Well, I finally had that long awaited appointment with another RE (that would be the 3rd one in 3 years). I can tell you that after 90 minutes with him, I wish I had gone to him 3 years ago. He is of the school of thought that you should figure out why you cannot get pregnant rather than just assuming it's old age. Hmmm, you think? I just always assumed it was a combination of my crappy old eggs and Tarzan's less than stellar sperm. Well we've known for more than a year now that Tarzan's sperm is back to normal. Maybe it was the boxer shorts, or not wearing a cell phone on the lap, or not using the heated seats in the car, but his last 2 semen analyses were completely normal. I've just assumed that the real culprit all of this time has been my eggs. However he suggested that it is possible (just a possibility) that I have undiagnosed endometriosis with no symptoms other than the infertility. He says that even if I don't have the telltale signs of painful periods or painful intercourse, that I could still have it and it may be causing my body to secrete antibodies that are attacking Tarzan's sperm. However he said the only definite way to diagnose it is with laparoscopic surgery. He can run a blood test CA125 that may give a telltale sign, but it would not be 100% sure - only surgery can do that.
He was not pushing surgery at all, just sharing one option if I wanted to try with my own eggs for another year or two. He is the first doctor I've met who didn't say I was too old. I do have a friend of a friend who has done several IVFs with this doctor and now has 3 kids and she was 42 when the last one was born. She probably did 6-7 IVFs/FETs in order have those kids all in her late 30s/early 40s.
Then Dr. B and I talked about my previous IVF cycles including my DE cycle. He doesn't think our donor was a dud, in fact he would try her again, but would use a different protocol. He thinks for a 24 year old with proven fertility and the excellent labs that our donor has, we should be able to get more eggs out of her.
He also says he didn't think I was that bad of a responder in the IVFs with my own eggs. He said based on my FSH (which last one was 8 months ago), he doesn't think my eggs are all that bad. However I'd need a new CD3 blood work-up to see where it is now. He said if we wanted to we could even try another IVF with my eggs, but just convert it to an IUI if I didn't get enough follicles. I don't know if I am up for that. I'd be more inclined to do the lap surgery to see if I had endometriosis and then if that was indeed found and removed, to try on our own or with IUIs for a few months.
He doesn't think we received bad care at RMA, he just has different theories about protocols, medicines, than they do. He does things differently. I got the impression that he feels they tend to throw IVF and Donor Eggs IVF at every issue rather than try to figure out what the real issue is. I think there may be some more fundamental disagreements and maybe some drama or history there, but he was being politically correct and not telling me everything. I really liked the way the doctors and nurses treated me at RMA, they were always super friendly, but I suppose I need to look beyond the surface and at the results. Plus even though I really liked my doctors at RMA, Tarzan doesn't. He doesn't trust them.
We then talked about my one lonely frozen embryo that is waiting for us to do something with. Do we do a FET at RMA in May with only 1 embryo? He agreed with RMAs statistics for success with that one embie - 70% chance of surviving the thaw, 35-40% chance of producing a pregnancy if it survives the thaw. He said it's up to us to decide if we want to try the FET with it, but it is risky (isn't everything we've done so far a risk?). He said we could leave it frozen for as long as we wanted and decide if we want to do a fresh cycle either with my eggs or donor eggs and save that frozen embie for a future FET when we have more frozen embryos. He said we could try non IVF treatments first.
So.......lots to think about. I really liked him and I think Tarzan would too. In fact since Tarzan is a Quality Engineer I have a feeling he and Dr. B would hit it off. So now comes the hard part - what do we do?
3 comments:
Wow. I am so glad you have more information. Lots to think about.
Yay - information! I would totally go for the lap; it is not that big of a deal, since normally they go in "from below" (no cuts). If this is what they are talking about for you, I'd do it asap. You'll get much more info and they'll really get to see what's going on in there.
Once that is done, you can make a much more informed decision - I had one done a few months before I got married (coincidence, I have severe endo and it just needed doing) but we got preggers the FIRST month we tried! Of course now that is all different, but MY eggs really are expired!
Best of luck, hon, sounds like this doc is a winner.
Wow, he sounds fantastic. I'll have to read on to see what you guys decided. I kind of agree that trying the lap might be a good idea, especially if you really want to continue trying with your own eggs.
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