JANUARY:
We saw the specialist for the first time, Dr. Bundren. We both really liked him and left his office for the first time feeling like we were finally getting somewhere and moving in the right direction. He did an ultrasound and said he thought from my symptoms that I had endometriosis. He recommended that I have a laparoscopy (a small procedure to determine if the endo was there and how severe it was). He also wanted Tim to repeat his SA. Which he was thrilled with!
January 21: surgery day. The surgery was quick of course I don't remember any of it! Dr.B told Tim that I had lots of endo. He said that it was all over and he removed what he could. He said he was going to stage it at stage 2 but a very aggressive stage 2. He also said that they did something called chromotubation. This is where they insert die in my tubes to see how they will respond. Ideally they would just allow the die to pass through. Of course the easy way is not the way we do things! My right tube swelled up when the die was passed through which as indication that the endo had penetrated the wall of my tube. As you can imagine this is not good. This information was all passed onto Tim and my mom who were waiting for me to get out of recovery. I forgot to mention that when they first took me back for the surgery Tim went to Dr.B's office and repeated his SA. So I recovered from the surgery quickly and really without many issues. I grilled Tim on what was next and he said all Dr.B said was we need to get her some FSH to get her ovulating and we will have a baby.
Two week follow up appointment to surgery: I went into this appointment with a lot of hope that we were finally going to get things started. This was just based on the information Tim had gotten. The first person I saw in the office was Claudia, whom I think is Dr.B's fill in nurse. Now don't get me wrong I don't blame her for what happened next but she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She started showing me (me alone because although Tim was there she didn't have me bring him back at this point) the pictures from my surgery and explaining what everything meant. It was pretty much all the same things we already knew except she said I also had adenomyosis uteri (also not good). Then she tells me that I will be starting treatment for all of this which will be six monthly injects of this medicine called Lupron (I work in a cancer center....so I'm familiar with this drug and its normal uses) to be followed by two months of birth control. So in case you missed it - instead of starting right away trying it will now be 8 months before that will even be possible. On top of my devastation Claudia doesn't realize I was not prepared for this and just keeps going about side effects and whatnot. She finally looks up and sees what I can only guess must have looked like total shock on my face and says...."this is not what you were expecting?" UH NO! She said are you going to cry? YEP. And then the water works start. Of course once they started I couldn't stop. She takes me to an exam where I am supposed to wait to see the doctor. I asked her if my husband could come in and she says "oh honey he is with you? He should have been back here the whole time." So she gets Tim who takes one look at my face and says what the heck is going on. We both expected this to be a happy visit. She tells him I wasn't prepared for the news and said "didn't you talk to her?" Implying that it was his fault I was an unprepared mess. I still to this day almost five months later have no idea where the disconnect happened. I don't know if after my surgery Dr.B reviewed everything and changed his mind or if he just didn't want to get into it all right after the surgery. Either way I look back and honestly think it wasn't all bad that I wasn't prepared. If I had known what was coming I would have googled it.......which is the worst possible thing to do with Lupron! There is some scary stuff out there!! So basically the doctor repeated everything Claudia told us. He said after the Lupron we would try on our own for awhile and if that doesn't work then we will move on to something else. We asked him lots of what ifs but he is very much a one-step-at-a-time kind of doctor so he was hesitant to tell us much beyond the Lupron and birth control. He did talk about IVF with us. He said that Tim's SA came back great which was a silver lining. He said that if I was going to get pregnant that Tim's swimmers would definitely do the trick (Tim still refers to them as his supersperm) so at least we had that going for us.
Lupron began February: First injection was in February. I also had a dexascan to make sure everything was ok with my bone structure and that I did not have any underlying issues as the injections can aggravate things if there is something already going on. The scan was all good. So first one. This month to start with I felt tired but overall not bad. I guess I should mention that this medicine's sole purpose is to drain my body of estrogen. This will in turn cause me to go into a menopausal state which will hopefully heal the endo and my uterus.
Month two March: I also forgot to mention that the first month I met Kelly who is the nurse that works with Dr.B and gives all the injections. I LOVE KELLY. She is helpful. By month two I had really severe headaches which Kelly said would probably subside (hopefully). She said that sometimes when the estrogen is leaving your body it causes headaches. She said another possibility is that when the meds are getting low in my system right before the next shot sometimes that will trigger headaches. I was hoping for option A as it would be temporary! And so far that is what I think it was. I still have the headache every now and then but way less frequent than before.
Month three April: this month was the worse so far and since. I began to have severe aching in my joints, primarily knees and wrists. Kelly said it was from the lack of estrogen and said that is why little old ladies walk all humped over. She recommended osteo-biflex.
Month four May: The osteo is really helping. The joint pain is so infrequent that I could almost say it is gone. It still rares its ugly head every now and then but for the most part it is almost non-existent.
Month five June: I have not had this injection yet. I will have it on Thursday (June 13) of this week. I should mention one other horrible side effect is the sweating....at night, in flashes, anytime really. I just sweat all the time. And if you know me you know how much I hate and avoid sweating at all costs. I know there must be a lesson in that!
So when I first learned about the shots it seemed like 8 months would be forever. But here we are halfway through! Granted I wish we were done but it has gone by fairly quickly. I am really going to try to stay more up to date with this so that I don't have to type a book every time.
I know big things are coming. Whatever the future holds I know there is a plan and I can't wait to see what it is.
A
