Testing

Searching for the right doctor can be hard, especially when you’re not quite sure who is going to help you out the best. After looking online at different doctor’s information and seeing who would accept our insurance, we finally came across a doctor that I felt comfortable going and seeing. She was and OB/GYN who specialized in endocrinology.

After my exam, she listened carefully to everything that I had to say and to what I had done in the past. This time I came in prepared! I wasn’t going to go out of that office without a plan. I had kept copious notes on my cycle and tracked everything that we had done so far. After I was done talking to her she suggested that we try clomid again but only after I had had some testing done. She said that we needed to figure out what was causing my infertility and not just assume that clomid would fix the problem.

The first exam she had me do a was a simple ultrasound and I say simple now because considering everything I have done since then, an ultrasound is very simple. During the ultrasound, they discovered that I had quite a few cysts on each of my ovaries. Having that many cysts was a huge indicator that I had polycystic ovarian syndrome or PCOS. This is usually caused when a woman is not ovulating correctly and can cause her to not ovulate at all.

With these findings, my doctor decided to put me on a drug called metformin. Metformin is a diabetic medicine that helps regulate the processing of sugar. My doctor informed me that all though I am not diabetic (this was determined through several blood tests) that my body was not processing the sugars correctly which can cause problems with ovulation. So she wrote me a prescription and I started taking metformin.

She still wanted to do further testing to make sure that all my reproduction organs were functioning correctly and looked healthy. That is when she scheduled for me to have a hysterosalpingogram (HSG), to make sure that my tubes were clear.

This is the test where they inject an iodine solution in through the uterus and push it through the tubes. The iodine is a great reflector for the x-ray machine to pick up, so after they have pushed the iodine through the uterus they start up the imagining equipment. My Radiologist was very nice and allowed me to see what was going on and what they were doing. Although this is not a very comfortable exam, it was neat to see that was going on.

The results ended up showing that I had one tube that was blocked where the other seamed clean and clear. The radiologist then proceeded to tell me that the tube could have closed up in reaction to the test and there could be nothing wrong with it, or there could be problems. She then continued to assure me that the since everything else looked great, there should be no reason why I shouldn’t get pregnant soon. I think the worst thing about the HSG exam is that fact that I found out that I was actually allergic to Iodine. For a week or two after the test, I was extremely sick, word to the wise, don’t have this exam done if you are allergic to iodine.

Back to the doctors I went. My doctor informed me that it was ok to start taking the clomid and that it is likely, depending on which ovary ovulated, that I could still get pregnant with one tube. So back onto clomid we went. Another 3 months passes by to no avail.

By this time Sean was ready to head back to grad school and I had been offered a job in Utah which made it impossible to continue fertility treatments. We decided that we for our 5^th anniversary we would go see a fertility specialist, to really figure out what was going on.