A lot has been going on in the last few days and I don't really know what to make of it. It started Friday with my first FC consultation. I was a little impressed since we had been told that he is always running late that we only had to wait about 1/2 hour. He didn't really tell me anything I didn't know already, but it was a good anatomy lesson for D. He didn't do any tests that day because I answered the questions with "normal" answers. He ordered a SA for DH and told me to call in my CD1 to schedule my CD3 bloodwork and HSG.

When we got home, D suggested a quickie because I was still in my fertile window. That was the first time ever that sex was painful. I didn't think much of it, but then on Saturday my lower abdomen started to hurt when I moved. By saturday night I was in constant pain and considering the ER. I took a tylenol and a gravol and went to bed to see how I would do overnight. Sunday morning was a little worse so I called telehealth and they told me to go to a Dr within 4 hours so I went to the walk-in clinic because I didn't feel like spending my entire Sunday in the waiting room of the ER.

The Dr. at the clinic looked at my recent ultrasound results and pretty much just said "yep, you have endometriosis, and you will probably be in pain from time to time and you need to learn how to deal with it, do you want a script for pain meds?" I told her that I had just O'd on Thurs or Fri and wasn't comfortable taking prescription pain meds right now. "well, then there's not uch I can do. If it get suddenly worse or you develop a fever, go to the ER."

So that is exactly what I did on Monday, I called in sick and spent 8hrs in the ER and still wasn't any closer to answers. However, I was in more pain from all the poking around. The hospital did some bloodwork and a pap and ordered another ultrasound for Tuesday. My white bloodcell count was slightly high so they think I have an infection of some kind but they don't know what. The Dr. threw around that it could be Pelvic Inflammatory Disease but he was not willing to rule out appendicitis.

I had the ultrasound yesterday and I had to go back through the ER to get the results. It wasn't as busy, it only took 4 hours instead of 8, so that wasn't as bad... but They still could not determine what the pain is!!!! The only reason I'm not extremely pissed and going to yet another hospital for answers, is that I started to feel better yesterday. I'm in no way feeling normal, but better than Monday and hoping that this is a trend that will continue.

I feel about the same today as I did yesterday and I was able to go to work, but I just I didn't do too much, and I didn't go to any sites. I told my boss that if there was something that I had to do out at the buildings, I would have to have help from someone and he was happy with that.

If I feel the same tomorrow and haven't heard back from the FC, I will head to Hamilton on Friday and not leave without real answers.

The results are in...

Today was my appointment with Dr. F to review the results of my Surprise! ultrasound. They were almost what I expected, except I thought I'd have cysts on both ovaries since I have had pain on my left side recently. But my left side looks fine.

I have 2 cysts on my right ovary.  One is a simple cyst, meaning that it is fluid filled. These are normal and usually develop during ovulation starting as follicles. Normally these will go away on their own.The other is a hemorrhagic cyst, beaning that it is blood filled. These would usually occur in women with endometriosis. I have suspected for years that I have endo so this doesn't surprise me.

I have a follow up ultrasound on May 4 so see if they have changed.  I don't know what would happen next if they haven't changed. But my FC appointment is 1 week after that.

Dr. F also mentioned that my uterus is retroflexed.  I had to wait until I got home tonight to find out what that means. Essentially it is a tilted uterus.

On their own, endometriosis or a tilted uterus may not interfere with fertility. However my Aunt had both and was never able to conceive.  Now, treatments have advanced over the last 30 years so I am still hopeful, but doubtful that we can do this without intervention.

I am more frustrated than anything… I have had suspicions about endometriosis for years and have been worried that it would interfere with fertility when the time came… and no Dr had been willing to do anything or look into it until it actually did cause problems… even though I am obviously in pain every month, they didn’t seem to care about the pain, and just gave me drugs to deal with the symptoms, not treat the problem.

Surprise!

I had my ultrasound today. I still don't know anything, the technicians won't tell you anything so I have to wait to see my Dr. once she gets the report.

Today was also Yoga Day!  Every Wednesday at lunch a woman from my work runs a yoga class at the gym.  It's a great way to relax and forget all my worries even if it's only for 40 min once a week.  I treasure this time and look forward to it each week.  Right after Yoga I had to start drinking my 1L of water to prepare for the u/s.

It was torture.

