Answers, Maybe; or Action, Definitely

My head is reeling right now at how fast everything is happening. I'm heading into Manhattan in a few minutes to pick up my Clomid prescription. We're planning an IUI for this cycle, and as I'm CD 6 (or CD 5 depending on how you calculate CD 1), I need to take the medication in the next three hours.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

To back up a little, my RE called me last night at 7 pm, as I was just about to leave the house to meet Lawyer Guy, my sister and her fiance for dinner. She was calling with the results of LG's semen analysis--one day after he had the test!

(And for the record, I am soooo impressed that she called me that quickly. This makes me very optimistic for the state of my care at Cor.nell. I think I need to find a new code name for her. Dr. Woman is not very descriptive, you know? So I will provisionally adopt Dr. Wonderful as her name)

So, the results of the test: Count good at 30 million. Motility good at 57%. Morphology not good at 3% after a wash (4% is now considered normal. I don't feel comfortable giving the pre-wash numbers, because of LG's sensitivity around this subject).

Based on this, Dr. Wonderful counseled going directly to monitored Clomid + IUI, as this will give the sperm a better shot at reaching an egg and more eggs to be potentially reached. She did say it's not impossible for us to conceive on our own with these stats (obviously, as we already have) but cautioned that it will likely take longer.

After all these months, this might be an answer. I don't know yet if we can say that this has been causing our problems, but it's definitely a red flag. And the plus side to morphology issues (I guess) is that if we must go the IVF route (and I'm not ready to say we need that yet-- Dr. Wonderful didn't even mention it), it appears there will be every likelihood of success, especially if my HSG results are normal.

I was relieved when she first gave me the results (I had feared learning LG had, like, only 2 million sperm in his sample). Then the more I thought about it (and googled-- bad Sloper!) the more nervous I became. Then I started thinking about getting my prescription and when the pharmacy would open and how I could do this all before leaving at 8:30 to teach. Answer: I couldn't, so I canceled class. Some things are just more important.

Ultimately, I'm still not really sure where this leaves us. I've read conflicting information on morphology, from "It's the only thing that matters" to "We don't give a crap about it." I don't want to read any more and Lawyer Guy wants me to avoid independent research into it, too. If you have anecdotes or experience with this, please just hold off on sharing for a while, because we want to sit down and chat with Doctor Wonderful about what all this means to her before we start hearing from other sources. We're seeing a fantastic doctor at one of the best clinics in the country, and if we can't trust the care we're getting here, what can we trust?

So: it's an IUI. I don't expect our first shot at bat to win the game for us, but I'm excited to be starting nonetheless. I'm happy that we're learning more about our situation. I'm happy I have a doctor I trust and like who is prompt and active in managing our care. I'm happy that Lawyer Guy seems to be taking all this okay. He's very pleased that his count and motility #s are good and is refusing to speculate about what the consequences of the morph #s will be until we speak with Dr. Wonderful. I know that men--and my LG, in particular--can be amazingly good at refusing to look at things that bother them and refusing to acknowledge their pain, and I'm a little worried about how this is going to pan out emotionally for us. But I trust him and me to do the best with this situation and to love each other fiercely regardless of our temporary and momentary traumas and distress. I'm going to have to work on being as much of a support for him as he has been for me, because we're both in this together. And that's the way it should always be.