It’s been more than two years since my last blog update because there’s been nothing to talk about fertility-wise. In April 2020 I had a telehealth appointment with a third doctor (whom I liked), but I wasn’t comfortable traveling to and from north of Atlanta given COVID, and since the doctor didn’t think that waiting until 2021 would make a huge difference, I decided to wait and revisit things in early 2021.
In early 2021, COVID was definitely still a worry, but there was talk of vaccines coming, and so I figured we’d restart the process once we saw how that played out. Just as my husband and I were able to get our first dose of the vaccine in March 2021 (which meant we’d be able to travel semi-safely again soon), we also got really bad news about my Dad. He’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness with an unknown length of time remaining (but it wasn’t good). Since we hadn’t been able to visit our families since 2019 due to COVID, my first priority was to be able to visit my parents and see my Dad. This meant anything fertility-wise was going to be put on hold again since fertility treatments can only be planned so much and I wanted to be able to travel home at a phone call. I’m not going to use this blog to go into great detail about my Dad, but the short version is that we were able to go home in April 2021 for a week, and when we went back in June 2021, we had two days with my Dad before he started failing and then passed away three days later (five days after we got there).
I was obviously in no mental or emotional place to even think about restarting any sort of fertility treatment anytime soon after that. And, not that much later, my Pop-Pop (my mom’s dad) started to not do so well, which is expected for a 97-98 year old, but was still painful since he and I had been video-chatting almost weekly for close to a decade. Again, I wanted to be able to fly home at a phone call so wasn’t going to start any fertility treatments that would prevent that. My Pop-Pop passed away at the very end of October.
I can say with certainty that most of 2021 is just a big blur for me, especially the holiday season.
Then came 2022. COVID is still here. I’m still working at the same place I started at full-time in January 2021 despite the stress and challenges because they pay for 100% of my medical, dental, and vision insurance (no small thing to sneeze at) and because I’ve established myself enough to feel quite comfortable using the “unlimited PTO” available to me, which would be needed with any sort of fertility treatment.
But did I even WANT to restart any sort of fertility process? That’s a question we’ve been wrestling with since 2020 — and putting off while we dealt with all of life’s challenges. Watching our friends and family struggle with home-schooling and work during COVID shutdowns, seeing how friends and family with kids have had a very different experience than those of us without kids, and knowing that we’re in our mid-40s and fairly set in our ways — was having kids now something we wanted to do? And the stress of fertility treatments, and the emotional roller coaster and the havoc on the physical body … it’s a lot.
I had gone to my ob-gyn late last year because my period cramps were MUCH worse than usual and I wanted to be sure everything was okay in there, especially since I had been on so many hormones for so long and the big “C” word lurks in our minds. The scans showed everything was normal, and that I had fibroids again (not unusual for me). The last time I had fibroids and was trying to do IVF, I needed surgery to remove them to make my uterus more embryo-friendly. The only thing I DID know is that if I needed surgery again, moving forward with more fertility treatments was going to be a no-go — which would open up a different path of questions.
However, the ob-gyn couldn’t tell me if the fibroids were in the way, only a fertility doctor could do that. So in early May, I called back the third doctor I had spoken with back in April 2020 to set another telehealth appointment to talk about next steps. He talked through all the steps we’d need to take to move forward with donor eggs — an SHG for me (a painful but quick procedure using an ultrasound and sterile fluid to show the uterus, endometrial (uterine lining) cavity, and ovaries), bloodwork for both of us, a joint psych eval for both of us, and a semen analysis and genetic testing for my husband — and left it with us to make the appointment with his nurses. (Fun fact about that call: we ended up talking about our love of nerdy things so the doctor ended it by saying something in a foreign language which I accurately identified as an Elvish tongue and my husband accurately identified which dialect of Elvish it was.)
I spent quite a bit of time on the phone trying to work out the timing/schedule that would allow us to have all of that (minus the psych eval) done with one visit to the office AND work the timing around my period. Several phones calls and one prescription for birth control pills (to control my period's timing) later, we were set. It was important that the SHG happen and be analyzed BEFORE the bloodwork and semen analysis because I didn’t want to pay for that stuff if the SHG showed that I’d need surgery to remove fibroids again, which is what I was expecting to learn.
That appointment was two weeks ago. In a shocking twist, it turns out that my uterine cavity is completely and totally normal. The fibroids I do have aren’t interfering with my uterus in any way. So instead of that scan sort of making the decision for us about not moving forward, we were suddenly presented with hope again. The blood work also came back almost all normal, except that I’m low in Vitamin D and need to take a supplement to boost that. (That’s not surprising since it was a heat index of 104+ degrees for almost two weeks — why would I go outside in that?)
Now we’re waiting for the Egg Bank Committee to review my case to determine which egg donor plan I qualify for — one that only guarantees two high-quality embryos or one that guarantees repeated tries until there’s a live birth (and yes, there is two-year limit on this one). My myomectomy in 2018 should disqualify me from the live birth option, but since my uterine cavity is completely normal and my husband’s semen morphology meets their minimum requirements, I’m hoping they’ll make an exception.
And so here we are. I’m waiting for a committee to determine how we move ahead, and we have the psych eval on Wednesday. As long as the counselor determines that we’re able to handle all the things that come along with egg donation fertility treatments, we will probably be starting some version of the donor egg process again in August or September.
Oh, and there’s that not-so-small fact about the Supreme Court overturning Roe, and Georgia trying to pass the “heartbeat” bill that was stalled a few years ago which would make abortion after 6 weeks illegal. At 6 weeks, many women don’t even know they’re pregnant. AND, depending on how all these laws are worded, it could impact fertility treatment options. I don’t want to be investigated for murder because the embryo I transferred didn’t take or has a genetic abnormality that causes a miscarriage, or all sorts of thing that can go wrong (and there are a lot).
Yep, so now in addition to the normal amount of ridiculous stress and anxiety that fertility treatments bring, I get to also worry if (when) Georgia passes its bills restricting my ability to choose what is best for me, and the potential impact on access to fertility treatments or even my freedom to talk about it without of fear of repercussions if there are miscarriages or other issues.