In Honor of NIAW, I found a song that I think represents infertility. Enjoy!
Category: Infertility
People lately have been asking us why we have been so open and that they are grateful that we are sharing our journey. My thoughts on this is that if our situation helps others, it is for the best.
I don’t feel as though infertility should be a taboo subject. For a lot of people, there is no way they are telling people about what they are going through. Many of them don’t say anything ever. It is their right to not talk about the trials and pain that they have gone through to achieve that pregnancy or to have their child. People don’t always understand about infertility and they can say things that unintentionally hurt.
WHO has just diagnosed infertility as a disease. This is a huge milestone as it might make it possible for many more people to be able to treat their infertility. Only about 15% of couples diagnosed with infertility actually go through with treatment. Treatment costs are so high that many couples end up going broke trying treatments. I hope that someday insurance will cover treatment for infertility. Even if it is only a couple of cycles. It would help many couples realize what they want and know that they have given it a shot.
I don’t want to rant about things, but as we are just coming into this disease, it is a subject close to us. I am glad that we are able to share this with others. Personally it has been a blessing as we are able to talk to people without getting the typical “So when are you having kids?” question. I am glad that we have told people because when we have a crappy day because of results or whatnot, we have people who understand even if they aren’t going through it.
One of the blogs I was reading the other day talked about whether or not to tell people about trying to conceive. It’s main point was that telling people helped make it real, and then when things ended badly, there was a support network that helped her grieve.
Thank you for being our support network! You mean a lot to us, and I don’t know how we would be doing if we had kept everything to ourselves and tried to deal with this alone in Texas. We love you!
So I finally got a hold of the financial adviser at our clinic, and we have our numbers. It is going to cost right around $2,000 for each cycle of IUI. That is great as we have that and can afford to do three cycles pretty much right away. Now I just have to wait a whole month since we found out 2 days to late to start things this cycle.
So things we have to do in the next 30 days:
-Find a donor
– Finish organizing the beerfest
– Travel to California
– Prepare for a lot of traveling to Ft. Worth
Not to much to do right? We have time, and we are just really excited to be getting the show on the road.
Not sure if anyone still reads this, but I like to keep it updated so I have a way to talk about it without having to fill up my facebook feed. :p
Hey all!
Been a little while since I’ve been on here. I’ve been really busy at work.
Yesterday, we took the day off and drove 3.5 hours to Dallas to the Urologist appointment. The appointment went okay. After examination and reviewing all of the results from testing, we were basically told that there is a 10% chance of finding anything on a biopsy, but there was a lot of risks to be had with doing said biopsy. It was a little heartbreaking, but just after hearing the risks, we decided that it wasn’t for us. So there will be no biopsy, which means no IVF. At least, no reason for IVF.
We are coming to terms with the results, but the decision was a fairly quick decision that we made. We had been talking about it for awhile in preparation for the worst, but you never really want to have to fall back to that plan. You always hope for a better result. We made the decision to not move forward with the biopsy before we left the appointment. Then it came down to whether to do adoption or to go ahead with donor.
We decided to go ahead with donor as we want to experience the whole shebang if at all possible. As of right now, all my tests have come back mostly normal, so we aren’t expecting anything out of the ordinary. An upside to this is that it is on the cheaper side, so our HSA will cover what the insurance won’t for an IUI. After a lengthy conversation on the drive home from Dallas, we decided we were going to start the steps for an IUI-Donor procedure.
We have to get a hold of our RE and figure out what we need to do next, and we also have to start looking for a donor. So many steps, but we are trying to keep an eye on the light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully it gets brighter soon, but we know that it is there.
Our lovely RE called me yesterday while at work and told me that he has gotten our genetic testing results. I was excited and scared all at the same time. Would it be good or bad news? Then the RE asked if we would like to make an appointment to come in and discuss the results or if I was okay with getting them over the phone. Are you kidding me? To know that you have the results on a Saturday where I have just basically started my 13 hour day, and not be able to hear them until I drive to fort Worth? Of course I want to hear over the phone. 🙂
So the results are in:
No Y-microdeletion – Genes have the manual on how to make sperm. Score!!
Karyotype issue – We have Klinefelter’s Syndrome.
Basically that means that most guys are a 46-xy. D happens to be a 47-xxy. Darn those pesky additions that shouldn’t be there :p. So it mainly comes down to he has the ability to produce, but it’s not enough to send them swimming out.
Ok – next step?
RE called a urologist in Frisco (that’s in Texas and not the San fran type), and gave him the run down of the test results thus far and asked what the chance of finding any pockets of sperm in a biopsy. Without examination, urologist replied that there is a 10-30% chance of finding some swimmers. So basically, we have to go ahead and make an appointment with the urologist, go in for an examination and then get a more definitive percentage.
This means that we will have to go through with IVF, so we still have to come up with that, but at least there’s a chance of finding those pesky little swimmers.We have been told by our RE that if we decide to do IVF, we should have donor sperm on back-up just in case when the time comes, if D’s gets shy and doesn’t show up in the biopsy, then we won’t have wasted the full cycle and all that money.