The Journey of a Thousand Miles

This last week, I had my first appointment with a fertility specialist. Our issue is actually male infertility, but since my body will do most of the work, I have the honor of getting worked on. Joy. There aren’t a whole lot of fertility specialists in our area and we had heard of other people going to larger cities hours away, but we were recommended to one and decided to try it. I was nervous and excited. I didn’t know what the appointment would entail, so I primped and primed my girly parts as best I could, took a few really deep breaths and went. I turned out, the doctor barely even touched me. (All that shaving for nothing. Geez!)  But I really liked him… and his staff… and his office. And I suppose there will be enough physical manipulation in due time, right?

So for those of you as uninformed as I was, here’s the plan. The first step is starting a new menstrual cycle. In fact, I have to call the office as soon as I start my period. I’ve never had to announce this news to anyone, let alone office staff, but I’ll do as I’m told. Then, within ten days I’m going to have about five tests: blood work, ultrasound, X-rays of my girlie parts, etc. The tests will tell them if there’s anything wrong with me. And then, the meds. Apparently there is about a $5,000 gap between “basically normal fertile female” and “damn that girl’s girlie parts are screwy.” I really hope I’m on the conservative side of this spectrum because nothing about this process is cheap.

We know we’re looking at a specific type of Invitro Fertilization (IVF) called Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSE for short) which involves the normal IVF harvesting of my eggs, but adds the manual selection of individual sperm and insertion of said sperm into my eggs (externally, of course). Sounds like fun, huh? And despite all of this, I left the doctor feeling excited, relieved and somewhat eager. There was comfort in knowing that we had a plan and we were taking the first steps. I had been feeling down for a while (I have struggled with mild clinical depression in the past) but I feel better than I have in a long time. Perhaps it’s just the newness, but I hope not. Maybe this is part of my larger purpose in life, even though it’s something I’ve never felt pulled towards. I’ve never felt my biological clock ticking and I’ve only held a couple of babies in my entire lifetime. But there must be sometehing to this parenting thing if so many generations have done it. (And we’ve had birth control for decades now, so don’t give me that bullshit.) And it may be that all of this effort and money leaves us with nothing but a failed attempt, but I still find hope in that. So… onward and upward! Here’s to my next menstrual cycle. May it come speed and significance! Excelsior!!