(If you haven't read Part 1, please click here)
Now that I have finished school, the reality that I am not a mother has set in harder than it had previously. When we moved to Arkansas I decided that I was ready to pursue more options and try and find solutions. This past year has been exceptionally hard as I have been faced with more UTI's than in the past and my body hasn't responded the same to the antibiotics as it has before.
Little Rock has a wonderful university medical center that I felt very good about and so I began the process of getting answers. I gathered and requested all of my medical records from the past 13 years of my life so that I would be able to give the doctors a better understanding of my situation. I set up a family care doctor so that I could get referrals to see the doctors at UAMS. At this point, I was finally able to make my appointments. When I did so, I could have never anticipated the wait that would follow. I made appointments with 2 doctors, a urologists and an OB/GYN. The earliest that I would be able to get into either doctor would be over 2 months. A week before my first appointment with the OB/GYN I received a letter in the mail informing me that they had pushed back my appointment for another month and a half. I was so frustrated after waiting so long to find out that I would have to wait even longer. Not to mention the fact that I had been bleeding for over 3 months and I was unsure why. As I explained this situation to the nurse who rescheduled my appointment, she simply said, "well, you have your appointment with the urologist in a few days, see what he says about it". Then to make matters worse, I received a call the day before my urologist appointment to inform me that they would need to move my appointment back one more month. And so the waiting process began again...
When the urologist appointment finally arrived they meant business. It was a long wait to get in to the doctor, but once I was in, he wasted no time in running test, after test, after test to try and get to the root of the problem and to get a clear understanding of my anatomy. He then confirmed, as my childhood urologist had already done, that my urethra was about 1 cm off from where it was suppose to be located. This in turn, directs a small amount of urine into the vaginal cavity and causes a significant amount of urinary tract infections along with a myriad of other issues. He then said that in his 35 years of practicing, he has never seen this situation before and wasn't sure if it would be able to be corrected or not. I then received a referral to see another urologist, as he attempted to comfort me by saying, "if there was a doctor who would have a solution it would be this new doctor". We then went to make the appointment only to be informed that there would be another two month wait to get into see him. This appointment will be December 12th, and I am very hopeful he will be able to repair and correct my urethra.
As for the OB/GYN, I went to that appointment and was again referred to another doctor who specializes in fertility treatment. Luckily this appointment was scheduled just a week and a half following this visit.
My first fertility appointment arrived November 10th, and I could hardly contain my excitement of the possibility that he would have an answer for me as to why I have been unable to get pregnant. Once again he wasted no time in finding a solution, as I underwent a series of tests and blood work. He discovered that I was not ovulating and that is why I had been bleeding for several months. He then ordered and HSG test to determine if there was any blockage in my right fallopian tube (since I only have one) and to get a clear picture of the shape of my uterus. During an HSG test, they shoot dye into you uterus and watch the path of the dye flow out through your fallopian tubes. It is done by taking a consecutive series of x-ray images as the dye is injected. It causes severe cramping for the point of dye injection up to two days later. I had watched a video of a normal HSG test before I went in for the procedure so I would know what to expect.
During the procedure I couldn't see the screen of the X-rays, but once they were done, the doctor sat me up and pulled the screen over to show me the results. The second I saw the images, my heart sank. I knew something wasn't right because my images looked nothing like the normal HSG test I had watched online. I left the hospital that Wednesday with a brief explanation of what the doctor thought might be wrong, but he told me that my fertility doctor would go over the results with me on Thursday. In my heart, I knew the outcome was not what I was hoping for. I spent the rest of Wednesday lying in bed because of pain from the procedure while I looked online for further explanation of what I had seen. There was alot of tears as I read through article after article describing my situation.
Yesterday was the follow up appointment for the test results. Going into the appointment, I had pretty much prepared myself for what the doctor would be telling me. He sat us down in his office and went through everything with us for almost an hour. I was born with a rare uterine abnormality known as a unicornuate uterus. This basically means I have about half the uterus that most women have. My unicornuate uterus has a left horn and a right non-communicating rudimentary horn (as seen in the diagram below, for a picture of a normal uterus please click here).
I have a very healthy right ovary and fallopian tube but there is no communication between them and my uterus. It is suggested that there are several women who have this condition and never experiance any problems from it. It is often diagnosed when a women suffers from repeated miscarriages, pre-term births, or infertiltiy. In my situation it has caused steralization. This is due to the fact that they removed the only fallopian tube that had communication with my uterus because of the damage the tube withstood as child. My uterine malformation was not discovered during my childhood operations because of the initial distortion of the organs from the blood that they held.
The doctor also suspects that I have endometrosis. He has suggested that I undergo a laprasopic surgery to remove my right uterine horn and fallopian tube and the portion still remaining of my left fallopian tube. This will resolve the pain caused from the endometrosis which has built up in my rudimentary horn and decrease the risk of any tubal pregnancies. I am waiting to see if the urologist will be able to operate on me to correct my urethra, and if so, I will have each doctor do their surgeries on the same day.
My options for motherhood are IVF (invitro fertilization), surrogacy, or adoption. If we were to go forward with IVF they would only be able to implant one egg at a time (they usually implant multiple Embryo's). This decreases the chance of the procedure being as affective. They would do this because of the risk involved if all the embryos took and I carried a multiples. Because of my uterine size, carrying just one is like carrying multiples for everyone else. I would be considered a very high risk pregnancy and the chance of miscarriage and preterm births are very high. The babies are usually breeched as well, because there is not enough room for the fetus to turn.
Amongst a lot of sorrow, there is certainly hope, but I have a significant amount of odds to fight. I know that if it is meant to be, the Lord will provide a way. Please keep us in your prayers as we continue are quest to become parents. I can't thank you enough for the immense amount of love and support that you all have shown. I will keep everyone updated as to what we find out over the coming months.
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