The Fertility Doc

This past Monday Nick and I went to see the fertility doctor. We will call him Doc A. Or maybe just Doc...I am sure I will settle into a name for him soon. I was hoping he wouldn't need a name on the blog. I was hoping I would go see him and he would say, "These things are normal!", "Keep Trying!", "You will be pregnant in NO TIME!!". These are not the things that Doc said.

Nick and I are both by the numbers kind of people. We are both science minded, and if you lay something out for us with percentages and statistics we are both at ease. That is, unless the numbers you are given are...grim. We both honestly believed that there was a high probability of us just getting pregnant on our own. We know I have endometriosis, but my tubes are open, Nick is all good, how hard can it be? Doc informed us that with the severity of my endo, I have about a 10% of getting pregnant...ever in my lifetime. 10%. He then included that the most likely time for that to have occurred would have been in the six months following my surgery. It has been ten months. So....right.

We then discussed insemination. In my head, this was our fall back plan. Our worst case scenario. Doc tells us that this is not a great option for us. That the success rate for people with severe endometriosis is 5-10%. Now, that is per month, so although the numbers do look the same, the odds do increase from the whole "in my lifetime" number. He told us we could try it, and that it could work, but just to not get our hopes up. That Endometriosis is "a TERRIBLE disease". I got to hear what a terrible disease it was many times during our meeting. Every time Doc says it, it breaks my heart, but at the same time I feel just a little justified. You know when you feel really bad, and you think to yourself, "How would other people handle this? Am I being a huge baby? Are all the doctor's walking out of my room rolling their eyes?” Doc gave me an answer, and in a small way it is nice to hear someone else say, "Damn....you got this bad! You must feel like shit!" Okay...Doc did not say Shit. But curse words make me feel better.

We then went on to discuss Invitro. Doc felt this was our best option. Then he dropped something else into the mix. He said, "This is your best option. Assuming your egg's are not diseased" Hold up. He thinks my eggs are diseased?? Well, apparently endo destroys your eggs. That's right people. He was all like, we will have to see if you have any egg's left. No way to know that until we get in there! This was a hard blow. In my head, Invitro was the big guns. The last option. Now we are sitting here with Doc and he is telling us we are to the point of invitro, and by the way, your eggs could be diseased and if they are...no go. He also added, just to make sure we knew how terrible my case of endo was, that I need a hysterectomy. That it is not far down the road for me, and that he just hopes he is able to help us have children first.

So, when I say the fertility doctor gave us bad news, he really just gave us the big picture. They told us the things we knew, but are still hard to hear from your "end of the road" doctor. We are trying insemination. I am just not ready to jump right into invitro. I need some time. Plus, you never know. The 5-10% could be us. I mean, it's gotta be somebody, right??