Every time a took a big drink of water I would look at the bottle and wonder why there was still so much left! It was driving me nuts!  It probably would have been easier if I had been even a little bit thirsty.  I had to finish the 1L of water at least 1 hour before my appointment.  I started to get really worried when after my first two drinks of water, I already had to pee... With about 2 minutes to go, I was trying to chug my water and type an email at the same time using one hand to hold the giant water bottle and the other to type.

Once at the lab, they were true to their word and didn't keep me waiting with an extremely uncomfortably full bladder too long.  I was taken to a tiny change room, smaller than a clothing store change room, and told to take off my pants and underwear and put on the robe. I then went to the ultrasound room.

As I getting on the table, the tech casually mentions that it is their standard with all pelvic ultrasounds to also do a trans-vaginal ultrasound.

Yep.

"Oh, by the way, we are going to get real personal this afternoon..."

Surprise!

The pelvic ultrasound went by really quickly and painlessly.  Even with her pushing on my very full bladder, it wasn't bad.  Thankfully, they don't have to do the trans-vag with a full bladder so I was allowed to go to the washroom first.

"Now, the instrument" (Yes she called it the instrument) "only has to be inserted about *this* far. So don't be scared by how big it is"

Doesn't this sound like fun so far?

Then she lubes it up and asks me to insert it.  Yes, because that will make this so much more comfortable, if you have me do that part. I mean, it's not like you will be moving it around inside me for the next 10 minutes.

It felt like it took forever.  But when I got back in my car, I had only been in there for about 30 minutes all together including changing time and going to the washroom.

Hopefully my Doctor will call me soon with the results.  She seemed to be taking a lot of images.  I wonder if that is because there was something to there to take images of, or if they normally take that many.

Part of me wants there to be something there.  Some sort of explanation that can be treated and dealt with.

I will keep you posted when I hear something.

Fun while it lasted...

Wow, a whole 7 days without spotting.

Just long enough for me to get my hopes up that it had stopped for good.  But no.

I guess it 's a good thing I still have that ultrasound on the 30th.

Even though I know how slim our chances were this month... what with only trying once between when the spotting stopped and when I ovulated - and that was the day I ovulated... it's still deflating to see the spotting.  I didn't really realize how high my hopes were until they were dashed.

If I'm truly honest with myself, I still have a spark of hope.  It's not over till it's over.

And if my logical side is truly honest with myself, it never really started.

You Have Two New Messages

Every day for the last 2 weeks I have come home from work and checked my phone to see if the fertility clinic has called me for my initial appointment.  Of course, the one night I didn't was the day they called.  I got the call on Monday, but didn't get the message until Tuesday after work.  I was a little disappointed in that the message only said "Hi, this is Dr. M's office, please call to set up your initial consultation." So I had to wait an entire day (well, evening and overnight) until their office opened again this morning before I could find out what day my appointment was.  It nearly killed me.

My appointment is May 13th.  Two months from now.

More waiting.

Story of my life.

It could be worse though, I have heard horror stories about people waiting close to 9 months to get into a clinic so I count my self lucky that it's only 2 months.

During these last two weeks of waiting I also have been in to see my GP again.  I finally made the call to go see her again, only 6 days after seeing her for the blood work results, because my period had not stopped.  By this time I was going on day 16! That's at least 12 days longer than the average woman's menstruation.  But it was mostly spotting, I had been spotting since about day 8, and when I saw her on day 10, I figured it HAD to be almost done so I didn't bring it up.

Since January I have had more spotting, both before and after AF, than I ever have before.  This month was a little different because it was accompanied by discomfort on my left side only.  I normally get mega cramps with AF, but I noticed this month they were almost all on the left side.  I thought it might be a cyst so I wanted to have it looked at.

My GP agreed that it could be a cyst and ordered an ultrasound.  The ultrasound is on March 30th.

Waiting (the magic word).

Now, following Murphy's Law, the spotting stopped 2 days later.  I still have little twinges on my left side so I think there is still something there, but maybe it will go away on it's own.

They do that sometimes... just to screw with you.

They also sometimes have hair or teeth in them... wouldn't that be freaky?  To have a tooth growing on your ovary?

Brings a whole new meaning to "Don't worry, I don't bite..."

Yesterday

I went to the the Doctor's yesterday to talk to her about the tests she ordered a couple of weeks ago and to request a referral to a gynecologist or a fertility clinic. She had already sent a referral to a gynecologist for me last week, so she only went over my test results.  


