The early stages
Unfortunately, I discovered that women fertility specialists are not as common as you would think. I even got referred to one woman specialist, who I found out after waiting over a month to see her, that the doctor who had given the recommendation had been wrong. She was just an OBGYN, She told me to come back after I was pregnant. So then she referred me to Conceptions Fertility clinic in Provo. Even though the doctor is a man, they are respectful of privacy and have women nurses do all of the ultrasounds and checkups.
My first appointment for fertility came along and they immediately wanted to steal my blood for tests. Ahhh! Well…I tried. I cried. I pulled away and freaked out and had to call my mom so I could hear her voice while they did a blood draw. I did eventually get through it. But then they said they needed me to do it again in 2 hours for a glucose test. I just couldn't. There was just no way. So we gave up and called it good. And sent me home.
After tests, they found out that I had a polyp that needed to be removed. What a gross name to match such a nasty object. I would have to deal with another needle during anesthesia. I sobbed in the office.
My wonderful mother came with me to get the polyp removed. I was so grateful. Luckily with that procedure it was okay if I just passed out. That was kind of the idea. It was not a huge deal other then horrible nausea after I woke up from the mini surgery.
Anyway, I got put on some meds that we hoped would work. Nope. That's when the IUI's started. Meanwhile, things at home were not okay with all of our issues clashing, causing mayhem.
IUI's required a shot three days a month, at home. Yeah…I was not about to stab myself with them. My sweet husband took that responsibility on. It was actually pretty funny the lengths we had to go through to accomplish administering the shots. I couldn't just sit still and let him stab me. My body wouldn't allow it. So, I had to be heavily medicated. However, even with that, I could not stay still. I bought a tattoo numbing cream. It helped, but not enough to calm the psycho wild cat clawing inside of me. Next idea…V.R. headset. Yeah. I would be in a completely other world. You think I would be okay. Nope. Not yet. Every time Zack would even touch me, I would flinch. So, I blasted music in my ears to zone out more. Still, I was freaking out. Finally, I got a mechanical pencil and had Zack poke me with it over and over again until I stopped flinching every time he touched me. Then, once I seemed ready, he delivered the shot. I could definitely tell the difference between the pencil and the shot because it pinched as the foreign object pressed into my skin.
Passing out is already really weird. Try passing out with a V.R. headset on! It's really trippy because reality is already confusing. I don't know where consciousness started or ended. However, I survived. I did it. The first shot, accomplished.
That was the hardest of those, shot wise. Beyond the shots, we were dealing with insane family crisis issues, including an important custody hearing and mental health issues. I won't go into them in order to protect privacy.
After several failed IUI treatments, the next step was to have a laparoscopic surgery to remove some endometriosis. My mom was gone on her mission, so I got support from Zack, my sisters, and my wonderful boss.
After more pokes, I went under. When I woke up, the doctor told me that they had to make an extra incision because they found a tumor in my ovary instead of endometriosis. That tumor was so big they had to do an extra incision. The interesting part about that tumor is it was growing hair, teeth, skin and other strange things. Who knew My ovaries could grow their own body parts? Wild. No, It was not because I had miscarried. It's just a weird thing the body does sometimes. An amazing thing about that is it was much less likely to grow back than endometriosis. After surgery would have been the best time to go back to IUIs. But…the chaotic home life broke us down to where I was having suicidal intentions, and contention in our marriage. With many tears, we paused our fertility treatments.
We were heartbroken. I fell into a deep depression.
For the next year, we worked on ourselves, making sure we were mentally and physically stable. We found the right therapists and psychiatrists. We leaned on our ward more and worked on our spirituality. It was both challenging and satisfying to progress as a family so much.
Once we felt somewhat solid and we finally gained full custody of August, we teased the idea of starting IVF.
We talked to our fertility Dr. again. He ordered a ton of blood tests! I mean like 12 vials of blood!! We also got back onto fertility meds, hoping that we would have more success without my tumor. However, after prayer and consideration, Zack and I felt like the time was still not quite right for IVF. We wanted to be more financially prepared and August needed extra attention after his wonderful therapist passed away—more waiting.
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