Today Elliott and I had to decide whether or not we wanted to do a process called ICSI. It’s basically where they inject an individual sperm into an egg to fertilise it vs just mixing the eggs and sperm together. If I end up testing positive for the brca genes then we were thinking of having our embryos tested and just not implant the brca positive ones. Basically not bringing a child into this world that would have a 70% chance of getting breast/ovarian cancer. I didn’t understand why we’d need to do ICSI but the doc said that lots of sperm make it into the outer layer of the egg so to do a genetic test on a bit it would not know the difference between me and Elliott and the test would come back faulty. ICSI costs £1,000 and then to do the genetic testing on the other end would be £3-4,000.
I really didn’t like the idea of someone in a lab choosing which sperm went into which egg. At least just mixing the cups together was still nature deciding which baby we’d end up getting. And it could always be that I’m negative, so we’d spend at least 1k in the process.
So we decided to not do it at all. If I do end up positive and we have a positive baby then we’ll know. And hopefully by that time in the future they would have cured this anyway.
Tomorrow I have another blood test and then Friday a checkup with the surgeon. Everyday another doctor appointment….getting so tired of them!!
Only a few days left of feeling strong and healthy. I’ve started counting down the days until chemo. Trying to get things done before it starts. I’m so scared about it. 🙁
Feeling: Scared