Thursday, November 6, 2008

The Current Situation

This has been a crazy couple of weeks.

I decided to switch to a new Ob/Gyn named Dr. B. I liked Dr. T but he always seemed like he was in a huge hurry and he was always brushing off my questions with "You're fine!" and "You'll be pregnant in to time!" When things got a little tricky he didn't want anything to do with us anymore. Dr. B is in the same practice as Dr. T so I hope that Dr. T isn't really ticked.

I saw Dr. B two Mondays ago. He was super nice and listened to everything and took me seriously. He says he thinks I have a problem with ovulation because my periods are so irregular. Guess what - nobody ever bothered to check that out before! I guess everybody just made assumptions based on one semenalysis and the fact that I have endo.

Here is what my life has been like since:

Monday: Appointment with Dr. B. I have an ultrasound to check for cysts on my ovaries. I also get referred to a physical therapist to work on my pelvic floor issues. I always assumed that it was endo that made pelvic exams so painful lately, but Dr. B thinks it may be tension from having so many surgeries and people poking around down there. Who knew they could do physical therapy on your lady parts?

Thursday: Dr. B leaves me a message saying the ultrasound showed several small cysts on my ovaries. I am probably not ovulating and I might have PCOS. Since he is leaving town for a week and half, he says he will try to call me Friday morning.

Friday: I wake up with all the symptoms of a raging UTI. I freak out, leave work right away and go to Dr. B's office to leave a urine sample. On my way back to the car, Dr. B calls me - probably from the the airport (did I mention he is WONDERFUL?) and tells me again that he thinks I am not ovulating. He calls in a prescription for Clomid and tells me to go back into the office and have some bloodwork to check my thyroid, prolactin, and progesterone. I am super super psyched to try Clomid. Finally - something that is affordable and might actually work!

Friday afternoon: The nurse calls me and tells me I have red blood cells in my urine but that otherwise there is no sign of infection. I figure that they're probably right (I have a crazy bladder).

Saturday morning: Once again I wake up feeling like I'm going to pee my pants any second. I pick up the phone to call Dr. B's office again. Turns out the nurse that called me Friday called me back an hour later and said that the urine was retested and that this time there were both red blood cells and white blood cells and so now they think I do have a UTI after all. Supposedly there is a prescription for antibiotics waiting for me at my pharmacy. My husband goes to the pharmacy. He picks up my Clomid, but no antibiotics have been called in. Hours of phone tag go by while I try to deal with Dr. B's horribly incompetent office staff. I had finally given up and was ready to go to the ER (my UTI's are really really bad) when the pharmacy finally called me to tell me the prescription was ready.

Saturday night: I get an email from Dr. B. Apparently my progesterone levels suggest that I did ovulate - maybe really early. He says he'll call when he gets back to town and to forget about taking the Clomid. I am devastated. I was excited to have something to blame for not being pregnant and I was even more excited to hold in my hands the pills that might get me pregnant. Now I am back to square one.

Wendnesday: I get an email from Dr. T. Since Dr. B was away, Dr. T was the one who reviewed my urine sample. He says that the culture was negative for bacteria. I did not have a UTI after all. No one seems concerned about my symptoms or all the red and white blood cells in my urine. I feel like an idiot. I also suspect that Dr. T is pissed at me for changing to Dr. B.

I am so tired of getting yanked around and around and around. Why does everything have to be so damn hard? The doctors can't make up their minds about anything and I can't even get a prescription filled without a ton of drama. And why does everything I try to do for myself lately backfire so miserably? The acupuncture catastrophe was bad enough but this is a new low. I'll never get pregnant without ART because sex is totally out of the question. It already made me feel like a failure because we are infertile. Now it makes me feel like a failure with a raging UTI.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I also have PCOS along with some mild endo that was removed. It is a pain when you know what is wrong...but nothing can fix it!

Amy said...

I have PCOS and my DH has sperm issues. I'm sorry you've had to join the infertility ranks...but you'll find alot of VERY supportive women (and even some men!) have blogs and are willing to see you through the tough times.

Just a warning if you visit my blog...I've "crossed over" so my posts lately are about that.

Amanda said...

I have PCOS and that was our only issue with getting pregnant. My cycles were not too wacky, but I could never figure out if I ovulated. I finally got a Clear Blue Easy Fertility Monitor (pricey, but worth it for me) and found out that I was ovulating most months (not all), but not when I thought I was. I still ended up trying Clomid, but the monitor let me know more of what was going on with my body.

That is horribly frustrating to have to deal with offices and doctors like that!!! Grrrrr I hope the PT has helped, though.

Have they ever mentioned a low-grade antibiotic to take after sex to decrease your chance of UTIs? For the past decade I've suffered horribly from them (like you, trips to the ER are warranted if an antibiotic isn't introduced quickly enough) and feel your pain in that aspect.