Just 12 days later, on September 29, 2010, we visited my husband's specialist to find out why his samples came back with zero sperm in it. I must admit that his specialist looking nothing like I expected. I had, of course, looked him up with the help of Dr. Google and found out that he had done a lot of mission work and study in Mexico. When we got to his office, the decor was very desert-looking with lots of cacti (that's the plural, right?). I expected something very different than the brawny, Mr-Clean-Looking, could-have-ridden-a-Harley-to-work man that walked in to talk to my hubby. We'll call him Dr. Mr-Clean.
He went through the entire spectrum of questions with him and a physical exam. I felt a little funny being in the room during the exam, but figured that I'd already seen everything Dr. Mr-Clean was looking at... Within the first minute of the physical exam, the doctor mumbled, "It's not there," and proceeded to go to the other side of the table and continue the exam. While shaking his head and taking off his gloves, he informed us that my dear hubby was missing the vas deferens - the tubes that carry the sperm up and out from where they're made. Dr. Mr-Clean said that, basically, Mother Nature had given hubby a vasectomy. Darn her! He said that this is not a common problem.
Dr. Mr-Clean went on to state that we had 3 options:
Behind Door #1 was adoption. He said that there are multiple ways to go about adoption, but that the costs would be somewhere around $15,000 - $20,000 and there is no guarantee that we'd actually have a child at the end of it all. Was that supposed to be reassuring?
Behind Door #2 was In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) - a newer, special form of IVF called Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). This would require a great deal of difficult steps including lots of genetic testing, a surgery to retrieve his sperm, egg retrieval surgery for me, injecting sperm into the eggs to make embryos, and then transferring them back into me. Whoa! Can you repeat that list so I can write it down and look on Dr. Google later? This ICSI procedure, developed in Belgium in the 1990s, was required because hubby's sperm don't learn to swim like normal ones do when they mature and make their way up and out of the tubes in a typical male. If his sperm were put into a dish with my eggs, nothing would happen. Slackers! They actually have to take an egg and inject a single sperm into it. Again, the costs would be someplace around $20,000 - $22,000 per try and there was no guarantee that we'd have a child after this either. However, this is the only way we would be able to have a biological child of our own. (This is assuming that hubby actually has sperm to deal with. We wouldn't know that for sure until retrieval surgery, even though his bloodwork and hormones came back normal.) That was even less assuring than the previous option!
Door #3 involved going home and dealing with living a life with just the two of us. Forget that.
Well, we knew what was causing the zero sperm count. We knew our options. What if we didn't like them? I've got a better one - the stork brings a baby of our own - let's say tomorrow.
When we left Dr. Mr-Clean's office that day, my hubby and I were in two different places. I was overwhelmed. It sounded like so much effort and money to hope to maybe have a baby - like the world's worst, most expensive lottery game. Hubby, on the other hand, was happy. This was really the first time he'd been happy leaving a doctor's office since we started this mess. He told me that he had hope - that there was a way to have a child of our own. He was right, as usual, but I wasn't going to admit that. It was just too much for me to handle at once.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Family Name
There has been a lot about this entire story that hurts to talk about and I'm sorry that my posts for the last week have been a bit on the somber side. I promise that there will be humor in the future-we haven't even gotten to the the really good parts yet that involve being naked, more conversations that no person should ever have with another human being, and of course the "sounding" procedure that just leaves me hanging out there. However, we are at the point in the story that breaks my heart the most about the whole flippin' situation. It was the one thing that hit me in the stomach, took my breath away, and made me feel like tears weren't even a good enough response.
In order to understand the gravity of the following story, I need to give you a little background. My hubby is a 4th. His great grandfather, grandfather, father, and he all have the same name. Names are a very big deal to my hubby. He is very much a person that believes in old school names that come from previous family members or the Bible. I am a girl with a rather boyish first name, so it doesn't bother me as much, but it's HUGE deal to him. I can remember talking about children more than a decade ago before we were married and he said that he definitely wanted a 5th. So a little boy with V behind his name was on the agenda for us. Every now and then I harass him stating that I don't think that I want a 5th or that the mother gets to decide what goes on the birth certificate, so he better be nice to me. But, that is all in jest. I know that the whole name thing is very important to him.
