Dr. visit update

Well I finally was able to meet our new doctor on Tuesday.  He was wonderful and treated me with respect.  I felt like he is all in with helping us get to our end goal starting a family.  He wants to tackle both problems (the endo and the septum) right away.  He gave us two different game plans that we can choose from.

Option 1: Get lupron injections for 6 months to help get rid of the endometriosis.  During that 6 month span he will have me come in for check ups to make sure the meds are working correctly.  Also at some point I will have surgery to get rid of the septum in my uterus.  So around March we will be able to start trying to start our family again.  There is no down time after the septum surgery.

Option 2: While doing the septum surgery he lasers off any endometriosis and or cysts he sees during surgery.  Then we start trying again.  Not sure of the down time after this surgery.

I know there are some pretty crazy side effects for lupron.  I asked my dr about the weight gain, hair loss, hot flashes, depression, and insomnia.  I am sure I am missing A LOT of other side effects but those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head.  He said he prescribes lupron to many of his patients who are dealing with endometriosis and has never had any of those side effect reported besides hot flashes.

So we chose to do the lupron for 6 months.   It sounded like the best shot at getting rid of the endometriosis.  The nurse came in and explained to us that sometimes health insurances will not cover this treatment and that could cost a couple hundred dollars per shot.  She will be calling me sometime next week to let me know if our insurance will cover these injections.  I was given permission to have the injections sent to our house and I can have a nurse at the OB/GYN clinic on base give me my injections.

Well after over 24hrs to let things sink in I may have changed my mind about everything.  I am really scared to get the injections.  I don't want to change or feel crappy every day for 6 months.  I started to research online for data on how successful lupron is and I really can't find the data.  I keep getting links to chat forums.  I read more about the pain they have a few days after injections.  Headaches and heartburn.  Women who have to be on anti depressants to help with the side effects.  And then the very few and far between women who have had positive results with lupron.  I am worried that after 6 months that my period wont come back.  I also feel if I have surgery for my septum and get any endometriosis that has grown back laser off that we can start trying sooner.  I just want to know which option is truly the better option for our situation.  Tomorrow I will call the doctors office and ask to speak to the nurse and see if I can get some answers.  If there is no real percentage difference between the two options I will opt with option number 2 and see when the soonest date I can schedule my surgery.

-Kate

World's Best Husband

I have to say I do have the world's best husband in my books.  Preston was a work when I received the call for the canceled doctors visit so I had to text him what was going on.  He told me at first he thought I was just joking with him because the last doctor we went to they canceled on us not even 24hrs before our appointment.  Once he realized it wasn't a joke he wanted Dr. Swanson's number right away to ask why my appointment was canceled.  When I didn't respond to his text messages or phone calls ( I was taking a shower during that time ) he came home from work to check on me and get the phone number.  I told him he had to be nice to who ever he spoke to on the phone because they didn't cancel on us on purpose and they really don't know our story.  Long story short he spoke to someone and they were magically able to get us in next Tuesday.  Why on earth I wasn't offered this date originally I have no idea and at this point I don't care.  All I know is that am very appreciative of my loving husband who always wants the best for me!  Needless to say I am in a a better frame of mind right now unlike earlier today.  

So stay tuned for next weeks post.  Unless they cancel again...ugh.

-Kate

 

An all time low

So I have been on this high this month knowing I had would be going to my doctor's appointment and finally get things moving again.  Well that all just came to a halt.  I just got a phone call a few mins ago from the doctors office to cancel my appointment.  The next date the had open was October 22nd.  I was in shock that yet again my doctor appointment is being canceled.  I somehow found it in me to speak up and ask if there were any sooner dates than that.  She then asked what it was again that I was needing to see the doctor.  My mind raced and I tried not to scream at her.  I told her I have a septum in my uterus and that my doctor on base has referred me out months ago.  I then said please we have been trying for 3 years to start a family I don't want to wait any longer.  The next available date is October 17th.

So now I am here writing this post and bawling my eyes out trying to figure out why do these things keep happing to me.  I am mentally at the point where I can't handle this any more.  I don't understand what I did to deserve this.  I can't handle this any more.  Why am I driving myself crazy about starting a family that I have no idea if I can even have one.  But it's the one thing I've always wanted.  I feel dead inside when people talk about the love that they have for their children.  Its just so empty knowing I don't or will never have that feeling.  Well I need to go get ready for work and put on a fake smile.

-Kate

Happy 3 years!

Well our journey has now officially entered into our 3rd year.  I was never the girl who imagined that we would become pregnant right after our wedding.  I thought maybe halfway through our 1st year or later we would announce our 1st child would be born with some really cute way hence my Pinterest page has a spot dedicated to cute and fun baby announcements.  If I had things going my way we would be trying for our 2nd child by now.  

I haven't written much lately because there is nothing really to report.  I am finally seeing my new doctor next week.  I again don't have high hopes on the visit.  I do however want him to do an ultra sound to make my anxiety go away.  Every time I have the slightest cramp I start to freak out and think I have a cyst again.  Just because Dr. Ta removed the last two and I was on birth control for the last 3 months doesn't mean I don't have them growing again.   We all know that the last time we tried to control the cysts the birth control didn't stop them from growing.  Also with all this time between drs I have been reading online about how women who have endometriosis have changed their diet to gluten free or vegan to help with endo. I am going to ask my dr about this and see if their is any truth to a change of diet.  If so I am going to be changing my diet drastically.  I will go vegan so I am able to have children!!

