Do you want the bad news first OR the bad news first?

Do you want the bad news first OR the bad news first?

…is what my RE should’ve asked at my appointment today.  Do you know those moments you have in your life when things really won’t be the same afterwards?  I think I just had one.  

Let’s rewind a bit.  I’ve had a long day, and it’s only noonish.  It started at about 4 am when I woke up and could’ve SWORN that my son got me up to take him to the potty, but when I stood up, he wasn’t there.  Totally creepy.  Anyway, I couldn’t go back to sleep, and then my son actually DID need help going potty at 5 am, so I figured I might as well just stay up since I was planning on getting up at 6 am anyway.   Showered and got ready for the magic wand and tried to do this mess of a hair, dropped my son off at my friend’s house (who incidentally, mentioned that she didn’t think my hair looked that bad, which means she’s a bloggie, which means that I LOVE her…especially for watching my son for so long today)…where was I?  Oh yeah, dropped my son off and drove to the hospital.

Mindless highway driving until I got to this tunnel where brake lights are coming at me quickly.  Slammed on my brakes and then watched in horror in my rear-view mirror as the semi truck behind me wrestled to stop before slamming into me.  Massive adrenaline surge and then shakily drove the rest of the way to the hospital.

Got to the appointment and tried to have some pleasantries with the other IF patients, but nobody was into it.  Seriously, people wait at the RE’s office like they’re waited to be be-headed or something.  I know it’s no fun to go to the RE, but geesh, we’re all in the same boat here…let’s have a little convo about it.  Anyway, met with the magic wand and discovered that BetterBe (that’s my cyst’s name, short for ‘BetterBeGoneByMarch’) was still a 20 mm.  Yay.

So, I’m waiting for the Doc to make my magical ‘cyst-be-gone’ plan, but I guess he wasn’t even in yet, so instead I read an old issue of People which was missing it’s cover because the other patients were hogging the other, more recent, Peoples.  So, things get better when in walks one of my former co-workers I hadn’t seen in YEARS!  The RE’s office is a very strange place to reunite with someone, but we used to be pretty close, so it was actually quite awesome!   So, the doc ended up being quite late, but I got to catch up with my old friend, so all in all, not terrible.

(Grammar error alert, I’m changing my story-telling to the present tense here)  And then we meet.  And he says there are two things that he wants to discuss with me.  OK, I’m ready.  He starts with good ol’ BetterBe, and says it ’should’ve gone away’ with the meds I was taking if it were just a common cyst.  99% of them do.  He actually thinks that this is an ‘endometrioma’ which is a cyst caused by my cruddy friendo, ‘endo’, which will not go away on its own and may get increasingly larger.  So that’s stinks.  He says the only way to get rid of BetterBe is with surgery, but that there are complications associated with removing endometriomas (let’s call them ‘endo cysts’ for user ease, shall we?) which might mean removing the entire ovary.  Furthermore, he says because I’ve already had an extensive lap and a c-section, that he might find there’s too much scar tissue in my pelvic cavity to do a laproscopic procedure, so I would need to have a ‘laparotomy’ instead, where they cut wide open like with my c-section. 

So that was the bad news.  Now onto the other bad news…see he didn’t offer me the ‘mandatory’ good news alternative that docs are supposed to.  Well, he did say that BetterBe didn’t look cancerous, which I know is great news, but I hadn’t even considered that as a possibility, so I didn’t find that news to be a relief.  Anyway, doc tells me they’ve been looking at my ‘egg reserve’ on my U/S and that they’ve been getting lower the past two months.  What does this mean?  Well, it means I am most likely going into (now this is where I started to feel that ‘my life is changing now’ sensation)…I am most likely going into pre-mature ovarian failure (which basically means going into menopause before the age of 40).

Stare blankly at the doc while he’s talking and just hear a lot of murmuring. 

It’s not extremely severe yet, he says, but there is no treatment and the only direction to go from here  is down.   So he says that having this POF (that’s what they call it, like “poof” let’s magically make your eggs go bye-bye) lessons my chances by 30% of getting preggo in the first place and increases my chances of miscarrying by 20%.  Now I already have percent problems with my endo and PCOS, I really didn’t need any additional ones.

So, here’s the plan:  Because BetterBe is only 20 mm, he says I can actually get preggo with that size cyst, so he wants t wait on surgery until a few more cycles.  So I’m off my crazy med, norethindrone, and going to go back on my other crazy med, clomid, to do my last cycle of the basics:  clomid, metformin, and trigger.  If this cycle doesn’t work, we’re adding follistim for two more tries.  If that doesn’t work, then we ‘reconvene’ to discuss IVF or egg donation…what?  When he started in on that I just really blanked out.  I’m just not in that head space yet.

At any time, he warned me, if BetterBe looks ’suspcious’ I’m getting pulled from my cycles and ordered to surgery.

So that’s that.  I’m still sort of numb about the whole thing.  I don’t think I should’ve driven home as I found myself zoned out listening to static on the radio, or worse, some hiphop song where the guy kept yelling  ’she a skank’ (at least I think that’s what he said).  I promised myself I wouldn’t do an internet search of ‘endo cysts’ or ‘POF” today.  Haven’t had an all-out cry yet.  I’m sure I will.  I’m just eating my french fries and taking it all in.  And I think I need to call my old hair dresser too, because bad hair AND endo cysts AND ‘POF’ are enough to make a girl go over the edge. 

Seriously.

Monday Quickie!

Well, I’m hoping to get this blog a little bit more interactive today!  I have a couple ideas up my sleeve to help.  The first is inspired by that old game show “The $25,000 Pyramid”.   I think they kept increasing the numeric value of the show, but the premise was always the same:  that you would try to get your partner to say the words on your list by giving them clues.   But my favorite part of the show was the finale, where the winning team woud sit in the Winner’s Circle in front of a large pyramid composed of six boxes. Each box contained a category, such as “Things You Plan” or “Why You Exercise”, and would be revealed one at a time.  One player gave a list of items or descriptions to the other player, who attempted to guess the category to which all of the described items belonged.   Example:

Player One:  Oh, I’m very, very tired of being used every morning by the missus.  She’s got bad morning breath and doesn’t even get up to brush her teeth before she puts me in her mouth.  She thinks my batteries might be running low so…

Player Two:  What a thermometer would say!

Get it?  OK, so here’s an ‘answer’ for you to come up with a creative ‘category’ of who might be saying this and why…

 

Give me your most creative answer as a comment!  I also created a few fun ‘plaques’ let’s call them, for you to steal if you’d like for your myspace, webpage, blog, etc.  I’m all about generosity today!

 

I go to the RE today to see what the heck we’re going to do about ‘BetterBe’.  Hopefully I don’t have to stop by McDonalds for emergency french fries on the way home (unless I just WANT french fries).  Wish me luck girls!