The Appointments

I don’t know if there’s anyone that likes to avoid Doctor’s appointments more than me. This is a terrible trait for someone that is facing possible infertility. I met with my Doctor for a consultation when we were in about month 4 of trying to conceive. I had recently switched Doctors, due to my previous Doctor being approximately 104 years old, with a stoic and cold bedside manor. I had been going to him for my yearly exams from the time that I was 18 years old…that was 16 years ago. I knew that now that we had begun to try to conceive, that I would need someone that was a bit warmer, and more caring. Perhaps someone that would remember my name, would make me feel more comfortable?

Walking in to the Doctor’s office knowing that I was solely there to talk to my new Doctor about the exciting news that we were TRYING was very exciting. I went in to the room and waited for a short couple of minutes before this beautiful, young, bubbly woman bounced in the room. Immediately I was relieved! She sat down, and with a huge smile on her face said, “So, we are trying to make a baby?!” I said, “That’s right!” We went on to discuss that it had already been about 4 months, but she reassured me that there was no need to worry or look in to anything further until we had hit the 10-12 month mark. So what does a person that hates Doctor Appointments do?….I waited a solid 14 months before I called to make another appointment.  Since my last meeting with her, my Doctor had become very popular and was scheduled out for 2 months. I’m no math whiz, but this meant that we would be in month 16 by the time we would be able to get in to be seen. No need to panic, I told myself. I’m sure that we will end up getting pregnant in the meantime, and we can just use that appointment as our first check up! Spoiler alert! We did not get pregnant in that time.

Appointment number 2 with my Doctor had finally arrived. My husband had decided to come with me to this one so that we could get all of our questions answered, and make a plan for what we were to do next. Once we were in the room, the Doctor buzzed in the with scrubs on, fresh from the hospital where I’m sure she had been delivering babies all morning. She was in a little bit more of a hurry this time. The information and test orders came flying at us, and I suddenly lost my warm fuzzy feelings that I had from the first appointment. She said the word. The word that I had been dreading all along. INFERTILITY. I had well surpassed the 12 month mark and was deep in the woods of infertility. What do we do now? Blood Tests, semen analysis, hysterosalpingogram (HSG Test), just to start and then we will go from there. If this were a cartoon, this would have been the point where my head would spin around, fall off and roll out the door. I think my Doctor could see my panic, so she reassured me that these were all simple and non invasive ways to check our reproductive health and to have a direction for the next steps. She knows the way to my heart…. A PLAN.

I walked directly out of that appointment over to the lab to have my blood drawn for all of my hormone checks. My husband set his appointment for his semen analysis, and I got all of the information about the HSG test. The receptionist told me that I would be making an appointment with radiology as soon as I started AF (remember those fun acronyms?? AF=Aunt Flow). She let me know that this test can be very painful, and that I should take a painkiller 1 hour before to avoid the full onset of the potential pain. Hmm…that doesn’t sound very noninvasive, but I can handle it! After all, the main goal here is to give birth…and we all know that is no walk in the park.

The very next morning I received the test results from my blood panel, and everything was in the normal ranges. This was a huge relief!  Now it was time for my husband’s test. We had to travel about an hour away from home to the Infertility Specialist for this test…there’s that darned word again…INFERTILITY….but I was just glad to be checking all of these items off of our to do list. When we arrived at the office address that was given to us by my Doctor we were greeted with a sign on the door that notified us that their office had been moved from Davis, CA to Sacramento, CA. We had arrived 10 minutes early, but had now found out that even if we hit zero traffic, that we would be 15 minutes late for our appointment. GREAT!!! I called the office and let them know the situation. They were very understanding, and told us that they would hold our appointment. We arrive to the actual location of the infertility specialist and checked in. While waiting in the waiting room, I observed the different patients that were waiting….one pregnant woman (I thought, “What the heck is she doing here?!”), one couple with 3 children (I had the similar thought about that), and a couple that looked equally as awkward and uncomfortable as we did (they fit my mind’s expectation perfectly). My evaluation of the waiting room, and curiosity of each person’s story, was broken up by a little old man in a white doctor’s coat, with a checkered bow tie, and round coke bottle glasses, calling our name. Super! We have an incredibly hip Doctor…if we had somehow time warped back to 1942. But I quickly tried to squelch that negativity, and tried to keep an open mind. We went in to his office and sat down in two chairs placed in front of a desk scattered with papers. The Doctor didn’t make eye contact as he flipped through our paperwork, but he began to tell us a story.

To paraphrase, he recounted a day back when he was in medical school, and it was the day of a very important exam. He had been given the location that the exam was to be taken at 8am that morning….(you guessed it, this was the point when I was wondering what the heck this had to do with us!?…but I continued to listen.) He showed up to the class room right on time, just to see that the classroom was dark and the door was locked. He asked around and quickly found out that the exam location had been moved to another room on to the far opposite side of the campus. He said that if he sprinted he may be able to make it right before they locked the door. He got to the correct classroom and the door was locked. He knocked on the door, and the professor opened it, but did not look amused. He said that he asked politely that the professor give him a chance to take the exam. The professor informed him that this exam had never started one minute passed 8:00 am in the 25 years that he had been administering it. He immediately felt defeated, and his medical career flashed before his eyes. However, he was relieved when the professor told him that he would make an exception for him, and that he would allow him to take the exam.

The Doctor finally looked up at us and with a soft smile in his eyes, and he said “If that Professor could see the potential in me to allow me to take that exam that day, then I can see the potential in you two to push my other patients back to keep this appointment for you today”. This was all quite dramatic as we were about to see a PowerPoint presentation on sperm…but it is a moment that I will never forget.  Now that we had broken the ice with story time, we got right down to the brass tacks of sperm mobility, quality, and all kinds of terms that I’m hoping I’ll never need again. Long story short, we had yet another completely normal test result! We had completed everything in our PLAN so far.

Now, it was time for the dreaded HSG test. This test is the one that the receptionist had described as “very painful”. Because of that description, I had decided to Google this test until I was nearly panicked at the variety of responses of women that had experienced it. One woman said that she had already given birth, and would prefer labor to the pain of this test. Another woman explained that she barely felt anything, but had mild cramping afterward. I assumed that because I have a fairly high pain tolerance, that I would fall somewhere around the “it was uncomfortable, but not unbearable” description. Boy, was I wrong.

I was about to have the shock of a lifetime…..