Friday, February 10, 2012

My Journey


 I'm not much of a blogger, but after facing some hard truths as of late, I feel that I need a way to vent about my Infertility, without blowing up on people who don't understand. After googling for quite a while, I found many blogs that had to do with Infertility and for once, I didn't feel alone. So here goes....
  When I was 12 years old, I had my first period. I didn't see another one until I was 17 1/2. Let me rephrase that, I went to the doctor when I was 14 to figure out why I wasn't like everyone else. After running tests, they concluded that I was just dealing with "irregular periods" that "most girls my age" experience. (It's not IRREGULAR if it doesn't occur at all.) He prescribed me Birth Control to help me have a period and sent me on my way. After trying to regulate me for a year, my doctor decided to take me off of the birth control (I wasn't sexually active, so why did it matter?), to see if my body would regulate itself. As I sat there, I remember asking him, "Will I be able to have kids?" My doctor laughed, as if this was a silly concern. I guess, I knew at 15 that it would be a bigger concern later on.
     When I was 17, I had a period, by myself, and the first one in 2 years since I had been off of birth control, it came as a shock, and it came very painfully. I did not have another one until I started on birth control again.
      A few short days before my 18th birthday, I asked my doctor again, what could be done about the fact that here I was a woman, and unable to have periods without the help of medication. My doctor visited the idea that it could be my pituitary gland, or that it could be something called PCOS. There were never tests ran, and I was never explained to what either of those things might mean for me, I was just prescribed birth control again, because that at least gave me a period.
     On June 1st, 2009 I married my best friend. I was 18, and ready to take on whatever life had to throw at me. My new husband was about to leave for basic training, and my mind was swirling with the new ideas of being a military wife, and all that entailed. In October of 2009, I went into see a doctor because one day I planned on having a family, and since here I was at 19 and still had no sign of a period. She ran some tests, did my annual, took some of my blood, gave me an ultrasound, and sent me on my way.
     When my test results came in, she brought me into her office and told me plain and simple that I have PCOS. Now this was the second time I had EVER heard this term, but I had no idea what it stood for, let alone what it meant. 

   In short, PCOS is Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome - condition in women characterized by irregular or no menstrual periods, acne, obesity, and excess hair growth. PCOS is a disorder of chronically abnormal ovarian function.That explained a lot, for one the moustache that grew thicker than my husbands, and the missing in action mother nature presentWhat did this mean for me? What could I do to fix it? Did I do something wrong? Will I be able to have kids? Is this genetic? Why was this not mentioned to me when I started having problems? Unfortunately, most of these questions remain to be seen.
   I asked her what I could do, she gave me a blank look, and proceeded to tell me that she could put me on birth control to give me a period, and that was it. You mean to tell me that the same thing that I have been doing since I was 14 is all there is? That didn't make sense to me, so I researched it myself. I came to a discovery that something called Metformin, which was a diabetic drug, would help regulate insulin levels and potentially get me on the right track. I called my doctor to ask about this. Her response? That I should crash diet, and lose weight and my body would fix itself. I switched doctors.
    As soon as I explained everything that was going on to my new doctor, he prescribed me Metformin. Why was that so hard for the other doctor? Remember when I said I started this in October of 2009? At this point, it was February of 2010. I started taking metformin, and 2 weeks later I had a period! I was both ecstatic and upset. See I had been visiting my husband, who at the time was stationed and Georgia, and of all the times for my period to actually show up, it had to be then. I did not stop bleeding until April. From then on, until August I was every 7 days. 7 days on, 7 days off. This would just not do, I asked my doctor what could happen, because I began to feel sick, because of the amount of Iron I was losing every other week. He tried provera to see if he could regulate me, I broke through and bled. So, we tried prometrium, same result. We tried this switching between the meds until December of 2010, when I had accidentally missed a dosage and all periods seemed to cease and desist. At that point my doctor recommended a laparoscopic surgery to remove the egg follicles (or cysts) from my ovaries. They were 3 times the normal size that an ovary should be. My right one being 3/4 cystic, and my left only be 1/2 cystic.I can tell you that for a few weeks I was miserable, it hurt to move, it hurt to sit up, it hurt to think about my  ovaries. I recovered from that, only to find out a few months later that the surgery didn't do what it was supposed to, the cysts formed again and this time they were meaner than before. At this point I was referred to a Fertility Specialist. After talking to him, I told him how important it was for me to one day be able to have a family, and how being a Military Wife, one of my fears was that something could happen to my husband, and that I would have nothing left. He nodded solemnly, and told me he understood. He, himself has served 14 years in the Army. We discussed a plan, and he prescribed me Prometrium, since I had been bleeding on that before. I was excited, we were finally going to see if I had any sort of progress, if my eggs were of good quality, and most importantly discuss the possibility of getting pregnant one day.I took the pills, nothing happened. I waited, nothing happened. I called the doctor, he scheduled me an ultrasound. My right ovary had a volume of 25, and my left of 17. Aren't they supposed to be below 10? I had 30-40 follicles on EACH OVARY. This is not normal. At this point in time, I got the news that my husband was to be deploying in January, it was currently October 2011, I didn't have much time. After talking it over with my doctor, about time periods and whatnot, I was told that the best case for me would to start seriously trying by the time I was 25 .For those of you keeping count, that leaves me with 4 years, to start trying, and a year and a half of that my husband will be deployed. This is my fertility journey, one day I will have my kids. I'm not sure how, or when, and I'm not always positive about it, but one day it will happen.

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