Saturday 17 October 2015

Another roadblock

I'm just going to skip over the fact that I have once again broken my own commitment to blog regularly and get straight to the bad news....

It all started with the hysteroscopy. I was very nervous prior and had to insert two cytotec tablets as close to my cervix as possible the night before. For the first half hour/hour I thought maybe I hadn't done it right as I wasn't feeling anything as I drifted off to sleep....well I must say I had a fabulous 45 minutes of sleep before I woke up practically scratching the mattress in pain. That was the end of that...I was up all night with horrendous pain but I managed to be a big girl and not wake M up to make him experience it with me - I am definitely getting less selfish!! Go me.

I felt better the next morning (lovely painkillers fortified with codeine...) so off we went! It all started off very well and my consultant, who had seemed a bit grumpy and not very personable the last time, was in great form and made me laugh several times in an effort to get rid of my nerves. The procedure itself was quite uncomfortable but not unbearable and it was over quickly. The real pain came after when we sat down to have a little chat...

As far as he can tell from the MRI photos and the hysteroscopy, I'm not a candidate for surgery and he doesn't want to put me through it without a good chance of a positive outcome - something which he doesn't see as being possible. He diagnosed me with a uterus didelphys (basically a double uterus). Most people who have this condition (we are a distinct minority) have two cervixes but I only have one - I feel so special!! Not really. Unfortunately the larger part of my uterus is blocked, with no access. This means that I can only get pregnant in the small part. This is very bad news because basically I will need to have several miscarriages to stretch my womb naturally and the hope is that eventually it will be stretched enough to maintain a pregnancy to around 30 weeks. As I sat there listening to this (M was still in the waiting room and I wish they would have had the foresight to have asked him in for this) I tried hard not to cry but I failed miserably... I was absolutely devastated. This would be bad enough but we can't even get pregnant on our own so basically we need to have IVF (with ICSI) in order to get pregnant, pray it works...and then...well, wait for the pregnancy to end prematurely. It is hard to comprehend how it would be possible to even cope with this kind of pain - repeatedly.

So the past week and a half has been filled much pain, sadness and tears. I do feel like I'm coming out the other side somewhat and trying to focus on the positives in the situation - mainly this is that we can afford to do a few rounds of IVF. And we pray to God that we won't have to but I just feel so grateful that money is not something that will be stopping us from doing everything we can to overcome this and have the baby we both want so much.

We have a follow up meeting with our consultant in about two weeks - in the meantime he is meeting with his doctor buddies and seeing if they can come up with any suggestions for me. He did ask me to prepare myself emotionally for bad news, which I have done. I just don't know where my capacity to accept more and more bad news ends! I am afraid to keep going to find out. I just really hope that we will get some good news soon - it must be nearly our turn!!

In the meantime, we are waiting for the results of a follow up semen analysis to see if our vitamin binging, healthy eating and varicocele surgery have had a positive result. We have also signed up to an IVF open day in a local(ish) clinic to see if we can get the ball rolling on that. Onwards and upwards I guess...

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