Doctor's Report

We saw the doctor today. He's the head honcho of the clinic and wants to see all new patients. I'm not sure if he'll be our doctor, but it sounds like he will be. I think he does most if not all of the retrievals and transfers, but I'm 100% sure on that either. We'll find out when we get going with ours. For now I'll call him Dr. L. for lack of a better nickname.

So we'd been told to call about 1.5-2 hours before our appointment to see if he was on time as he's notorious for being late. I'd heard it before as well, and it's because he likes to be thorough with his patients. However, it turned out that it wasn't a busy day and he was on time. Of course V., being on call this week, got a call just as he was supposed to get ready and for us to go with lots of time available in case there was traffic. Needless to say, we got out of the house with about 20 minutes available for us to get from where we live to downtown Toronto. I won't say how we did it, but V. managed to drive what would normally be about 45-60 minutes in 30 minutes. We were only about 10 minutes late, but ended up waiting for him for a half hour anyway as he had a transfer to do.

So we go through the standard questions about heredity, illnesses and the like. There were even questions I'd never been asked by any doctor during the 4 years we've been trying. That in itself made me think that this was going to be different and more thorough. Even though there were copies in the file, I had brought printouts of all the tests we'd had done in March as well as the file that I'd sent to the clinic in Montreal 18 months ago. I also found a copy of the surgical report from when the fibroids were removed. Turned out to be a good idea as he didn't seem to have read the file. What's interesting is that he did question why I had the fibroids removed as they weren't in the cavity.

After the interview he did an exam of me. V. went back to the waiting room as they had internet access. He did an ultrasound both internal and external. Luckily my bladder was already full as he said otherwise we'd have had to wait an hour. After this, we were back in his office. He said my uterus looked good which was nice to know. Then he went over the Issues and the Plan for us.

He said issues included hormones and making sure everything was okay here but this would be dealt with in blood work, immune specifically referring to autoantibodies like lupus and this would be determined through bloodwork, and finally my uterus and if the tubes were clear. Even though I've already had several sonohysterograms, he wants me to do one after my next period to make sure himself.

So the plan is as follows. V. and I will begin the process to select a donor. We've already got that in the works with the US agency. We just need to complete the forms and send the deposit and we're going to do that this weekend and send it for Tuesday. Psychological counselling would be part of that plan, but because we already had it done with the Montreal clinic, and the report was included in the referral (thankfully I requested it be sent), we are able to check that off as done. Yippee!!. I will go in sometime in the next week or so for the sonohysterogram as that has to be done on CD6-10, so after my period ends but before I ovulate. Since I'm on CD28, that will be fairly soon. And finally bloodwork. Both V. and I had blood work done today even though we'd had it done and given them the results. No biggie really. All is covered by OHIP except for two tests that he wanted done for me that weren't. Thankfully not expensive. He wants me to get the anti-cardiolipin IgA and IgM tests which is another test for autoantibodies, from what I googled. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So basically that's where we stand right now. Once we've selected our donor, things will being moving. He did say that the agency has excellent donors. And that generally there is a 60-70% success rate, so I'm feeling fairly optimistic at this stage.

So, stay tuned.

Oh, on a side note, Dr. L. asked V. after looking at the report for his most recent semen analysis if he'd ever considered being a sperm donor. Apparently my man has super sperm! :)