Medication-Phase 2

Last week I went in for my baseline appointment at the fertility clinic.  They did a blood draw to check my hormonal levels as well as an ultrasound.  The ultrasound was necessary to check the lining of my uterus, which at this point, they want to be thinned out from the Lupron.  They also checked my ovaries, I am assuming to make sure they've temporarily shut down.  Everything looked as it should, so I got the OK to begin the next phase of medications.  I have dropped the Lupron dosage level to 5 units and have added estrogen patches and baby aspirin to my daily regimen.  The estrogen patches will thicken up my uterine lining, while the baby aspirin very slightly thins out my blood and is believed to help during implantation.
The Lupron shots are quite easy to give and for the first week, I didn't notice any side effects, other than a slight itching at the injection site, which lasted only a few minutes.  I did notice that on days that I didn't itch, I developed a small bruise instead.  A little over a week in, the side effects became more noticeable, mainly fatigue and headaches.  The grossest thing so far has been what is called scaling.  Definition: Abnormal shedding or accumulation of an upper layer of skin" I noticed that my feet were kind of dry and itchy so I put some lotion on in the morning.  The next morning after my shower, the skin was literally hanging off my feet, huge clumps that kind of looked like blisters.  It didn't hurt, just looked really awful.  I went out and bought a pedicure set with a pumice stone and one of those heel grater things, soaked my feet and then gave them a good scrape and they are looking much better.  I'm just glad its still boot weather outside, so I can hide my toes until things are back to normal!

The estrogen patches I'm using are called Estradiol

and are meant to stay on for 48 hours at a time.  I had an issue with adhesion the first day and ended up using bandaids and gauze to keep them in place.  I did some research (thanks Google!) and found that prepping the area first with an alcohol pad works wonders.  The packages seem huge and I was wondering how I was going to comfortably fit two of them (and later on four) on one arm, but as you can see from the photo of me above, the actual patches are much smaller.
Common side effects of estrogen patches include cramping, bloating and headaches.  So far I've felt the headaches but I'm also dealing with seasonal allergies, so I'm not 100% certain its because of the estrogen.  Things are going smoothly and everything has been easy to manage, more so than I ever imagined it would be!