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Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Aggressive? Who me?

I went to see my doctor this morning. A few things came out of that appointment.

First, I have two follicles developing on the left. They currently stand at 1.2 and 1.3 in size. He wants me to return on Thursday, CD11 as they are still too immature to work with, but by Thursday we can likely do an IUI.

I told him that I'm concerned about hypothyroidism, and I've often been tested, so far, with negative results. In recent years, I'm worried that it may have come to the forefront and thus is causing us difficulties. Time to be tested again.

He asked about whether I've done the serophene (Clomid) route. I replied that no, he'd never prescribed that for me, except for the one month that he did about a year ago, pre-laparoscopy. He thinks it may be time to get aggressive and do that, and do it for a series of six months, as is the standard procedure.

I asked him about IVF giving us better chances. He said, and I quote, "Well, you know you're working with bad sperm right?" Nice... thanks for the update there. Actually, no I didn't know THAT per se because he's never told us that. He's always told us that "All we need is one," and "They're good enough." This is the first negative comment I've heard about the quality of the sperm that we have to use. So that is an issue and something hubby and I are going to have to discuss. He thinks that if we look at IVF, then they will go the route of MESA or TESA to get the sperm to work with, if we do not use donor of course. I'm still open to donor, but hubby is not; or at least, the last time we discussed it, that topic seemed to be off the table for him. *sighs*

I mentioned to him that I was wondering if it might be Luteal Phase Defect (short luteal phase) but he seems to think that I ovulate too early, thus the eggs are not quite mature enough. The progesterone, it thus seems, is only to help thicken the endometrium, not to lengthen the luteal phase. Either way, that stuff makes me D*MN grumpy. Hubby will attest to that.

And to top it all off, it's way past time for me to have a round of bloodwork done. The last time he checked my hormone levels was sometime between January and March of 2004. So God knows what's happened between then and now; for all we know I'm off the charts somewhere and nothing we do will work if that is the case. So he's going to order bloodwork. Oh Joy. Another hour or two flat on my back in tears. At this point though, you know something? I'll do it. I'm scared sh*tless, but I will do it. Whatever it takes.

And that is the thought behind my keeping up my workouts at the gym too; whatever it takes. If I need to lose 50 lbs, then so be it. I can do that. I WILL do that, for my baby. I HAVE to do that for my baby. I have to give this the best possible opportunity to work.

Time marches on; I'm not getting any younger and it's time to get serious. Aggressive and serious about all this baby-making business.

3 comments:

Gil said...

Thanks Kathy. I believe the doc figures that with Clomid, we'd just have a better shot of ONE of the little guys finding an egg. I have had two very early miscarriages so far in this journey, so it's not unreasonable to think that it is possible. We have an appointment with the doc on the 27th of this month to discuss a variety of factors... and this is just one of them.

Anonymous said...

Gil - I'm curious what he means by "bad sperm?" Have you done anything to try and improve sperm quality? There's a lot of info out there about vitamins and minerals, diet changes, etc to improve sperm quality. I've found the message board at http://www.fertilichat.com/forumdisplay.php?f=13
to be helpful!

Gil said...

Thanks Rich! I'll have a peek at that forum. No, rather than the diet/minerals thing, I believe the doc means that given the vasectomy and the subsequent failure of the vasovasotomy, the motility and concentration of the sperm has been drastically compromised. So the little guys ARE there, but in very few numbers, and they aren't doing much. As I mentioned, I inquired the other day about IVF and he figures that the fertility clinic in our town would not use the simple extraction process that he is using; rather they would use MESA or TESA (surgery for hubby) to extract the sperm from him and they would likely use ICSI as well. Again, more for us to discuss at our appointment on the 27th.