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Saturday, December 28, 2013

My infertility journey.. so far!

For the past few weeks I have been contemplating this blog. I originally thought that I should just continue my old one with a completely new topic... but I want to keep my life then separate from my life now. The person I was then was adding to my issue that this blog will be focused on. I have hypothalamic amenorrhea. My old blog was titled “With great pain comes great change.” and it was dedicated to fitness and nutrition. My life was run by what I was putting in my body and the effort that I was pushing out of it. And I loved every second of it. That title is fitting for this blog also, but it is a whole different kind of pain this time.
Let me start with a little background information. I first got my period when I was 9 years old and in fourth grade. This was not a surprise to my mother, because my sister got hers when she was 8 years old. It was a surprise to me, though. I don’t think I really even knew what a period was yet, so my lesson came about an hour before school after reality hit me like a brick one morning. My mom was drying my hair for me when I told her I needed to go to the bathroom right away.. that is how much of a baby I still was! I was sent off the school with a backpack full of pads and an overwhelming amount of emotions. I do not exactly remember if it became a monthly thing in the beginning or not. I just remember that I was the tallest and most developed girl in my grade. I started shopping in the junior section. I started getting pimples. My body was doing all types of crazy things and my insecurities were ever growing. My periods started coming less and less and by middle school they were pretty much nonexistent. I thought that I was so lucky that mine were going away as all of my friends were just starting theirs. I was always very conscious about what I ate and how I looked. I became the type of person who would refuse to eat when I was upset or any time I felt like I was “fat”. How ridiculous is it that I felt these ways when I was such a little girl?!
When I became a freshman in High School my mom took me to the doctor specifically to discuss the period issue. I had entered my first “sexual” relationship and the doctor said that the best route for me was to go on birth control to help with regulation in addition to preventing pregnancy. I was 14 years old at this point and I was overjoyed when my period came after my first round of birth control pills. This continued throughout all of my high school years. I would go off of it for a few months at a time just to see what would happen.. but I never got a period without it. I went through a few rocky relationships during these years and the refusing to eat thing reentered my life. I remember specifically my senior year. I was doing a shadowing program where I went and “worked” at a dental office for the first three or four hours of the school day. It was almost a daily occurrence for me to be sitting in the break room light headed with a bottle of Gatorade in my hand because I was to the point of tunnel vision and passing out. I would refuse to eat all day, but I grew up in a household that had family dinners every night. When I would sit down to eat with my family I would tell them how I had eaten so much during the day and at lunch so that they wouldn’t question the small amounts of food on my plate. I should say.. this isn’t the way that things always were. It was pretty much just when things weren’t going well in my relationship. Also, I think it was after high school, but one of my friends and I were so obsessed with our weight that we would step on the scale as soon as we woke up and if it was 120 or above we would not eat that day.. or until it went below 120.
I joined the Air Force in December of 2009 and moved to Alaska in July of 2010. Very soon after getting there I made an appointment with my doctor to discuss my periods. He told me that he thought that I was just too thin and active and that he really wouldn’t worry about it until I wanted to have babies.. but he suggested that I continue birth control to stay “regular”. I didn’t like this answer, but I took it. I went back about three more times over the next two years. (I gained quite a bit of weight when I was living there and ended up getting my period twice without birth control, but I thought that it was the whole “female hormones affecting ppl they hang out with” because my roommate was going through a miscarriage. I went back on birth control right after and stayed on it, so I don’t know if they would have stayed regular or not while I was heavier.) The last time that I went in, I was married to my wonderful Savier, so he ordered me an ultrasound to first check that my ovaries and uterus appeared normal. I went in and they said that everything looked perfect! I was so so happy.. they even showed me my ovaries and pointed out my potential eggs! This tiny step was the biggest relief ever. I told my doctor that I knew somebody who took provera to help her get her period and he said that we could try it! I took the medication as directed, but I did not have any result. I called the doctor to tell him and he told me that he was going to refer me to the women’s health clinic. I started seeing a female doctor there and she had me try Provera again at a different dosage. Again, there was no period. She mentioned my activity level and body weight and had me have a bunch of labs done to include a glucose test. My estrogen was very low, and I don’t exactly remember the rest of what came of those. She put me on estrogen and progesterone pills to regulate my period. Next, she ordered a hysterosalpingogram (HSG). This was an x-ray test to check if my fallopian tubes are open. When I got there the procedure was explained to me and after the balloon was placed inside of me and inflated, they realized that they did not know where the doctor was that had to be there to run the radiology equipment. I started panicking because it hurt so bad, but I let the nurse leave it in me because I knew I couldn’t go through it again if she deflated it. It took about fifteen minutes for the doctor to get there and I was completely in tears by this point. The procedure only took about two minutes once he was there and I watched on the screen as the dye flowed smoothly through both tubes! I was overjoyed at the result. When I was told I could go get dressed, I felt very dizzy. I walked to the bathroom and could not even stand once I got there. Everything went blurry and I was sweating and I had to lay on the floor while I put my clothes on. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I couldn’t stay in a locked bathroom. I collected myself from the floor and walked out. As I was passing the front reception desk, the girl who helped check me in saw me and ran to my side. She told me that I was pale to the point of almost being green and asked me if I was feeling okay. I told her that I wasn’t feeling well at all and she ran to get me some water and a doctor. They ended up taking me to the emergency room in a wheel chair and hooking me up to an IV. I stayed there for around two hours I think. The doctor compared what happen to me to when people play the “pass out” game. My body went into shock from having my uterus expanded so much so quickly. Worst experience ever!! So I went back to the doctor after this and she said that she wanted to induce a period and put me on Clomid. I told her that I was PCSing soon so she suggested that I just wait until I got to my new to start any type of fertility treatment. Oh yes.. she also had me order something called Pregnitude and start taking that. And take ovulation tests every day.... talk about disheartening!
