Post-Op Report

Today was my official post-op appointment.  Dr. M took a look at my incisions and said they are looking great.  I must agree.  Aside from them being a little red still, you wouldn't be able to tell I had surgery a little over 3 weeks ago. 

As for the appointment itself, she showed us the 8 pages of pictures she took during surgery.  I had to laugh at a couple of them.  She had to take pictures of both the left and right sides round ligaments because I have no fat surrounding them.  She told us that the surgery staff had never seen something like that before because they'd never worked on a patient with such little body fat as myself.  Heart disease will never be a problem for me, she joked. 

As we progressed through the pictures, we got to the ones she had taken of my tubes and ovaries.  From the outside, they look perfect - no scarring or anything that would indicate any kind of infection or endometriosis.  However, when she injected the dye, it pooled in one area on the right side.  She said that she had a hard time trying to get it to spill like it should.  Getting it to spill into the left was impossible.  She moved things around and still no luck.  She's somewhat at a loss as to how they got the dye to get through my left tube during the HSG.

So, she came to the conclusion that it's most likely inside the tubes.  Hence, the diagnosis of Tubal Factor IF.  She said that they could have removed the diseased tubes, but since I'm so young, didn't really see much of a benefit of doing so.  Because of the possible diseased tubes, she also doesn't recommend us doing an O-inducing medications (Clomid, Femara, etc.) because there is such a heightened risk of having an ectopic pregnancy if we do get pregnant.  Our final choice:  IVF.

I'm fine moving on with it.  Hubby has his reservations now.  He's looking at the financial aspect of it all.  Paying for transportation, lodging, and the embryologist (I believe it is) currently wouldn't be feasible on our one-income right now.  My thoughts are that we won't be able to get an appointment with the RE for at least 6-8 months, which would give us a lot of time to get things in line financially so we could do it.  And who knows, I could have a job by that time and it wouldn't be such an issue.

We're going to discuss it more and go from there.  I know I don't want to waste too much time cuz this girl isn't getting younger (as my 25th rapidly approaches next week - not that I'm old, but being a military spouse puts a litttle damper on some aspects of life).  Plus, if at all possible, I want to utilize whatever routes we can to try to have a baby before we get to the point that we have to decide about living CF or adopting.

Now what to tell the families...that's an entirely different post, especially since they don't know we're TTC.