Everything looked fine except my progesterone was a little low.  The normal range for a non-pregnant female at Mid-Luteal is 16.4 - 59.0.  Mine was 10.2.  She didn't really seem worried about that though.  She said "it's not above the 16.4, but it is above 10, soooo...."  What does that mean? It's not normal, but it's more than half-way to normal!  I'm glad that I got the printed results, now I can take it to my naturalpath tomorrow and show them to her and maybe there is something she can do to help with the low progesterone.


The tests my family Doctor did were only a small portion of the tests that need to be done.  And D has to be tested too.  She said that the GYN would order the tests for him.  I was trying to get an idea from her when I might expect an appointment with the GYN and she didn't really know.  I got the feeling that she knew it was going to be a long wait, but didn't want to say anything.  When I pushed, she did get me their phone number and also the phone number of Fertility Clinics that she could refer me to if I wanted.  She suggested that I call some clinics and find one I wanted to work with then give her a call back and she would send the referral.  


I still had a while before I had to be back at the office so I called the GYN to find out the status of my referral and to see if they had an idea of when my appointment would be. Ya, they hadn't even looked at my referral yet and probably wouldn't for another 3 weeks and my appointment likely wouldn't be until August.  I was so upset when I heard that.  I was next to tears all afternoon.  


I spend some time researching the clinics that she gave me.  Most of them were in Mississauga/Brampton/Burlington, and when going through treatments I will likely have to go in every morning for a couple weeks each cycle for monitoring so going to most of them would be difficult.  But one of them has a satellite clinic in Milton; still 1/2 hr away, but doable.  I called them this morning and they are booking for April!  Much, much sooner than August!  So my Dr. was going to fax the referral right away.  


So that's were we are right now, waiting to find out when that appointment is.  It will probably still be a little while after that initial appointment before we can start any treatments, but I finally feel like we are getting somewhere.

A year in review...

Over the last 12 months I probably could have wrote 3 identical posts over and over and over again about.... well... 12 times, and they would go something like this:

My Period started today.  This month will be our month.  It would be so perfect!  because If I got pregnant this cycle I could announce my pregnance to my family at H's Birthday/Easter/My birthday/Father's Day/Canada day/Our anniversary/Thanksgiving/Christmas/insert any special occasion here.  Then I could announce to everyone else in a really fun way at H's Birthday/Easter/My birthday/Father's Day/Canada day/Our anniversary/Thanksgiving/Christmas/insert any special occasion here.  And my due date would be really close to H's Birthday/Easter/My birthday/Father's Day/Canada day/Our anniversary/Thanksgiving/Christmas/insert any special occasion here.  I just have to wait for Aunt Flo (AF) to be over and then we can get this party started!

I will probably ovulate (O) today or tomorrow.  I have had lots of EWCM (egg white cervical mucus) and I can just tell that it's coming.  We didn't BD (baby dance) as much as I would like this month because it's really hard to time things around when D is home for the weekend or because D wasn't feeling well.  But the times that we did it, we had good timing and that's what matters.  There are lot of people who only have sex once in their fertile window and get pregnant... hopefully that will happen to us as well.

AF is on her way.  I have all the tell tale signs... bloating, cramping, sore breasts, irritability, headache, spotting.  It's just a matter of time now before it starts.  Damn! I really thought we had it this month.  I have to stop getting my hopes up so high each month so that I don't have so far to fall when fucking AF shows up.  Not only does she knock me down just by showing up, but she kicks me while I'm on the ground with her massive cramping and lasting forever!  FUCK HER! She can go to hell.  This sucks.  Why me?

So that was the monthly roller coaster ride that I have been on for the last year.

I'm not sure what this year will bring for us, but hopefully there will be more to this monotony.  Tomorrow I have a Doctors appointment to get the fertility clinic ball rolling.  I plan to write about my journey with the clinic in the hopes that anyone else going through the same thing will not feel as alone as I do.  I will not mask any emotions here, even if they don't seem appropriate to anyone else, they are strong and what I feel at the time.  For example:  My 'cousin' (close family friend) announced that he accidentally got his girlfriend pregnant.  I found out on New Years Eve. After-words, I bawled, changed in my PJ's and sulked the rest of the night away.  Worst. New Years. Ever.  I will try and be happy for those who get pregnant while I am still trying, but I will be sad for my self.  And that's ok. But be warned, it won't be pretty.