The Surgery (Part 1)...

Rewinding back to the moment I found out I needed to have surgery... As I sat there on a Tuesday afternoon in late October, trying to level my head that was swimming with racing thoughts, in the faint distance I hear the doctor ask his nurse coordinator about scheduling availability. His voice then comes in clearly as I hear him say to me, "Looks like we can get you in as early as Friday for your surgery." Friday?? FRIDAY!! Uhh, that's like 4 days away and I'm still barely processing the reality of this whole situation. Talk about a quick turn around time. I then quickly hear the nurse coordinator chime in (I assume because she saw the striking look of terror rather quickly come across my face), "Or you can go home today and talk it over with your husband, and we can schedule you for a future date next month. Either way is no problem at all." Well, that simple statement helped ease me for a brief moment, long enough to quickly process and be able to say, "Ok thanks, sounds good... I'll talk with my husband tonight and then give your office a call." The only problem was, it didn't sound good... as a matter of fact, it didn't sound good at all. I was in this crazy fog of a panic as I walked out of the hospital to my car thinking: THIS.JUST.GOT.REAL.

Well, once the initial shock wore off and after I was able to discuss everything with my calm and rational husband (seriously, thank God for him!), we crazily decided to go ahead and as Nike would say: Just Do It... Yes, I had just decided to move forward with having a major surgery in only a few days - and a surgery, may I remind you, that I had no definitive answers about what it would even entail. What the heck was I thinking??...

Well, what I was thinking was, "I want a baby darnit! So whatever it takes, right? - Might as well not prolong the inevitable." Ha...

From there, the next couple of days flew by as I coordinated with the surgical nurse to prepare for Friday. Mounds of forms to complete, pre-surgical blood work to schedule, pre-surgery phone interviews and questionnaires to complete, and then the real fun began the day before surgery. As soon as I woke up that morning, I had to start on a clear liquid diet (blah) until midnight, and then nothing to drink at all after that. The highlight of my clear liquid diet though was the Citrate of Magnesium I had to drink that afternoon to flush my system...

Bottoms Up!

The remainder of my evening consisted of many helpings of jello, chicken broth, sorbet (yum!), juice, and water. Needless to say, I went to bed feeling more than hungry that night. The next morning was go time. I woke up in good spirits, actually worked for part of the morning, and then headed to the hospital with my husband to check-in for my scheduled surgery time of 3pm. As we drove to the hospital, it all still felt rather unreal. Really, seemed just like another car ride to run an errand or something. But, once we got to the hospital, parked, and started walking in... the reality that I was about to under-go surgery slowly started to set in. And now, I started to get a lit bit nervous...

The Results Are In

After 3 or was it 4 months (minor details at this point) of trying to have an HSG done, FINALLY on Oct. 26, 2015 I had it done ... and the result were in, well sort of: some sort of tubal defects, but in the words of my doctor, "I'm sorry, but I just can't really tell you what's going on at this point." Wait what??? "I'm sorry doc., I didn't quite understand you the first time, could you please tell me that again?" Apparently, he saw from the test that there was a problem, but couldn't tell what exactly the problem was? What the heck does that mean?? There was something blocking the left tube, but the right was ok... or wait, no, the right might be partially blocked too... or maybe it was the left that looked like it may have collapsed in on itself, but couldn't quite be seen from the scan... or no, was is the other way around with the right being collapsed? My head was spinning at this point and nothing made sense (imagine what that was like when I went home and tried to explain all this to husband that night)... So, what did this all mean? Well, it meant surgery. SURGERY? Oh my gosh, is this really happening? Surgery is serious. And not just any little surgery with local anesthesia, but under general anesthesia and one that initially is going to be primarily exploratory in nature to find out "what was going on"... and then ultimately correct whatever's found. So again, no real answers. No.Real.Answers. Not even an answer as to what kind of surgery this will be or even how long it will take? At this point, my denial quickly lost all of it's traction... this was real: We are that couple who is the dreaded word "infertile"... and now I'm about to face surgery because of it...

Hysterosal-What??

Fast forward about 3 months into the diagnostic testing process and working through this crazy waiting game to finally be able to have one last diagnostic test, a hysterosalpingogram (say that 5 times fast) or HSG, which by the way was the WORST of all the tests - wouldn't wish it upon anyone. Problem was, random things kept happening that were out of my control and that kept postponing the test. Typically, most if not all of the diagnostic testing is done within the first month or so (at least within my doctor's practice), as every test is time-sensitive and very dependent upon which day of your cycle it is. However, here we were almost 4 months in and had every other test done and complete, except this one. The first month the doctor's office had a glitch and didn't transfer my file over to the correct scheduling nurse, so when I was scheduled for another test and supposed to have the HSG done at the same time, no one realized that (including me) until I was at the appointment and at that point it was too late. The office genuinely apologized, which I understandingly accepted, but it was still frustrating because this meant I had to wait another month to be able to schedule the HSG, since it had to be done at a very specific (yet very limited) time frame within my cycle, and since the doctor typically only performed the test on Mondays, as it needed to be done at the hospital.

So, let me digress a moment: The purpose of an HSG is to look for any abnormalities and/or blockages within a woman's fallopian tubes and uterus. Without getting too graphic, a dye is injected and then viewed to see if it's able to travel freely through both tubes, or to determine if there are any blockages, scarring, or abnormal structures, which ultimately could be preventing the egg from making contact with the sperm. The HSG is typically done sometime between days 6-12 of your cycle (after your cycle starts, but before ovulation).

Now, back to my scheduling conflicts... Since you typically have to wait to actually start your cycle to even schedule the test, the next month when I called to let the office know that I had started and to try and schedule the HSG, I was told that the doctor was unfortunately going to be out of the office that following Monday so I had two choices: 1) wait until next month or 2) start on birth control for a number of days in order to prolong my cycle and prevent ovulation. Umm, WHAT? You seriously want me to go on birth control for a week and screw up my cycle which is apparently already broken? No thanks. So, I guess that meant we were waiting for yet another month. So the next month came and wait for it... same story. The doc. was out of town at a conference and it would be too late in my cycle by the next week to perform the test (again, unless I went on birth control). Come on, this is just ridiculous torture at this point. I mean, I truly love my doctor and he's one of the best in the region, if not the country, so it wasn't that I was dealing with an imprudent office, it was just the uncanny timing of everything that happened to be interfering. Month after month came without being able to schedule this stupid HSG, and with the secret hope that maybe it would be "the month" when we got pregnant on our own and could simply stop all this foolish chaos. I couldn't help but wonder if this was maybe God's way of prolonging something that He knew wouldn't be necessary? Maybe the test would come back normal and it was only a matter of another month before we'd be pregnant, so perhaps it was His way of preventing me from going through unnecessary poking and prodding? That had to be it, right? Hold on to the hope that this would be the month, Tiff...