Consultation

This morning CP and I went in for a consultation with our fertility doctor.  We came away with a few bits of insight:

·         Generally, if 3 IUIs don’t work, then it is time to move on to a more aggressive treatment.  Our doctor suggested that a fourth IUI wouldn’t be in our best interest. 

·         The doctor briefly outlined the IVF process.  Fertility drugs starting on day 2 and lasting 8-10 days (aka injections into my stomach) with frequent doctor visits to monitor growth and figure out if drug dosage needs to be tweaked.  Egg retrieval where they knock me out and grab the follicles/eggs trans-vaginally.  The procedure shouldn’t be a big deal- you don’t even leave the office with a pain prescription.  Then the eggs are sperminated and 1-2 embryos inserted into me.  If there are leftover embryos then they are frozen for a cycle either the following month or later down the road if the IVF works.

·         Because of CP’s sperm analysis and his 2% and 4% readings of “good sperm” that might be the reason that the IUIs are not working.  I thought that because he had great samples (aka a lot of sperm running around for the IUIs), we were in the clear, but apparently we are not. So because of his sperm analysis, the doctor recommended a more expensive IVF procedure that injects a single sperm into an egg to fertilize instead of putting the sperm and egg together in a dish and allowing the sperm to fertilize by themselves. 

·         The doctor estimated that if CP’s new insurance didn’t cover IVF then it would most likely be $15,000.  If the first fresh cycle was unsuccessful, then future frozen cycles would be much less expensive (more like $5,000).  We find out about CP’s insurance on Monday- and we are crossing our fingers and toes that it covers IVF!

·         I asked about my endometriosis and whether it could come back/be a problem.  The doctor surprisingly said that there have been two studies on Stage Two endometriosis and whether it effects fertility.  In one study the woman that had the endo taken out via surgery and got pregnant more often than women in the control group that didn’t have the surgery, in another study the surgery didn’t make a difference.  The doctor also said that the endo usually doesn’t get any worse.  So if I only have Stage Two, then if it does come back then it isn’t likely to jump to Stage Four with adhesions/scarring/etc.

·         We  have a referral for a doctor in Chicago that our doctor used to work with.  So hopefully he is able to fit us in after I move out to Chicago.

CP feels better about this after talking to the doctor.  Now that he knows that there is not much we can do until we get out there.  Hopefully in August we can hit the ground running (with insurance??).