Fertility Doc round-up

As I took a left out of the end of my road this morning, not two minutes from my house, I hit a detour. (They're repaving a piece of the street that been in ruins for the entire two years I've lived here. Two years.) I called my husband and said, "do you think that it's a bad omen that I'm only two minutes from home and I already hit a detour?"

Luckily, the rest of the ride was uneventful and the doctor's appointment wasn't all bad.

Two major things came out of the appointment today: I'm NOT taking Clomid after all, and I'm going to try to stop drinking during the months when I'm TTC. That goes completely against my rule of "I refuse to put my life completely on hold" but the doctor suggested that although occasional drinking while TTC doesn't increase the odds of miscarriage, there are some studies that show that drinking even while trying to conceive can adversely affect the baby.

Here's how it went down. The doctor never did get my medical record. It's probably going to show up in their mail today. Thanks a lot you useless-piece-of-crap medical records person who "put it in the mail" on Wednesday of last week. It could have made it there by pony by now.

I basically paid a whole lot of money out of pocket for the doctor to order the chromosomal testing for T and I that Dr. N probably should have ordered.

See, having a normal baby doesn't necessarily rule out chromosomal issues for T and I as I understood Dr. N to say. (Maybe I misunderstood him, but either way, he didn't order the tests.) Dr. G. ordered those labs, which I'm really happy about, and the results will be available in a few weeks.

Now for the Clomid. I'm sure that Dr. N has reasons / a good track record with the use of Clomid for people like me. However, when I told Dr. G that I was being prescribed Clomid (and I'm supposed to start taking it today if I'm going to take it) she couldn't understand why he was suggesting Clomid since I don't have trouble getting pregnant. In fact, she said that 20% of the time, Clomid causes the endometrial lining to be thinner, which I definitely don't need to add to my list of things to worry about. I explained that Dr. N wanted to help my body to produce progesterone on its own, and she didn't seem to agree, but she kept her opinion to herself.

My impression of Dr. G is a tough call. She absolutely knows her stuff. She's very, very smart, but she also talked fast and "above my head" for much of the time. In the end, I think I preferred that to the feeling that I get with Dr. N, that he (and his staff) are not paying enough attention. Dr. G is being proactive and ordering more tests. Dr. N's suggestion was to just "see what happens."

The plan: Chromosomal testing for T and me, try to get pregnant this month (yay!) and start taking progesterone three days after LH surge. Baby aspirin is up to me, and she said to go ahead and start taking it now if I want to. (It sounded like she didn't think it made a difference.)

When do the candid cameras come in?

Well, things didn't really get better, (in fact, I would venture to say that they've gotten progressively worse) but I think I've adjusted to the suckage of everything and am trying to roll with it.

We're keeping the appointment on Monday even though we'll have to pay for it out of pocket (holy crap is it expensive!) because the freaking PCP's BigHugeCorporation won't give an out of state referral, even though the doctor ALSO practices in state. (I may have mentioned that a few. dozen. times.)

I'm a serious type-A personality. I hate when things aren't organized, and I hate having to flip through things to find something. A few weeks ago I channeled my heartbreak and anger into a five page single spaced medical history detailing my entire history of illness (not much) and pregnancy/pregnancy loss. We're talking exact dates, here, even down to periods I missed in 1999 and 2000. It took hours. Now, whenever a doctor asks me a question about my family's medical issues, my own medical issues in terms of what/when/where, I'll be able to find it at my fingertips.

It's looking like a mighty good thing that I'm so anal right about now, because it looks like that might be all the doctor has to go by on Monday. Believe it or not, they still haven't received my medical history in the mail (and the mail already came today.) There's a chance that it will show up in Saturday's mail, but I'm not holding my breath. For some reason, I'm not feeling particularly lucky right now.

Please, please, please, let the doctor tell me that she thinks she can figure this thing out, and that she has a better answer than, "roll the dice again..."