Friday morning we met with Dr. B at Oregon Reproductive. All in all, it could have been worse. I think the worse case scenario I had played over in my mind was the Dr. saying, “There’s really nothing we can do for you. Beat it. Scram.” But he didn’t say that. To be honest, we didn’t really learn a lot more than we already knew or suspected. We had a number of tests done before we went in, but a few need to be redone on a particular day in my cycle. So now, for the semi-bad news. The one test that did come back and did give us some information was the AMH test or Anti-Mullerian Hormone test. This test lets you know about your ovarian reserve – or eggs in waiting. I think they actually said something like primordial eggs, which makes me think they are from the beginning of time, dinosaurs and shit. If only it was that cool. For women my age, the number is up somewhere around 5-7, in fact, the higher the better. Mine came back at a dismal 0.5. This is not promising in terms of the time we have left to make things happen.
Why is it so low? Likely it is an unfortunate side effect of chemotherapy. A classic example of I wish I had known then what I know now. At the time, I could have had my eggs removed and frozen. But, we did not know if my cancer was hormone receptive positive, which meant we wouldn't have wanted to feed the cancer by taking hormones to stimulate egg growth. And, I didn't want to wait to have the cancer removed and start treatment.
Plus, I would have been faced with the same financial hurdle back then and even less likely to be able to do something about it. How would I have paid to have my eggs removed and frozen? I wouldn’t have been able to and my insurance wouldn’t have covered it. Plus, unfertilized eggs don’t do the whole freezing/unfreezing process as well as fertilized eggs, so we might actually have found ourselves in the exact same position anyways. I imagine if we had tried sooner, that perhaps the number would have been higher and we might have been more successful earlier on. As it stands, Dr. B thinks that it is likely my ovaries are more like a woman in her early 40s than one in her late 30s. And where fertility is concerned, a few years can make all the difference. The good news is I know at least one over 40 who recently got pregnant the old-fashioned way and just had a baby. So, if it can happen once, it can happen again, right?
The two tests we need to re-take will give us information about the quality of those eggs that I have remaining. This test will confirm whether 6 months of chemo some 7 years ago merely diminished the number of eggs I have or if it permanently damaged most or all the eggs lying dormant in my ovaries. If it is the later, it’s likely a good egg will be few and far between. It's not impossible that a good egg will surface, but highly unlikely. So hopefully, at the end of next week, we will finally figure out exactly what we are dealing with.
Dr. B didn’t belabor the fact that the odds are against us. He didn’t Fox News us into fearing the worst. In fact, the only statistics he showed us were their success rate with women in my age group, which was around 60% and that the likelihood of having another miscarriage wasn’t any greater after having two. I thought those were pretty nice statistics to share.
I guess the good news is that we now know what our options are going to be given different scenarios and there are a few. Again, it will all depend on whether we are dealing with a low number of eggs that are either of good or bad quality or a low number of eggs that are likely all bad quality. And depending on which it is, we will know whether we will need to do IUI or IVF with my own eggs (hopefully this will be an option) or if we have to use donor eggs. Dr. B said we would deal with the donor egg option down the road, when we crossed that bridge. There was still a lot to do before we even have that conversation.
I asked him how normal people pay for this kind of thing and he rattled off a list of ways. As Brett said, “Well, one shot is basically the price of a nice new car really.” Too bad we already bought one of those this summer. Guess that is just another bridge to cross when we get there – sure are a lot of bridges on this damn road.
But all of that aside, I think why we are both taking it so well (and by well, I mean, I'm not crying non-stop. And if I had to talk to anyone about all of this, instead of writing it, I would probably not make it through the conversation without crying.) is that all of this reproductive medicine is pretty f-ing amazing; the science behind all of this and what they can do for people. It’s insane. Seriously out of a science fiction novel. It’s not just about boosting your egg production, taking those eggs, fertilizing them and putting them back. That’s basically what we are able to do on our own.
But now, once they extract as many eggs as possible, they make sure they are healthy and able to be fertilized, then they fertilize them and test whether the egg is going to be free of any chromosomal damage or defect before they try to implant that egg or eggs. Basically giving you the absolute best shot of having a healthy baby because you know that everything is on the up and up. It then comes down to the implantation and hoping that it sticks, continues to grow, and the cells divide. It’s likely to go okay if all the chromosomes are okay. High school science really came in handy while listening to him. When Dr. B drew the chromosomes all lining up (yes, there were lots of drawings and illustrations), I knew exactly where he was going with this thing. In fact, the first part of our conversation felt like we were getting 'the talk' about how you make babies. When I have a teenager, I will record Dr. B giving 'the talk' and just play the video.
If we do have to explore the IVF option, it is good to know this is possible and hopefully they will be able to get at least one or two good eggs. We just need one! That’s all. Out of the 400,000 damn, freakin’ eggs I was born with, we just need one damn good egg. It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask of the universe, but she apparently is one stingy biatch when it comes to giving up eggs to the +35 set. I feel like if we could just get one good egg it would likely stick given we’ve had two bad eggs stick in the past. Sticking doesn’t seem to be our problem.
But then, what do I know? Right now it really just feels like it all comes down to luck. Luck and age really. It’s hard to say whether we have good or bad luck. I’m lucky that I had cancer early (who says that?!), met Brett, married Brett and after dragging him to a foreign country for two years still like him well enough to want to have his baby (haha), and we still have some time to figure this out. I’m lucky that chemotherapy exists and that it apparently works really well at killing cancer. I guess I’m unlucky that it works so well that it kills off poor bystanders, like primordial egg cells. And Brett said, "You're lucky that you don’t look nearly as old as your ovaries are." So I guess we’re also lucky that we still have our senses of humor.
We've been pretty damn lucky so far. Guess we just need some more luck. Prayers and good mojo (I don’t really know what mojo means, but I think it's like luck). That’s what we really need.
