Skip to main content

New ideas, fresh takes

So we went and met up with a new fertility doctor yesterday.
It was illuminating.
and *Very* different from what I've been doing.
The doctor was an interesting guy with some new ideas about what we can do with our cycles... interpersonally, he's rather different from my last doctor who was all sweet and caring... this guy was warm too, but had quite some brashness, used some rather un-technical language like "vag" and "shagging"... and he also has a tic which made the experience a bit more colourful (he hums little tunes all the time). I don't know, I think this field of medicine might attract some interesting characters.  Anyway, I guess the important thing is that he seems an honest and up front kind of guy who will tell it like it is... I think I will like him... it's just a bit of an adjustment. Plus it doesn't matter so much if I like him or not, just whether he can get the job done!
He has definitely given us some new treatment options that my last doctor wasn't comfortable with I don't think. So we will give it a go. He suggests we use a different protocol to stimulate more and get more eggs... and go freeze-all with whatever embryos we make. We'll see how that goes... somewhat hard to believe since we've never been able to freeze anything up to this point, but it's worth trying something different to see what happens. He didn't think it was time to consider donor options just yet though didn't put that off the table.
I still have a few mixed feelings... part of me is feeling foolish for not doing more research, for being too passive in this whole thing, for doing too much of the same old thing over and over with treatment up til now. Part of me feels angry that I feel foolish - I'm paying these guys enough money that I should be able to trust them to do the research for me! Part of me is then feeling hopeful of course that this new approach could offer something. Part of me feels cynical too-- that there's probably a reason my first doctor didn't try this - that he doesn't think it would offer anything different. But, you know, I'm open minded....
as is always the case in this infertility stuff, we'll keep fingers crossed and wait and see...

Comments

  1. A second opinion and a different approach is always worth trying!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the stories that are out there

It seems to me that the happy-ending story that is so often "out there" about infertility is this: "Here is a couple who struggled and struggled to have kids, and then, finally, they had a baby. The end"... I think something about this story feels like a lack of honouring of the losses felt along the way for infertile couples. I know life goes on, and I know it does no one any good at all to get stuck in grief or pain. But surely there is some kind of transition for people to adjust from infertility to parenthood? Maybe there is a certain loss that is always felt? Transitioning to parenthood seems like it would be a hard process following infertility battles, and different somehow from a "normal fertility" transition to parenthood which I am sure would be hard enough (and I think is spoken about a lot). Something about the "...and then they had a baby" part of the story seems a bit dismissive about the infertility dramas, or gives a message of-...

belonging or be longing somewhere

I heard a great radio segment the other day on the importance of belonging.  Belonging is a pretty core and pretty basic human need I would say, and we certainly don't feel great, in fact we probably do things like turn to drugs and alcohol or other addictions or avoidant behaviours, when we don't have a strong sense of belonging somewhere in the world. These notions of belonging got me thinking about the infertility/trying to conceive journey. I guess getting online and reading and writing a blog has been all about gaining a better sense of belonging in this process. But even in this lovely online world there is a sad kind of aspect to it that... some people move on to the world of having kids and it doesn't feel like I "Belong" with them in the same sense. Some move on to have no kids, but as I am still trying to have kids, in a sense, don't "belong" there either. I can perhaps feel that I belong wholeheartedly with other people in my position, bu...

a few thoughts on where am I at

I'm getting over it. We have recently had the results of our 7th IVF round... which are... negative. sigh. I'm not surprised of course. It's starting to feel a bit ridiculous. Plan is to meet with a third doctor, who we have been waiting to see for months, to see what light he would shed. The thing I'm frustrated about is that IVF... it's not treating the problem at all, as far as I can see. I'm not a doctor but it seems to me that there's something up with the fact that our embryos are not hardy. IVF is just trying to maximise numbers, not helping to fix whatever is causing the problem with the embryos. But the thing is that the medical professionals don't actually know what the problem is for us... so IVF is all they've got to offer. I'm feeling a bit silly to continue with it, because who knows how long it could go on for, and who knows if for us, with whatever our problem is, whether it even could work. Well a few questions for the new do...