It’s time for a second opinion.

I could list all the things that my reproductive endocrinologist has done, not done, said, not said, forgotten, glossed over, fucking made light of,  or simply shrugged off, and maybe you would get how disappointed and angered I am by this woman, but well, it’s a long list.  I am not even sure where to start. So I’ll begin with today – Today, in a follow-up ultrasound, she could not find my right ovary. Yeah, I wrote that.  She informed me this made sense since they must have removed it [MY OVARY] durring my cystectomy back in February. Um, no. They did not remove my ovary.  I expressed my disbelief and she felt compelled to check my records.  “Oh right. In your post-op, it was there”. Yeah, I knew that.

So, I get that docs are busy people. I get that it’s hard for them. I do not always have the best days on the job, but it would be nice if she knew who the fuck she was talking to. Look at my records before you walk into the room, woman! I do not know how many times I had remind her that I have an obstructed fallopian tube.

“Oh but your left ovary looks wonderful”, she muses.

“But my left fallopian tube is blocked” I reminder her.

“Oh”, she says time and time again.

So yeah, today she can’t find my right ovary. Awesome. Totally inspires confidence.

And lets not forget, she is the doc that has taken my long, in depth medical history. The lady that knows, I have HHT and had a stroke when I was 23, yet this is the same lady that advices me to consider the AMIGOS study. The same study that I do not, and never will, qualify for since I had a stroke. Maybe it’s just hard to keep track of it all. Or maybe she is just a thoughtless piece of shit. Sorry. I know that’s harsh, but that is how it all makes me feel – like a piece of shit… That I spent 8 months hanging on her every diagnosis, her every word. Hoping, against hope that I will hear something that I can trust and count on.

I would LOVE to hear her defense. LOVE to give her a chance to explain her shitty care, but she interrupts me. She shrugs her shoulders. She explains that a missing ovary is nothing to worry about and walks out of the room. For real.

So anyway, time for a second opinion. Hospital #2, you are up.

So the good news is that I wont be taking any fertility drugs. Whew. The bad news is I wont be participating in the AMIGOS study.  I did not qualify. Not because I have an obstructed fallopian tube. Not because I had a grapefruit sized cyst on my right ovary. Not because I have crappy hormone levels. Not because his sperm count is borderline. All that other shit would have let us pass. I was disqualified because I had a stroke when I was 23. Ouch.

So it’s perhaps important to note here that I really would not be able to qualify for ANY study that includes the use of fertility drugs.  All because of that incy wincy stroke 15 years ago. Thank you, HHT, Thank you.

We are going tomorrow to see if we qualify for a that study that would give us four months of IUI with fertility drugs. I have never been so torn about anything. Never wanted to do and not do something so equally in my entire life. Well, that’s not true. I really don’t want to do this, not at all, but I would never forgive myself if we did not try. In equal parts. In any event, the next four months might be really, truly awful. Crazy on drugs. 8 appointments a month. 4 torturous two week waits. OR, I’ll find out tomorrow that we don’t qualify for some odd reason. Which will be devastating in its own terrible way, because my doctor has told me the likelihood of getting pregnant without assistance would be nothing short of a miracle.  Not qualifying will put me 4 months closer to the inevitable.

Of course I realize there is a chance that 4 months of IUI could actually get me pregnant, but honestly, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that 100 months of IUI will do a thing for me. In truth, I think I have lost all hope of ever getting pregnant. When I think about the future – the next 4 months, the next 12 – I just see the disappointment. I only see me in one year’s time without a baby. I see having to deal with the loss. The only future I can honestly foresee is the greif and then eventual acceptance. And god knows how long that will take.

I can’t tell if it’s because I intuitively have this knowledge of my absolute infertility or because there is still some smattering hope deep down somewhere and I have to hide from it at all costs. Even the tiniest bit of hope makes each month a million times harder. Even a little bit of enthusiasm makes each flush of blood that much of a bigger heartbreak.

Having no hope at all might be the only way to survive the next four months. I can hear a dozen voices say (these are the same “just relax and it will happen” voices), “well, with that sort of attitude…” and all I can say to them is ‘go fuck yourselves’.

So here is the scoop…

I am 38, well I was 37 when we started. In early spring of 2011, my beau and I stopped using birth control. By June, I decided I wanted to have a better idea of how shit worked so, by July I had a full month of fertility charting. By the time October hit, I suspected something was up. As far as I could tell I was ovulating each month, but all the perfectly timed sex I could have in 5 month hadn’t gotten me knocked up, so I went to the Doctor. By November I had a fertility specialist giving me the “full work-up” (what a bull shit concept that is. more on that later). So by December, I had one obstructed fallopian tube (left), a fist sized ovarian cyst (right), and the hormones (FSH, AMH, TSH) of a lady past 40. In other words, it made perfect sense I was not getting pregnant. I was a mess. Before the end of 2012 I had joined a Resolve infertility support group.

In February 2012, I had the cyst removed. Nothing could be done about the fallopian tube. I kept trying naturally. By April I owed the hospital so much, I could no longer seek “voluntary” fertility services, so I had to take a break from doctors until I could pay the bills off. I kept trying naturally. June came and went. A full year had come and gone. Now it’s July and I am still not pregnant. My specialist tells me that I have run out of “natural” options. That my only really choice to do some assisted fertility technique. My insurance does not cover anything assisted. I live paycheck to paycheck.

Yeah.