You also need to know that my hubby's younger (by 2 years) and his wife were also expecting their 3rd child. Yes, I cried when we found out. Please don't hear that I was jealous. I was not. I am very happy for them. They are a good, solid, Christian couple and are great parents to their 2 little girls and now the 3rd - a little boy was on the way very soon. I was just sad for myself - sad that we didn't have good news like that to share with the family - sad that it was not our turn. My sadness was not in any response to them. It is about me and us.
Now that you have all the background: After our phone call to my hubby's parents on Sept. 19th, we sat and just held each other and were sad together. Saying the words aloud made them real. After some discussion and trying to talk about things, hubby looked at me through tears and said, "Maybe I should call my brother and tell him to go ahead and use the family name. It doesn't look like I'm going to get to use it."
Sad is not a big enough word to describe what I felt. Tears were not enough to express my feelings. That was the point in this process that, if I forget everything, I will never forget that. That was the lowest point.
In order to understand the gravity of the following story, I need to give you a little background. My hubby is a 4th. His great grandfather, grandfather, father, and he all have the same name. Names are a very big deal to my hubby. He is very much a person that believes in old school names that come from previous family members or the Bible. I am a girl with a rather boyish first name, so it doesn't bother me as much, but it's HUGE deal to him. I can remember talking about children more than a decade ago before we were married and he said that he definitely wanted a 5th. So a little boy with V behind his name was on the agenda for us. Every now and then I harass him stating that I don't think that I want a 5th or that the mother gets to decide what goes on the birth certificate, so he better be nice to me. But, that is all in jest. I know that the whole name thing is very important to him.
You also need to know that my hubby's younger (by 2 years) and his wife were also expecting their 3rd child. Yes, I cried when we found out. Please don't hear that I was jealous. I was not. I am very happy for them. They are a good, solid, Christian couple and are great parents to their 2 little girls and now the 3rd - a little boy was on the way very soon. I was just sad for myself - sad that we didn't have good news like that to share with the family - sad that it was not our turn. My sadness was not in any response to them. It is about me and us.
Now that you have all the background: After our phone call to my hubby's parents on Sept. 19th, we sat and just held each other and were sad together. Saying the words aloud made them real. After some discussion and trying to talk about things, hubby looked at me through tears and said, "Maybe I should call my brother and tell him to go ahead and use the family name. It doesn't look like I'm going to get to use it."
Sad is not a big enough word to describe what I felt. Tears were not enough to express my feelings. That was the point in this process that, if I forget everything, I will never forget that. That was the lowest point.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
A Familiar Story
My hubby is pretty close to his parents, so we decided that we needed to call them and tell them what was going on with us. They live pretty far away and we hadn't really told them anything up to this point.
Hubby asked his parents to put us on speaker phone so we could talk to both of them at once. He started off by telling them that we'd been trying for several years to have a child. He said that we'd gone to the doctor to try to find out if there was a problem and had gotten some results that were very saddening to both of us because there were such problems on both ends. I was crying, as I had been on and off for days, and he had to do most of the talking.
He let them know that both of his samples had come back with zero sperm and he was going to see a specialist about it. He explained that I was diagnosed with PCOS and what that entailed and that I was also going to a fertility specialist. His Mom and Dad were so saddened to hear our news and shared that it had taken them 7 years before having their first child because of complications of their own. They were unusually quiet and I could tell that we dropped the bombshell on them just as the doctors had done to us. They were sorry that we had to suffer similar complications and offered words of love, sympathy, and understanding. I could tell that they were reliving a painful past of their own when we shared our story with them.
