The Upcoming Journey..

The best choice Robert and I could have made was to move our doctors appointments to the University of Iowa. I was SO nervous yesterday and did not know what to expect. Well, it was so great. We did not feel uncomfortable and it was way more than I ever thought it would be for the first appointment. I had assumed it was just going to be a whole bunch of questions and then schedule for the next step. That is not at at all what happened. They were to the point and gave me the most hope I have felt in a long time.

As everyone knows, finding your way around the University is not all too easy. We parked in ramp 4 (thanks to a friend explaining where to park and go) and made our way to the Women's Health department. By this point, I am feeling so much anxiety that I almost needed Robert to get my anxiety meds. But I decided that this was the good anxiety and dealt with it med free. The check in was simple because I was one of the few who did my questionnaires and such online. We were then directed to the waiting room.

The nurse comes and takes us to our room where we answer some questions like any other appointment and wait for the doctor. Mind you, I thought I was seeing Dr. Bradley Van Voorhis. This was a woman who came in and introduced herself. She proceeded to ask what kind of testing we already had, if any. I had no idea until she told me that I was getting an ultrasound of my ovaries. She said this could tell them a lot about what to expect with me by the quality of them and if they acted "older" than they actually are.

I won't go into details about the how the ultrasound was done beings it was internal but the woman doing the testing reassured me that I had beautiful ovaries and lining. She proceeded to also tell me I had plenty of eggs. This was a relief because I had never had this test done. Back to the waiting room we went until again, we were brought back to our room. This time around, Dr Van Voorhis joined the female doctor (I feel terrible for not remembering her name). He mainly sat and listened while the other let us know the game plan.

Here is what we are expecting to do. First off, as I already knew, Robert and I are considered unknown infertility which hits 5% of couples. Without any help getting pregnant, we have a VERY small chance of getting pregnant on our own. With knowing this, we now know that we are prime candidates for IUI (Insemination) because all our testing have come back just fine. They also are going to put me on a higher dosage of clomid (UGH) to bring up the chances even higher. We are going to start as soon as NEXT month. How the U does this, is I take ovulation tests and the moment I get a "peak LH", we will have to go up to the U the next morning at 8am. It is about a four hour process and wa-la.. I am inseminated. For those of you that do not know what this truly means, I call it turkey basting (haha). A catheter bypasses my cervix and gets as close as possible to my fallopian tubes to give the swimmers a head start. We will try this for three months straight. If that does not work, well... IVF.  Fingers Crossed!!

As soon as we left, I told Robert "Oh my gosh, this could be happening finally" and followed it with "Holy crap can I handle ACTUALLY being pregnant?"  I had so many thoughts crossing my mind and poor Robert dealing with me. I feel emotional and hopefully but scared shitless. We are not pregnant (YET) but this could finally be our time. Robert and I also decided to be apart of two studies. One, we will actually be reimbursed and the second, we are just basically allowing our results and testing to be used in a database. When Dr. Van Voohis asked, we were more than willing because maybe offering ourselves to the study could help others down the road.