I'm a teacher. So I tend to put things off until the summer when I have time to breathe. After a year of shots, pills, ultrasounds, acupuncture needles, horrible herbs, and tears, I made an appointment with an RE in June of 2013. She looked over my history. She immediately decided to order blood tests. Egg count, hormone levels, chromosome makeup (my dad is adopted so there are some holes in my medical history). She also did another vaginal ultrasound. My right ovary and tube looked great. Apparently my ovary resembled a chocolate chip cookie. This is good because you can see all the follicles. My left side wasn't so clear and was enough to cause concern. So she ordered a HSG. They inject dye through the cervix and do an xray scan to see the shape of the uterus and fallopian tubes. I said sign me up. Whatever helps right?
When I went in for my HSG, all my blood work was back. Completely normal hormone levels, no markers for genetic disease, and excellent egg quantity. So far so good. On to the HSG. I'm not trying to scare anyone, but I'm a straight shooter. This was one of the worst experiences of my life. I have never experienced this kind of pain. My doc uses a cervical block which means she takes a NEEDLE and injects numbing medication into the cervix. That was NOT fun! The entire procedure took about 5 minutes and I felt every second of it. But finally, an answer. My right side looked textbook perfect. My uterus also perfect. But I had a hydrosalpinx (sp?). My left fallopian tube was twisted and swollen. She couldn't see an opening or an ovary. Her suggestion? Surgery. I would probably lose the tube. However, plenty of women go on to have successful pregnancies after an ectopic pregnancy where they lose a tube. Not all hope was lost.
The surgery was scheduled for a month later. It was laproscopy. What was supposed to take an hour took 2 1/2. Turns out my left tube had completely twisted/wrapped around itself. Somewhere in that twisting, it seemed to swallow up the left ovary because after an house of looking, she still couldn't find it. And to add to that, it had adhered itself to my abdominal wall. While the doc wanted to remove the tube, she found that in all the acrobatics, the tube had twisted with my ureter. Yeah let's not remove that. So she cauterized my left tube. I was down for about a week. But I got some awesome color photos of my lady parts.
After the surgery and after the drugs wore off, I started to research. Apparently we all have fluid in our tubes at some point in the month. It flows out the ovary end and into the your body. No biggie. Because my tube was closed on the ovary end, that fluid was flowing back into my uterus. I found several studies that said this can cause a whole mess of issues. First, the fluid can create a barrier in your uterus so the egg can't implant. Second, the fluid can wash the egg right out. Third, the fluid can create a change in your uterine contractions. Look into this if you have a hydrosalpinx. It's really fascinating. So with that problem removed would we have success?
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