Hubby asked his parents to put us on speaker phone so we could talk to both of them at once. He started off by telling them that we'd been trying for several years to have a child. He said that we'd gone to the doctor to try to find out if there was a problem and had gotten some results that were very saddening to both of us because there were such problems on both ends. I was crying, as I had been on and off for days, and he had to do most of the talking.
He let them know that both of his samples had come back with zero sperm and he was going to see a specialist about it. He explained that I was diagnosed with PCOS and what that entailed and that I was also going to a fertility specialist. His Mom and Dad were so saddened to hear our news and shared that it had taken them 7 years before having their first child because of complications of their own. They were unusually quiet and I could tell that we dropped the bombshell on them just as the doctors had done to us. They were sorry that we had to suffer similar complications and offered words of love, sympathy, and understanding. I could tell that they were reliving a painful past of their own when we shared our story with them.
Monday, March 21, 2011
More Joyful Waiting...in Sarcasm Font
On September 17, 2010, (3.5 weeks after that phone call at work), we went back to my OB/GYN to get our results. I even took my beautiful temp charts with me to turn in to her. My Doc started off with stating that my husband's sample had come back, again, with zero sperm and so she was sending him to a male fertility specialist out of town. I had been hoping it was some sort of accident, but apparently it was not.
Then my Doc turned to me and my temp charts for the last several months. She concluded that I had not ovulated 2 of the 3 months, and the 3rd was "iffy." Then she filed them away. All that hard work just shoved in a folder. She pulled out my bloodwork results and stated that my hormones and insulin were messed up causing a cyst to develop each month instead of an egg. That's not helpful. This was also contributing to the weight gain I had experienced. That's also not helpful. My husband chimed in and informed my Doc that I exercised and ate very healthy. God bless him. He knew that I was very frustrated with the situation. My Doc suggested putting me on a drug called Metformin for PCOS. She stated that I needed to work my way up to taking 3 pills per day, if I could. She said that this medicine was generally prescribed for patients with diabetes but made it very clear that I am not diabetic - that my body is just confused and acting like it. She was going to make an appointment for me to see a different fertility specialist out of town, as well. I wonder how many years it'll take to get in there. I mentioned that I was disappointed that my prior doctors had only prescribed birth control pills for me to mask the symptoms instead of finding out the cause for my problems. She stated that I shouldn't be too upset with them because that would have been the treatment anyhow, as long as I wasn't trying to have a baby. Fair enough.
So that was it - meds for me and specialist appointments for the both of us. More waiting...you can probably guess that I was joyful about that....and yes, that should be in sarcasm font. The positive outcome? I no longer had to get up at 6am to take my temperature!
Then my Doc turned to me and my temp charts for the last several months. She concluded that I had not ovulated 2 of the 3 months, and the 3rd was "iffy." Then she filed them away. All that hard work just shoved in a folder. She pulled out my bloodwork results and stated that my hormones and insulin were messed up causing a cyst to develop each month instead of an egg. That's not helpful. This was also contributing to the weight gain I had experienced. That's also not helpful. My husband chimed in and informed my Doc that I exercised and ate very healthy. God bless him. He knew that I was very frustrated with the situation. My Doc suggested putting me on a drug called Metformin for PCOS. She stated that I needed to work my way up to taking 3 pills per day, if I could. She said that this medicine was generally prescribed for patients with diabetes but made it very clear that I am not diabetic - that my body is just confused and acting like it. She was going to make an appointment for me to see a different fertility specialist out of town, as well. I wonder how many years it'll take to get in there. I mentioned that I was disappointed that my prior doctors had only prescribed birth control pills for me to mask the symptoms instead of finding out the cause for my problems. She stated that I shouldn't be too upset with them because that would have been the treatment anyhow, as long as I wasn't trying to have a baby. Fair enough.
So that was it - meds for me and specialist appointments for the both of us. More waiting...you can probably guess that I was joyful about that....and yes, that should be in sarcasm font. The positive outcome? I no longer had to get up at 6am to take my temperature!
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