Fertility Part II

...Then I went to get a diagnostic ultrasound ordered by the repro-endo (like my nickname for him? He's actually way-fun.)



Anyway, I showed up the appointment and I'd forgotten my insurance card. Very bright. After some stressful finagling there, I had a serious coughing fit in the office and had to go to the restroom to recover in peace. As I'm on my way I'm thinking, "Today is going really well."



But then I recover and I cross through the lobby again and I find a $10 bill with no logical place or person to return it to. Hmmm. Then I get called in and have the ultrasound. A doctor there comes in and says she's puzzled as to why I'm there. She basically says I have the reproductive health of a 14 year old cheerleader (no, she didn't actually say that). But she says she never would have known about the radiation, and my uterus et. al. looked"gorgeous". (Aside: Why do these doctors keep referring to anatomy and yucky stuff in terms we would normally reserve for People's Sexiest Man Alive?)



I know, I know, this doesn't mean necessarilly that all is hunky dory. More likely, the AMH test is much more revealing than this. But still, I thought....I dunno. After the $10 and then this, I thought, maybe something big will come easily and gracefully to me, like that ten bucks. Maybe I do have some luck left over after my successful surgery.



I see things happening for a reason and little things being reflective of something larger much, much more than I used to.



We shall see.

Fertility Part I

I'm not going to make excuses here for how long it's been since I last blogged (Hmm, that sounds like "How long since your last confession?" when I would usually lie to the priest about how long it had actually been. Yes, in confession.).

So while I'm on a confessional bent, it's been an interesting couple of months. I found out about a month ago that my fertility is probably in the dumper. And boy, it was a blow. Once again, I went into the appointment with the reproductive endocrinologist thinking that everything was probably just fine. Sure, I'd had some pretty heavy duty radiation, but my radiation oncologist didn't expect anything to be affected, and so I just went with that.

Bad idea.

I was quite taken aback. I guess my AMH was .2. Last year (pre-radiation) it was 1.2 (should be .7 or above). That's not so good. And old as I may be, I don't think age could blow things up quite that effectively.

Why I haven't been prepared for the worst these past couple of years, I don't know, but I just haven't. Then when the worst happens, I am completely caught off guard. Then I'm caught off guard by the fact that I'm caught off guard! How crazy is that?

I know I have options. I saved embryos. And there are even options before we get to that point. It just took me some time to get used to the fact that it was unlikely that I was going to conceive naturally. It made me sad. And then there was part of me that thought, "Maybe I'm not going to have another child." And going down that road made me sadder.

I guess there is this category of the "healthy" (interchangeable with "lucky") cancer survivor. (BTW, as everyone is coughing and sneezing around me this season I've had barely a sniffle and the irony does not pass me by.) I've said this before, but as easy (and, I guess, healthy) as it is to slip back into your old life's routines, you're not the same person. You're the post-cancer person. Then, these things crop up like whack-a-moles, but they're whacking you on the head, as opposed to the other way around.

But a week or two passed and I made peace with the post-cancer me and her options and then....