Catch up with Part 1 and Part 2.

“It’s basically a disaster area back there.”  My doctor’s words were shocking.  One of the things I love most about her is that she’s brutally honest (albeit positive and optimistic, so it’s an interesting juxtaposition).  “Your uterus and bladder are glued down to your other organs.  Your right Fallopian tube is glued to your uterus and ovary.  You’re probably going to need another surgery down the road, but hopefully we can sneak a kid in there beforehand.”  She showed me the pictures (which were gross) and gave me a copy to take home (how about scrapbooking that, crafty moms).

Her suggestion was that we put off trying for six months, while I undergo treatment with Lupron to stop my ovaries from producing estrogen and hopefully dissolve the endometriosis.  It would be a monthly injection that would basically force my body into menopause.  Menopause??  I’m already hot-natured and moody, and now I’m going to have something shot into my butt that’ll make it even worse?  She said that, once we were done with that, we’d hit the fertility meds hard again and be a little more aggressive in our approach (I’m still not quite sure what that’ll entail).  And if that didn’t work, then it would be off to Atlanta for another surgery.  Or IVF.  Neither of those prospects sounded desirable.

Six months of nothing?  That seems like a lot of time lost, time spent waiting and not even being able to try.  I agreed to the Lupron treatment, but I was still reeling from being told that my insides are a disaster and it wasn’t just going to be a matter of waiting to heal and then starting to pop out babies.  I also mentioned the abdominal pain and cramping and was told that it was a normal part of the recovery process and was encouraged to take some fiber and make sure I was pooping regularly (really?  You think I was intentionally deciding to turn my GI tract into a war zone?).

The GI pain finally abated, but was quickly replaced by feeling like I was pissing razor blades.  And after a month of misdiagnoses and setbacks, it turned out that I’d probably been nursing a low-grade UTI for eight weeks or so, and it took two full rounds of antibiotics to clear up.  I finally started to feel human again.  But still, a recovery that was supposed to take a couple of weeks ended up knocking me flat on my arse for over two months.  I felt pathetic; why was I so much weaker than everyone else I knew who’d had laparoscopic surgery?  Why were they back at work in three days, doing cartwheels down the hall (apparently) while I was still carrying a pillow everywhere and walking as if I was traversing broken glass?

And now, here I was, facing six months of injections of a drug I knew nothing about, but knew it was our last hope of a non-invasive way to be able to have a child.  There was no question that I would go through it, but what on EARTH was going to happen to me during the process?

–to be continued–