If things do really workout with this new dr here are how I see things playing out:
-September 19th consultation and possible ultrasound
-October ultrasound and testing for septum in the uterus
-Late October or November surgery for septum
-January get the green light to start trying again

-OR- 

We find out that the septum isn't really bad and we can go ahead and start trying again.Wouldn't that be nice?  I would probably be mad if we found out that this entire time we could of been trying.  Our plan once we are given the green light is to try a few months naturally before I start adding fertility drugs again.  I want to see if I can do it on my own after the modifications my body had have done to it.

Well that is all for now.  I will write another post once I have any new information.

-Kate

Don't give up

So I have a few blue days here lately.  I still haven't heard back from the doctor we saw almost two weeks ago.  I am currently waiting on my referral to go through for this doctor I found online who is within our network.  He is everything we need right now.  What caught my attention about him was he specializes in uterine surgery.  But on top of that he is an OBGYN, reproductive endocrinologist, and fertility specialist.  I just hope we can get into see him soon!

My thoughts have been wondering to the thought of giving up.  I just so badly want to be done with this journey.  People ask me do you think you will have children and depending on my mood it will be a half hearted sure or an "eh".  I am a pessimist at heart.  It drives Preston nuts that I have that outlook on life.  If you can't tell he is an optimist and always has hope for the best.  I would rather think the worst and be surprised in the end if something actually went right.  So my honest answer to "do you think you will have children" is no.  I would love to be wrong and have two or three little ones running around when I read this post years from now but the simple fact is it's easier to think no then to daydream about our future children.


Hopefully the next post I will have a doctors appointment with our potential new doctor.

-Kate

Yet another wasted visit

Well I thought I would have something positive to write after my visit but sadly I do not.  I really had high hopes for this visit because I did some research about the office and my doctor and felt really good about it.

After waiting in lobby with kids running everywhere for 45 mins we were called back to our room.  The nurse practitioner came in and explained to me that the doctor would not be seeing me today (which I already knew).  She wanted to ask a few questions about my history.  She then started calling medical files a novel.  I think she honestly thought that we haven't been dealing with our issues for very long.  It wasn't until she started going through my "novel" that she realized that we have been going to the doctor since 2011 for everything.

The one part of the the visit that drove Preston nuts was the fact that she kept focusing my endometriosis and not my uterus.  On our car ride home he told me that he was frustrated that he had to say "but we are here about her uterus not just the endometriosis" to get her to refocus about the uterus.

After maybe 20 mins of her asking a few questions and writing some notes she informed us that she will give the doctor my file and her notes from todays visit.  She does not know if the doctor will be setting up another appointment with us or not.  If she does she only sees patients on Wednesdays.  The nurse also mentioned the doctor might refer me to specialist also.

All in all we feel like I need to go the base hospital and talk to someone about what we should really do next.  My doctor had told me in the past that he would be able to do surgery on my uterus but did not want to because he didn't want to do something that San Diego would not like.  Well San Diego is not seeing dependents at this time and this place in Fresno has no idea when they can schedule me again.  We really don't feel like having another place dragging their feet.  To doctors they may think they are going as fast as they can.  And to outsiders I may seem that I am being whiny and super annoying about all this.  But in all reality all we want is a healthy baby of our own! 

-Kate

update

It has been awhile since I have written a post so I thought I would give a mini update before my doctor's appointment this morning.

The proper name for what is going on with my uterus is called a septum uterus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uterine_septum) My doctor here on base seems to think that I will need to have surgery to shave down the septum in order for me to have enough room for a fetus/baby grow.  I have been reading about the surgery online and found that women have been able to become pregnant very easily after they are given the green light to go ahead and start trying.  Now I have not tried to google women who have level 3 endometriosis and septum uterus pregnancy success.  I am pretty sure google will give me links that will not be helpful if I looked that up.

I have also been on birth control for the past month in hopes that it slows the endometriosis down.  I would love if I end up having surgery for them to check out everything and see if the endometriosis came back yet or not.  The ultimate goal would be that I could have this surgery by next month and then wait 3 months to heal.  Then I would love to try to conceive naturally instead of doing the IUI right away.  For some reason I have a feeling that the endometriosis and the septum uterus were the true reason why we could not become pregnant for all these yrs.

So today I am seeing a new doctor in Fresno.  I was actually supposed to have my appointment last week but on Tuesday evening I received a phone call stating that the doctor would not be at the practice that day. So I was very frustrated with the news and was even more frustrated when I found out that today's appointment would not be with the doctor but with her nurse.  I really hope I don't have to go to 3 more appointments in order to get a game plan started.

I had to fill out this new patient packet for the doctor's office and wow it was really long.  I felt like they wanted the okay for the rights of my 1st born!  I honestly had to keep calling my mom about family history that they needed to know.  "Do you have at least two family members with such and such cancer?"  "Have you had chicken pox? If so what was the date?"  "What was the date of your first period?"  Ahhh I don't know all these answers!!!

I will do a post later today or tomorrow about how my appointment went and what the game plan will be from here on out.


-Kate