Realizations

It has been a while since I shared my thoughts, emotions, and status with you all regarding my infertility and medical challenges. During this period of time I have had many realizations that I wish to share today.

A fellow infertile blogger wrote a letter to a friend who was also struggling with infertility and miscarriage. She chose to share the letter on her blog for the thousands out there who need to hear her well chosen words. In the letter she addresses the grief cycle. If you ever took a psychology class in college (one of my favorite general ed requirement classes), you have probably learned about this cycle. There are numerous ways of illustrating the cycle, but I have chosen to use the chart shown below:

I have traveled in and out of many stages of the grief cycle during my journey through infertility and medical challenges. In some of these stages, I have spent more time in than others. I have gone backwards rather than forwards and skipped a few only to go back to them at a later time, but either way I have spent my fair share in each stage with the exception of the end result. I have found that seeing a new baby, the site of baby products, or hearing of a friend or relative who is pregnant has a way of catapulting me back into certain stages for brief periods of time. It is simply unpredictable.

I won't go into detail about my experiences in each stage, but I do wish to elaborate on the most recent stage I am in. Acceptance. It feels good even typing that. Several weeks ago, as I was saying my evening prayers, I poured out my heart to Heavenly Father and expressed that I was okay with whatever way he chose to bless us with children. It is easy to say your okay with adoption, but it takes a little more than just saying. You have to truly feel okay about it to. I feel embarrassed to even say that I might not have been okay with it , but lets be honest, it isn't a decision most people are never faced with. It is something I have always thought about, but when it become a reality it was a little harder to swallow.

Thanks to lots of prayers, a visit to a dear friend in Utah last April, and lots of patience from the Lord I have come to accept that I may never carry my own child. In whatever manner the Lord blesses us with children it will be wonderful! Weather it be through IVF, adoption, or a miracle from God, I will find complete joy in having a child to call my own and to be a part of our eternal family. It took a long time for me to entirely feel like I was accepting of all options available to me, but I am now. The ball is in the Lords court and we are just waiting for him to tell us by what means we should pursue children. And that answer has not come.

Just as I have made strides in the sorrow of my infertility, I have also had several realizations regarding my health. The past several months have been terribly hard on me as I have had infection after infection (often without a break). I have certainly passed through many of the darker sides of the grief cycle with my recent health conditions. I have questioned weather I should have pursued all that I did to make me better when at times I only feel worse. I have felt feelings of frustration towards my Doctor even though he has been amazing in every way. And I have most certainly felt helpless.

The conclusion that I finally have come to is not something I like to think about. It is a thought I have fought more than once, but at the same time it could be the reality of my situation. Some people are born with terrible abnormalities that cannot be repaired. Some people experience horrible accidents that cause paralysis or other challenges. We cannot always avoid such situations nor can we correct them. Thankfully my condition is internal. Most people will never know of my medical conditions. They typically cannot see when I am sick.

We are all given trials in life. Some only stay with us for a short period of time, while others are left to carry the burden of their trails throughout their earthly life. For so long I approached my condition as a race in which there was a finish line. The truth is I don't know if there will be a finish line in this earthly life. My medical struggles may be something that I carry with me throughout the remainder of my days. It has always been "when I am healthy" or "when they fix that problem". I am not sure I will ever be healthy nor do I know if they will find solutions to all of my medical concerns. It is a hard concept to grasp, but I at least have to learn to understand that it may be the reality.

I am who I am. Healthy or sick...happy or sad. And I have to learn to make the most of life either way. The sweet and inspired words of the mother of Joseph B. Wirthlin come to mind, "come what may, and love it". That is all I can do. Learn to love the life (and body) I have been given and he will carry me through the trails.

Follow-up

As a follow-up to my last post entitled, "Avoiding the Why Me's" I wanted to share the following. In this post I shared a few of my feelings and thoughts on the possibility that we chose our trails in the pre earth life. My sweet friend shared a story on her blog in relation to what I had said. It is such a touching story, and it brought tears to my eyes. Her family has been blessed through adoption and is currently trying to adopt again. Please visit the following link to read the story which she shared...

Click Here

Part 2 of My Story

(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.