clarified (somewhat)

At our follow-up appointment, my doc had found out that the “unclear” parts of the MRI were so because of all the scar tissue / adhesions I have from my previous surgery. Which means that they cannot see much in this area. The overall conclusion remains, no big bloody masses or anything to be seen, which is good. Whether there are small amounts of endometriosis or not they cannot really say, as far as I understand. Nor where my pain comes from — my doctor thinks it could be from the adhesions, but what I find weird is that it mainly occurs during my period, and to a lesser extent until ovulation — to me this screams estrogen-dependent. Anyone with adhesions, or other “weird pain”, has had this experience?

She had also finally received the SA results from last year — oddly enough, on that report morphology wasn’t even mentioned (where I’m from, you don’t actually get any records unless you, or better another doctor, specifically asks for them). So now I don’t know whether they tested for it at all, and hence whether the new results are worse or just “another factor we didn’t know about”. Not that this would help, I guess… H, although very skeptical about anything that is not traditional western medicine, has agreed to start trying a supplement for male fertility. Let’s see if that brings us anywhere. It cannot hurt, I suppose.

The best news of the consultation was that the doctor thinks we could be successful with IUI. Of course it is hard to predict anything as nobody knows how my endo (if it is there at all) affects my chances of getting pregnant, but based on his numbers she would suggest us to try 4 rounds of that, and then think about IVF. One of the insurance plans at my next job would cover 50% of IUIs, including the drugs, which would be a start. No IVF coverage, though… sigh. I’m not entirely sure how it would be with my insurance here, and unfortunately the only clinic that works with it was not very impressive (they wrote the wrong diagnosis on the SA, and needed 4 attempts to put the correct name on the invoice).

I think in part I’m still grieving the idea of conceiving naturally, so perhaps it is not the worst thing in the world if we have to wait a bit, until we have moved and settled in our new location. Still, it hurts me that some friends will probably be preparing for the arrival of #2 by the time we even have a chance of conceiving #1 (and we all know that this does not mean we’ll actually have a baby 9 months later). I got though most of this month fairly well, given my IF-unhappiness and the anniversary of my mom’s death in late November, but last Friday I just lost it, and all I could do was cry on the way home. A BFN on Saturday morning didn’t make it any better, but HP7 was at least distracting, and afterwards we went for drinks with friends. In a place that used to be super-nice with great food, but now has new owners and is… less nice. But more expensive. Sigh. This will get better, right?

radio silence

Thanks for checking in — it’s lovely that you guys (ok, girls) care about me so much! Sorry for vanishing without a word — my computer decided that it was a good time to break down, even though I did not take it anywhere near the big magnets. Thus, no updates. Also, I’ve been busy like crazy, and we’ll have a bunch of guests next weekend (which I’m very much looking forward to, but also slightly stressed about), so that I don’t know how much time I’ll have for blogging until after that.

So, the executive summary of the news:

  • I was tested for gluten-sensitivity related antibodies, as this is often found in endometriosis patients. Negative. Any idea how much this means, in the sense that my symptoms could still improve if I cut out wheat?
  • The MRI is unclear. Lovely. Well, I guess it could be worse and have shown huge problems, so I’m trying to look at the bright side… My doc wants to talk to the MRI specialist again to make sure they look at the right places, so there might be an update lateron.
  • The SA was worse, unfortunately. 5% morphology (usual threshold 12-15%), plus motility problems. As far as I remember, last time they only told us about motility problems, so that would be another blow.

I’m not sure how we’ll move on from here. Since my endo surgery years ago we had always assumed I’d be the one with the problems, but now it seems to be both of us (ok, technically we don’t even know if my endo is interfering with my fertility, but it’s quite possible, and the pain is enough of a problem as far as I’m concerned). I’ll schedule an appointment with my doctor and my husband, so that the three of us can sit down together and try to sort this out.
Somehow I had hoped that the SA would bring us good news. H was disappointed as well, though he’s trying not to show it much, and he’s so stressed with work-related things (which cannot be good for his swimmers, but we’re going in circles on that one) that the denial phase works well.