Today we sat down and talked with Dr. H about our options. I had several questions about some diagnostic tests that I felt it was probably time for. I'll start with those.
The first one is an HSG. Don't ask me to spell out the whole word. It's always referred to as an HSG, so that's what I'm going with :o) An HSG is basically an internal x-ray to check the fallopian tubes. The doctor inserts a catheter filled with dye, and puts the dye through the uterus so it can (hopefully) flow through the fallopian tubes. If the dye pools in the uterus it means the tubes are blocked. The radiologist can then watch the screen to see how much if any of the dye is able to flow around the reproductive organs. You're obviously hoping it doesn't pool in the uterus. Sometimes small blockages can be removed by the HSG, but the whole process is quite painful for most people. I wasn't looking forward to having it done, but it seemed pretty important.
Dr. H told me that he is not a big proponent of HSGs. He actually hasn't done them for about 10 years. He feels it's too painful and doesn't give a good enough indication of whether there are problems or not. He feels that doing a laparoscopy (LAP) gives a much better indication of physical problems within the reproductive organs. The downside of a LAP is even though it's considered a "minor" procedure, it's still surgery. I would be completely put under and in an operating room. That part kind of freaked me out. During the procedure Dr. H would use two or three laporoscopes to examine the inside of my abdomen, specifically the reproductive organs. This procedure would allow him to see if there are any endometriosis lesions, or other problems causing our infertility. It generally takes a day or two to recover from the procedure. He said that typically most patients end up moving to IVF after having a LAP done, IUI doesn't do enough any longer.
The other thing we could do was bypass the LAP altogether and just go straight to IVF. Since IVF is probably where we would end up anyway, it seems kind of pointless to put myself through the pain of surgery if it's not really necessary. While yes it would be nice to know a little more about what could be causing my infertility, I also don't want to spend more money and waste more time by doing a surgery that won't be super beneficial. For us, it's more exploratory than anything else.
So Matthew and I talked in the car and we decided that moving on to IVF is the way to go. We are trying to decide whether we want to get into the April or May IVF cycles our RE's office does. My biggest fear with IVF is getting the scheduling to work with my school schedule. Dr. H said that they could give me early morning and late afternoon appointments to work around my work, so hopefully that ends up being true. I know there will be some days I'll have to take off of work, but I don't want to use too much of my sick time. We have to use sick days for maternity leave. I can get up to 30 paid days, anything over that I can take unpaid. If I don't have 30 sick days to use, then I can use however many I have, be paid for those, then take the rest of my time unpaid. I'd like to avoid as many unpaid days as possible, so I've been really paranoid about using my sick time this year.
Anyway, we are continuing to move forward! Hopefully this is just the process we need in order to finally have the family we've been hoping for!
No comments:
Post a Comment