys, so that is gonna be the end of part one of this two-part episode with Mackenzie and Alex. ⁓ it'll be on next week, just like normal. I trust that there's plenty to chew on here because it was longer than many of the other episodes, and there's more. ⁓ again, it's worth listening to, especially if you're in it. Like this is one of those episodes that you wanna know all the minor details because they make the difference. For McKenzie in the end. She could have quit at any point on this journey thus far. But she kept on and she, you know, spoiler alert, I we've already spoiled it, so I I'm not worried about it. But she is pregnant. And so please ⁓ stay tuned for next week. And like normal, if you have any questions for McKenzie or myself or Alex, send us ⁓ an email. I'll put people's Information in the show notes and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to part one.