Things have been moving along "normally" over the past month since my last visit which has been fantastic news. I was able to have a somewhat normal cycle (for me) this month although it was while I was out of town which made it slightly more difficult to manage. The pain was definitely increased from last month but still nowhere near as bad as before the surgery.
I had an appointment scheduled for yesterday, the 17th, for the saline ultrasound and mock transfer. It needed to be done as early in my cycle as possible so that the lining of my uterus was the thinnest.
When I got to the office yesterday...it was the most crowded I've ever seen it. Apparently, this meant that Dr. Fritz was also extremely backed up. We ended up waiting over an hour for the appointment. SO FRUSTRATING! I couldn't even reschedule because I needed it done this month and I can't do it any other day this week.
The actual meeting with Dr. Fritz went fine and we all concurred that we are on track to move forward with IVF. When it was time to do the actual procedures, Dr. Fritz asked if it was ok for the other doctor at the practice to perform them because he was so backed up. While it wouldn't have been my first choice, I said yes because they were supposed to be easy and quick. I should have known better. Nothing I do is ever easy and quick when it comes to this.
First, we were doing the mock transfer. It involved placing the speculum to insert a catheter into the uterus to measure the length and depth. As it's similar to a normal pelvic exam, I'm already not a fan of this. I thought well at least it won't take long. Problem was my cervix apparently had an odd angle to it that was preventing the catheter from going in the way it should have. She had to add an additional clamp onto my uterus itself which she referred to as a "mean clamp". That device truly lived up to it's name. I'm pretty sure it was some sort of medieval torture device that was dug up in a closet. After 2 failed attempts, the doctor said she would give it one more try and then get Dr. Fritz if it didn't work. The good news was that it went straight in on the last attempt and we were done with that portion. By the end though, I was in tears because it had me so stressed out from the pain & cramping. Not to mention the thoughts that kept running through my head about having to go through this again on the day of the actual transfer.
Next up was the saline ultrasound to determine if my uterus is healthy enough for a pregnancy. The doctor said this should be the easy part. By now, I should have been able to predict that there would be nothing easy about this either. Again, the speculum was in place in order to insert a catheter into the uterus. About 10cc's of saline were to be injected through the catheter into the uterus after removing the speculum. The problem was that every time the speculum was removed and they started to inject the saline, the catheter would pop. This was repeated 5 times. Unreal. On the last attempt, the doctor was able to get 2 quick pictures of my uterus. Not optimal but enough to get an idea of what everything looked like.
Apparently, my cervix has an "S" shape to it or curve which was the problem with the mock transfer. Good news is that she confirmed that my uterus still looks great which I'm hoping is a wonderful sign for pregnancy. She went and got Dr. Fritz to come in and talk to me about everything and look at the images she had captured. He was super positive about everything and just told me to think of it as being "special". I think I could handle not being special right now. He gave me a big hug and told me to try not to worry. The reason for doing all these tests is so that on the day of the actual transfer, we have NONE of these issues arise. He said that I won't feel any cramping like I did during this because they have little "tricks" they can do to prevent that.
So, I still don't know when we are to actually start the meds. I'm emailing the practice today to tell them which payment option we decided upon and find out what we need to do about that. I guess we'll get more information after that.
At least, I'm another step closer to having our dream become a reality...
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