Monday, December 3, 2007

HSG Complete

Ahhhh...no more diagnostic procedures.

Ok, one more - but it's not so much diagnostic as it is a "test run" as my husband calls it. Today was the HSG appointment - and I was a bit nervous, not as nervous as I was before though.

We arrived bright and early at the hospital and they immediately saw me upon sitting in the waiting room. M stood up to escort me back (it's becoming quite the habit now) and Nurse C said "She'll see you in about 20 minutes." He quietly sat down, I gave him a kiss and I walked back with Nurse C.

She led me to a "women's changing room" and on went the infamous paper gown. She then led me to an "x-ray room" and asked me to lay down on the table. She wanted to take a baseline picture of my uterus and this very big machine slid over my body, and snap goes the picture.

"Woah, what's that!" she said. (You NEVER want to hear this in this situation, seriously.)

She pointed to the left side of the X-ray (right side of my body) and asked "what I had done in that area". I looked at the X-ray and lo and behold, my sutures from my previous hernia surgery were shining pretty in the x-ray. She remarked how "strong" they were, and indicated that I would never have another hernia with those strong sutures in there. I was a little proud. I'm getting very proud of the weirdest things. (I do still need to ask Dr. O what the possible impacts of two hernia surgeries could do in labor and birth).

Dr. O was about 7 minutes late, so I stared at the monitor, the florescent lights, the bandaid weirdly placed on the big machine.....in he walks, hair cut and all, shaking my hand like he always does. Nurse C scooted me down to the end of the table and propped a pillow under my head (thanks, C!). As usual, Dr. O walked me through each step and inserted all the machinery into my cooch.

On the screen I could see the catheter once again, but this time it was a black dye. I also saw my little fallopian tubes and I do mean little! I've always pictured this Dodge Ram uterus image in my head, but it was so delicate and fragile. After the dye was pushed, it was very clear it was going through my left fallopian tube. But not my right.

Hmm, he says, the dye isn't coming through that right side. My proud uterus self froze for a moment and alas, the dye started spilling out of the right fallopian tube. He mentioned that there still could be adhesions or a blockage on the right side, but that it wouldn't affect my IVF treatment (as we won't be using the fallopian tubes for conception).

I asked a couple times "Are you sure that's ok? Are you sure nothing's wrong?" He assured me that all is good and that the X-ray machines aren't 100% accurate anyway. He said everything was fine and right on track.

I thanked him for being my doctor, got dressed, got lost finding my way back to M, and then finally found him. We made our quick movie (we've taken videos of this entire process from the beginning) and headed back to the car.

I decided to go into work today (I was going to "work from home") but I started noticing that I was having some harsh cramping on my right side. (the "defunct" side). It's still there, kind of like a pang, an ache, a sharp icky feeling. The cramps are different than menstrual cramps and instead kind of feel like a sharp dagger. I'll see if I feel any better tomorrow, and if not, I may call Dr. O to see what he thinks.

I'm not as excited over these results as I was my SHG, but I think that's to be expected. I can't always have a perfect uterus and tubes, I spose.

This picture is NOT mine, but this is basically what I was looking at today:


Next Steps:
My Trial Transfer on Monday. Immediately after the transfer, we have a consultation with Dr. O to go over all of my blood work, all of my procedures and generally talk about the start of the BCP and hormone treatments.