Bear with me... Medical histories are boring by nature

I can remember having my first hot flash in my late teens. I didn't think anything of it because I didn't know what it was. They only ever occurred once in a blue moon. By the time I was 24 it felt like for 2 minutes out of every hour in my day I was anxiously stranded in the Sahara Desert. I wasn't sleeping through the night anymore because it was covers on and snuggled in and then in an instant I was ripping them off and sweating then awake again a few minutes later freezing cold. I had finally had enough and went to my OB/GYN's office to ask her what she thought. I saw Pam Sunshine, the PA at the women's center at Alta View Hospital. After many blood tests, ultrasounds, and confirming with her colleagues Pam told me that she was of the opinion that I had Perimenopause. It explained why my hormone levels would change to that of 50 year old during a month/months while I was having hot flashes and then bounce back to a normal 24 year old levels when I was not. She referred me to an endocrinologist for further testing to confirm that my thyroid and adrenal glands where not the issues. I have an affinity for Pam Sunshine... I mean the name alone is joyful. But the endocrinologist she referred me too.... I can't even remember his name. I only remember that it was foreign and had to many vowels for me to even remember it when setting appointments. He was a slight, older man that would sit with his legs crossed and subject me to ridiculous tests over and over and over again! I had exams, blood tests at all times of the month for months and months, and and my personal favorite... for a whole day I had a huge orange medical jug, I mean bigger then a gallon of milk and I had to carry a duffel bag because it didn't fit upright in any purse I had. (and it was of the utmost importance that it be upright) I had to carry this huge jug around and here is the best part, pee in it! All damn day! It was a week day too so this included going to work. I took this as a challenge. It was huge and I can drink and pee a lot. I filled that sucker up and took it back to a very shocked lab tech. It just ended up being humiliating to see his reaction. I obviously was the first person in the history of people caring jugs of pee around all day to return it full. The orange pee jug was to measure hormone levels through out the day to get an average. He found nothing wrong with my adrenal glands or my thyroid and sent me back to Pam Sunshine. She told me she was confident in her diagnosis and that if Sam and I planned to have children we shouldn't put it off any longer.

This is the phase that I like to call denial and it lasted a long time. While I knew I was having symptoms of menopause and these symptoms had increased over the last few years I didn't believe that a day would come anytime soon where I would not be able to have children. I did a few noncommittal Google searches and read what I needed to come to the conclusion that I could probably wait a little longer. Simply put Sam and I had discussed having children, maybe, when we were 30. At 24 we just weren't ready yet to commit ourselves to a family unit. But in the back of our minds was a little niggle saying... you may not get a chance. After a few months we decided to stop birth control and to just see what happened. We got a little excited at the prospect of being the first of our friends to have children especially since we didn't think anyone would have expected it from the two of us. But that time came and passed and, simply put, nothing happened. My friends were having children and we began to resign ourselves to not having children. Sam and I felt okay with that. To be honest the thing that bothered us most was all the money wasted on contraception.

Now we enter the next phase. I'll call this one, a change of heart. It had been over a year since I was told I had Perimenopause. We told a few people about it but really tried to keep it under our hats since the idea of surprising people with being pregnant was so alluring! Sam and I moved to England and this is where I began to think I wanted to have a baby in England. The timing finally started to feel right. I knew I could surprise the pants off people because they wouldn't be seeing me on a regular basis. I began to fantasize about showing up home for Christmas with a big belly and finally telling everyone that Sam and I were expecting. I went to another doctor and told her what was going on. She told me that Sam and I had to be actively trying for 2 years before we were eligible for any aid from the NHS. We still had a year to go so we just kept plugging away on our own to see what would happen. I started doing normal TTC (Trying To Conceive) things like tracking cycles on apps, and ovulation tests. Mostly these things just became more frustrating. I only got one positive ovulation test ever and it didn't take long before it started to sink in that we might actually have a real fertility issue on our hands. After another year passed I went back to my GP. We were led to believe that it was unlikely the NHS was going to cover anything and it was going to be out of our pocket in the end. It was also so close to us coming home from England that we decided to wait... just a little longer and see a doctor when we got back.

A few months after we got back a particularly nasty bout of hot flashes that almost drove me to the brink of MADNESS also stirred me to go see another doctor. I had to do something because I couldn't live with the symptoms of my hormones any longer. We had new insurance and a local fertility clinic, we're talking just around the corner from both our offices, so we got a referral. July 2014 we saw our first fertility doc. At this point Sam and I were invested in this. We did more hormone level testing and ultrasounds for me and a semen analysis for Sam. Sam's levels were, and I quote, "Olympic quality". Sam could probably quote his levels to you with pride and many of you have already heard all about it. My levels showed that my AMH was low at .22 which means a low egg count and because it was not a time were I was getting hot flashes my FSH was in a good range at 8.5, this is the hormone in your brain that sends a message to your ovaries to work. If you are in menopause then the level is higher because your brain is trying to scream at your ovaries to work. The doctor said that we should try an IUI or Inter-Uterine Insemination at the beginning of October.

When October came I went for a base line ultra sound and started taking Letrozole. I took that for 5 days and went back in for another ultrasound and there was a 15mm egg growing! We were so excited! It was crazy to see a little egg on the screen. They told me to start taking an injection called Gonel-F for the next 3 days and come back for another ultrasound and hopefully we could trigger ovulation with another injection for the next week. That freaked me the eff out! I had no idea injections administered by yours truly would be involved in the process! I took the injection pen home and tried to follow along with the how to video. I kept saying to myself just don't think about it and follow the video, it will be over before you know it. The injection came and went and the girl on the screen was done and I was still standing there with the needle hovering over my stomach. It took about a half hour to work up the courage to stick myself and I gave myself a "test" prick and a bruise in the process. The next few days got easier and by the end of the third day I was a pro. When I went back for the next ultrasound they couldn't find the egg. They thought it had died or had already been ovulated so they sent me for a progesterone blood test to find out if I had ovulated. After an anxious week of waiting for the test results it was only .33. When you ovulate your level should be around 25, so the assumption was that the egg had died and we had to wait till the next month. It was hard to swallow because we allowed ourselves to believe that this would obviously work. There is basically no chance involved at all because everything is so controlled. Disappointed we just had to wait for the next month.

When it was finally time to go back for a baseline ultrasound the excitement was back! Now I knew more about the process and I was ready to dive right in! In the ultrasound the doctor found a cyst. He said it could be the egg from last month and it had not been visible on the ultrasound. WHAT!! It could have been there the whole time! That was annoying.... He then told us that there was nothing to do because if we started any meds we risked growing the cyst and it would become painful or rupture. We just had to keep waiting. He then told us something that sent us reeling. He walked clear across the room and said that we could continue to try IUI but that they probably wouldn't work but he suggested we use a donor egg and IVF. That knocked us down a few pegs. Were my eggs really that bad? We had no idea that after one failed attempt at an IUI it would result in this prognosis. Just to give up on using my eggs all together. It was devastating! So many things were running through my mind as I thought about having a baby that looked like my husband and someone else. The idea of having a baby using a siblings egg and having that baby that looked like my sister and my husband. Wondering what my sister would feel towards a baby created with her eggs? Feeling blind sided as this was not something we had ever discussed before and lastly feeling terribly inadequate. We went home and digested what had been said and decided that before we give up on having a baby with our own DNA we would get a second opinion.