The gathering phase

Hey Ya’ll. It’s been way too long.  I kept thinking about writing, but I have been so busy with my new job, researching clinics and fertility treatments and appointments that I just didn’t know where I would start. 

Checklists help me to reduce anxiety about too many things on my mind so here’s what’s been going on:

-       Quit Hot Yoga - too strenuous on my body and too hot for sperm

-       Started Acupuncture

-       Quit taking advice- or lack of advice- from my OB

-       Initial consultation with fertility center.  Ultrasound shows a cyst and gynecological exam hurts like Hades.  The endo has spread again.  Doctor recommends a colonoscopy stat for bowel symptoms.  Rut roh

-       Make a plan to take 100 mg of Clomid and do an IUI.  We are excited!

-       Scratch the plan to do an IUI and decide against Clomid this cycle.  IUI has a 10% chance on working any given month for women with endo.  Those odds SUCK.  Might as well throw our cash into the wind.

-       Decide to go a few months au naturale (no drugs) to restore my sanity.

-       Get a new plan- we are going straight to IVF after the break.  Narrowed our options to two clinics- one in Nashville and one in Las Vegas.  I’m pulling for Vegas!

-       Schedule a skype consultation with doctor in Vegas and an old fashioned face to face visit with a female doctor at the same fertility clinic we already visited

-       Go to a Resolve Infertility Support Group.  It was awesome.  We both went and were surprised to see so many other couples at the meeting.  J Bird really liked talking to and hearing from other men going through the same things we are.

-       Got an HSG done to see if my fallopian tubes are open.  I cried during the exam before they even put the dye in.  GD endometriosis makes it impossible to even put a speculum in without extreme pain.  I haven’t heard from the clinic yet about results, but the radiologist said that everything looked good and both my tubes are open.  First piece of good news in what feels like forever.

-       The day after my HSG I start my bowel prep.  Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as everyone had warned me.  Mostly I was hungry.  I didn’t work that day so I had easy access to run to the restroom when needed.

-       The big day.  Still very hungry and fantasizing about my first meal as if I hadn’t eaten in a week.  The worst part of today was that it took 2 nurses, 1 anesthesiologist, 4 needle pricks and 1 badass bruise before they could start my IV.  I have small veins to start with and dehydrating me doesn’t help!

-       Doc tells me it’s all good in the hood.  Two pieces of good news in a week! What?!

Now we are all caught up.  Right now my focus is on making sure my body is healthy and fulfilling all the prerequisites for IVF.  I have a lot of the prereq’s taken care of already, but one thing I am really looking forward to is getting my bloodwork taken to Natural Killer Cells and Antisperm Antibodies.  I just reread that sentence and it sounds sick to “look forward” to a blood test to find out if something is wrong with you. For me it is a way to check another thing off my list (hopefully) and it will help me feel more confident moving forward with IVF.  I don’t want to take the chance of IVF not working and then finding out AFTER we go through it there was a blood test I could have taken to find an issue.