Dr.'s Game Plan

Well, I sucked it up and headed to Dr. Grainger's today.

Dave was able to sneak away from work and he and I drove up to Wichita together, after stopping for a cheddar-wurst-puke-in-my-mouth hot dog for his lunch.

We were the only ones in the waiting room.  I sat around.  Dave sat around.  It was pretty freaking awesome.

Husband of the Year, even with the poo/blood mixture on his hat.

If you know Dave--well, he doesn't sit patiently very well.  He was bored to tears.  I reminded him this is what his patients have to do when he is in the back eating pizza and catching up on the latest epidsode of Days doing veterinarian things like wearing long gloves or hydrating a snake with gatorade (for realsies!). He said that at least they have dogs to entertain them. True.

We got escorted to the "special office" where I've only been twice before.  Deb, one of the nurses, took down my info and asked a little bit about my situation and wrote down some info in my ever-expanding folder.

And my tears made their grand entrance.

Not obnoxiously.  Just enough to need a tissue and make her feel sorry for me.

Then we waited for Dr. Grainger.

A long freaking time.

We looked at every piece of art on the wall (Dave said he wouldn't pay more than $5 for any of them).

He looked at every magazine.

And found these shoes- the Gravity Defyers- in one of them.

I don't know if they planned to have their ad in a magazine that was placed in a fertility doctor's office.

But, if they didn't, it was a sweet coincidence. Or super smart marketing.

Because look at the logo!

It screams Dr. Grainger's office!

Is there any grown man who would feel awesome wearing this shoes with those logos on the sides?   Excuse me, sir, do you realize you have sperm on your shoe? Whew. That's awkward.
If you want to read more about them, go here.

Maybe these are just the shoes to end our infertility and bring us buckets of children!

Too bad they are super-duper ugly.



Okay, that was a huge diversion.

The point is--we waited a long time.

Sweet Dr. Grainger came in.  He hugged me and immediately said, "Guys-what happened?"

Sigh. I love him.  He is so kind and thoughtful and hilarious.

We gave him the history- the ER visit, everything else being completely normal, no idea what caused Maggie's death.

He asked some questions and then I went through the list that I had for him.

I had a to-do list on my phone of what I wanted to ask him.

I will try to give you the short and sweet version.  If you really want to know more details about my insides, please ask.  I am not afraid to talk about them. And, I am not embarrassed either.  So, ask away if this bullet list does not provide you with enough information about my biz-nass.

DISCLAIMER. I teach 9 and 10 year olds.  I am not in the medical profession.  I'm pretty sure that I didn't get everything written down perfectly.  

• I am going in again in the next couple of weeks for a 3D histogram or sonohistogram or something like that.  This is going to check to see if everything inside of me is looking the way it should. He is going to look to see if there is any residual septum leftover from surgery last year and how things look after pregnancy.
• If things from the thing above don't look good, I am going to go under and have him go in and clean things out again. Not a complete laporoscopic surgery, but something where I get fun drugs and ice chips.
• If things do look good, we will start my treatments up again.  If you want full details of drugs and procedures, let me know.  The basics are: Ovidrel (injectible), Femara (oral pill), and IUI (get used to the acronyms- bet there are like 200 or 300 of them).
• He is hopeful that those procedures should be successful, as they were last time.
• He is also going to run some labs sometime in July that he usually runs for women with recurrent pregnancy loss (we just have to get insurance approval first). 
• He is also going to do some chromosomal analyses just to make sure that I am not whacked out and don't have crazy genes.
• He also might put me on Heparin, which is a blood thinner which may help with some of the bleeding that I experienced in December (ER visit). I was a little confused by this but Dave said it makes sense.  So, being the good wife, I shut up and listened.  Just kidding.  I just didn't need any more information swirling in my brain.  I'll ask Dr. Grainger later if it looks like an option.
• If/when I do get pregnant again, he (or Dr. Eck- not sure) would do more frequent sonograms to watch things.  He said that research has shown that the higher frequency of sonograms does lessen the chances of miscarriages/stillbirths.  And, not because they find anything that they can fix, but he said he thinks a lot has to do with lessening the stress levels.  

I feel good about things--good that I have a plan.
And, I am so thankful that I have such an excellent doctor.
I do have a load of things to be thankful for--that many women cannot even get to the point where I was at with Maggie, that I have an incredibly supportive husband, friends, coworkers.

Oh, and I forgot one thing.

Then I got my blood drawn to make sure I wasn't pregnant.

Surprise!

I wasn't.

BFN #36.  (Try to figure out that acronym!)