The results are back... again!

It has always bothered me that even though our problem lies within Jeff's body he has never been checked out.  So recently I joined a Christian infertility support forum called Hannah's Prayer (GREAT site!) and decided to ask the ladies there whether their hubby's had ever been sent to a urologist to get checked out.  Turns out they have!  I have asked all of my doctors (4 of them over the years) about getting him checked and they all said there was no point.  So, as soon as the ladies assured me that I was right to want him checked out I made an appointment with my doctor to get a referral.  Thankfully my regular family doctor was away so I got to see the doctor filling in for him (since I had already asked my family doctor about a referral before I wasn't looking forward to "demanding" one).

So we went in for our appointment and the doctor, since he doesn't know us, was looking at our files to see whether Jeff really should see a urologist and he commented that Jeff had just had a semen analysis (SA) but the count wasn't done... excuse me??  Not done?  I told him that when I had called early that week, the nurse had said that the count was 8 million. Turns out she read the results wrong and looked at the PH level rather than the count.  So, that meant that we had stopped the vitamins without really knowing whether they worked.  So of course I asked for another test (poor Jeff! lol!).

Well, thankfully this doctor realised that we should be referred to a urologist, so we now have an appointment in Vancouver (there are no urologists here) for August 18th.  I'm really hoping that we figure out what is going on.  It is quite possible that he has varicocele veins which is fixable through a simple surgery (I'm pretty sure Jeff wouldn't agree!).  It doesn't guarantee to improve fertility but it would be a chance we would be willing to take.

As for the newest SA the results have come back from that one and his count has gone up!  It was 10 million this time... he hasn't had counts that high since the first SA that was done years ago.  Unfortunately the motility went down to 70% from 80% on the last one.  So we've decided that we will go back on the vitamins since the count was so good.  Hopefully they will continue to help.

As for me, I've been charting my temperatures again for the past 3 months and I've noticed that my Luteal Phase (the time between ovulation and period) has been 10-11 days long.  Anything under 12 days is considered a Luteal Phase Defect (LPD).  This means that even if I were to become pregnant my body may not recognise it and just go on to my period and flush out the little embryo.  (I wonder if this explains the two times that I've felt for sure that I was pregnant??)  Of course my doctors have never said anything about this (which really doesn't surprise me... grrrrr).  I've done some research and some people have had success lengthening their LP with vitamin B6.  So I've started taking it and I'm hoping next month I will see a difference.  If I don't see it lengthen in the next few months I'll head back to the doctor to see what my next step should be... to which I am sure they will say IVF.  That seems to be their answer for everything (funny that that is also where they make the most money.. hmmm.)

Anyways, all of this information has given me hope again that just maybe we will be able to conceive naturally some day.  For now we are going to put off IVF until we get the diagnoses from the urologist. 

Please pray that we can figure some things out this summer!

The results are back...

So I finally got the results back from Jeff's test... not much changed.  His count went up to 8 million (from 7 million last time) but that's not really a big enough change to make me think it's due to the vitamins.  The very first semen analysis he had done he had 10 million and the lowest has been 4.5 so 8 is not really an improvement especially considering 25 million is the lowest healthy number.  The morphology was still normal so that's good.  Now we have to decide whether we stick with the vitamins or save the money.  We will probably save the money... that way we can put it towards IVF. 

It was a little frustrating going to the gynecologist this week (they bumped my appointment from June 1st to June 6th) and finding out that my family doctor could have just referred me to the fertility clinic in Calgary two months ago when I asked him about it.  So the GYN visit was a complete waste of time... no exam, no looking at the temperature charts I've been doing (because that's what they told me he needed), no information on what the process will be.. sigh... a complete waste of time.  Oh well... at least the referral has been done now and so waiting for a call from the Calgary clinic is my next step... I feel like I'm always waiting...