When we got to Charleston I made an appointment right away. The doctor told me to stop taking the estrogen and progesterone since it was acting as a birth control and he put in a referral for me to go to an OBGYN downtown since this base doesn’t have a women’s health clinic. When I went to see her she did an exam and talked with me about what was going on. She said that we would try clomid without inducing a period. If I did not get a period or get pregnant she was going to need to refer me to an infertility specialist. I had to wait a few weeks to start the clomid since I had recently had a period from the estrogen and progesterone pills. She also did some labs just to see if they were still similar to the ones I had done in Alaska (they were). While I was waiting to take the clomid she consulted the fertility specialist who told her to have me do a CAT scan to make sure everything in my brain was normal.  I had that done at the Navy base and everything looked good. When I took the clomid it did not make me feel very good… and it did not work. During this time I was doing a ton of research trying to figure out what was wrong with me and where I could get the proper treatment. The military only helps pay to diagnose infertility, but not to treat it. I did find that there are a handful of bases that do deal with infertility treatment. It still would not be free, but the medication and monitoring would be.. which is the expensive part! Everything I read was saying that the places have waiting lists of around a year and I was very discouraged by this. When I found out that Fort Bragg (North Carolina) is one of the bases/posts that does this I called right away!! At this point I was sure I was going to need to do in vitro, so that is what I asked about when my message was returned the day after I left it! The lady, Dori, explained the way they handle in vitro and was super helpful, but then she asked me why I thought I needed it. She then introduced me to the world of IUI. She said that in vitro starts at $5800 with them, but an IUI only costs $200! She said that she is pretty confident that an IUI will work for my situation and that I should come in to meet the doctors! Dr. Devine, from the OBGYN clinic, called me to let me know that she was going to refer me. I told her that I had found the Fort Bragg clinic and asked her to send the referral to them. When I went to pick up my records from her office I was very sad to see some of her notes. They talked about how I am “very small” and suggested a few things that could be wrong. At this point I weighed 110 pounds.
The nurse at Fort Bragg asked me to have a bunch of labs done before I came and Savier had to have a sperm analysis. She ordered me birth control and Femara and said that I would come in on day ten of my cycle after taking the medication. I was so excited and nervous and overwhelmed with emotion! On December 9, 2013 Savier and I drove three hours to the clinic to have a follicle check and see if that medication was working! When the doctor placed the wand near my first ovary she said “not much going on in this one.. yet” and I immediately started tearing up. She moved over to the other one and it showed the same thing. I was choking back tears and Savier knew it.. I think that she did also. She said that she had to go see her other scheduled patients, but she wanted to look through my files and talk to me about what was going on. We were left in the room for probably about twenty to thirty minutes before she came back. She began questioning me about if I was ever anorexic, how much I exercise, how I eat, ect. (This is why I went into detail about my eating habits in high school.) I didn’t think about my high school years when answering and I said that I have decreased my exercise recently, I eat very healthy, and I never have been anorexic. She said that one of the things Dr. Devine suggested was hypothalamic amenorrhea.. and she was right. My brain does not send the proper hormones to my ovaries. These hormones are what create estrogen and mature eggs for ovulation. This is caused by over exercise/under eating/too low BMI. She told me that clomid and femara and any type of oral medications like this will never work for me. She started talking to me about injectables and said that she would have the nurse come in to teach me how to use them. Natalie came in and said that she would send these home with me since we live so far away but I cannot start them until January 1st because their clinic is going to be closed for three weeks over the holidays and I need to be very closely monitored. She explained them to me and taught me how to do the injections. She told me that another girl came to them from Charleston and had a hard time coordinating with the clinic here for her monitoring and it ended up taking her four cycles to get things running smoothly and that cycle successfully gave her a baby! She also sent me home with a trigger shot to use when the follicles are the proper size. She did forget to give me one of the medications, but thankfully my friend, Rickjames, is stationed there and was able to get it for me and mail it! Before I left I had to have blood work done. They said that I will need to have the labs done every time I am seen to go alone with the monitoring and ensure that everything is working properly. These medications are supposed to surpass my brain and send the hormones directly to my ovaries. I intend on just going to North Carolina to be monitored so that I don’t have to dick around with the clinic here since they would need to immediately send the results so that I can adjust my daily dosages accordingly. She said that it could be three or four times a week, but my work knows what is going on and said that I can go whenever I need to.
When we left the clinic I just couldn’t hold my emotions anymore. Savier was driving so I just cried and cried and cried. He was super sweet and talked me through it, but I could just feel my heart breaking. I cried all day and all night and just felt so terrible, but I knew that I needed to keep on keeping on the next day. I just needed a few hours to break down.
Since then I have become obsessed with researching hypothalamic amenorrhea. I have learned that this is completely reversible (thankfully)! All I need to do is everything that upsets me. I need to stop exercising and eat way more. If you checked out my old blog, you know that this is very very hard for me. First of all, I can’t stop exercising since I have mandatory PT three times a week for the Air Force. I am not quite sure how to deal with this yet. As for nutrition.. fat=estrogen and that is the area that I have the most trouble in… obviously! My abs are completely gone.. my thighs are coming back.. and I am just all around unhappy with my appearance. My cloths are already fitting me differently and I have only gained about five pounds. I am going to save my feelings on all of this for a new post, though. This one is long enough and nobody has probably even stuck with me this far ;)
I will post again very soon to release all of my crazy thoughts and feelings on this life change that I am going through.
xox.
-N.

p.s. I’m sorry if this is hard to follow, I kept thinking of more things and trying to add them in. =)


1 comment:

  1. I stuck through you til the end!! :) I can't wait to read your future posts! :) Hang in there and keep your head up, girl. Praying! <3

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