Something more substantial for your Thursday

Fair warning: This is a lot of specific stuff about my infertility, so it may or may not interest you at all. But this is MY (b)log and pretty much the only place where I keep track of major life stuff, so here it is.

Last week, I saw my former supervisor, who helped me through my training to become a FertilityCare Practitioner so many years ago. And I took her my recent charts. Because, come on, who's not going to take advantage of that expertise?

Yeah, I know...I've said before that I'm pretty much "over" fertility. And that's true. I still think about what it would be like to be pregnant and not have to go through a personal investigation and most of our savings to build our family. But I'm happy with adoption and I truly believe we have been called to become parents in this way.

But...there's always been this nagging fear that the wackiness in my cycles could lead to lingering medical issues. I've pushed it to the back of my mind several times as I try to focus on our little family, but it's still hanging out there.

So, former supervisor took one look at the charts and said, "You need to do something about this." To which I replied, "Even if we are not concerned about wanting to get pregnant?" Yes, even so. She believes that there's some underlying disease factor that could be detrimental to my overall health if it is not addressed at some point. She strongly encouraged me to prepare my treatment history and send my charts to Dr. Thomas Hilgers to ask for his input.

*Big Heavy Sigh* OK. Although it's a lot of work to get my charting and treatment history together, I know I can accomplish that in fairly short order. What I'm a little apprehensive about is what may come of that...surgery. While I'm sure that Dr. Hilgers will suggest a few other things to address some of the cycle issues I have, I'm almost POSITIVE that he'll want to do a laparotomy, hysteroscopy and D&C to address the hiding endometriosis that couldn't safely be reached by laparoscopy in 2006 and to address the chronic spotting I have.

*HUGE Heavy Sigh* It's not that I'm AFRAID of surgery, it's just that it's freaking expensive and time consuming and he'll absolutely insist it be done by him in Omaha (he's the best, after all), and while I'd WANT it done by him, all these other factors make it seem like a HUGE burden.

Something happened this week to make me think much more seriously about this possibility. Someone very close to us had a total hysterectomy. She went in to have her uterus removed due to hemmoraging, but then the doctor decided to remove her tubes and ovaries as well because of all the endometriosis he found. She's in her mid 40s and will have to deal with hormone therapy now because of this. And while it will probably make her feel much better overall, I would like to avoid being in her shoes some day.

I know I'm jumping the gun a bit. I haven't even sent my charting yet. But I'm mentally preparing myself for this, just in case. I'd really like to make my cycles behave like normal cycles should, and if we have the happy side-effect of restored fertility...well, we'd be ecstatic! But I'm not counting on it.