After a full year of trying (which I do realize isn't that long) and after having only 4 periods, when I called the doctor and asked what we were going to do next, they said that we were going to do the same tests again. This got me pretty frustrated because I had already done those tests; why are we doing them again...shouldn't we move on to something else? I went in very reluctantly to have my blood drawn and wasn't at all anxious for the call I would get a week later because I knew what they were going to say; the same thing they had said many times before - "Everything appears normal so here's some pills and hopefully they'll work". Now obviously that's not exactly what they had told me, but that's pretty much what I heard.
After taking the tests I went home and cried. That was the first time I got upset in over a year. I even remember at one point a few months earlier asking God if something was wrong with me that I wasn't upset about not getting pregnant. I had seen women get upset way before that. Like I said earlier, the first year really was okay, because I did have 100% faith that God would work it out. However, I also had faith in the doctors who were helping me, but when they told me they really didn't know what was wrong and that they just wanted to test the same stuff again, I lost that faith. I lost that hope that they would make me all better. And that's when I finally cried for the first time. I felt that I had hit a roadblock and didn't know where to turn next. If my doctors didn't know what to do, then who would? So I hadn't even got the results, but I just knew they would be normal and we'd be back where we were a year ago - nowhere.
God is really amazing and can completely surprise you sometimes. He did with me when I did finally get my test results back; the doctor didn't say I was normal. She said one of my hormones was a little high and they were referring me to a specialist. I can't even begin to tell you exactly how I felt right then. I seriously let out a deep sigh which felt like I was unloading something huge. Suddenly in that moment I was so happy and thankful. That probably sounds completely opposite of how I should have felt, but after hearing "normal" so many times and knowing that I wasn't, to hear that something might be wrong was actually so refreshing.
So I went to the specialist (whom I really like by the way) and my husband came with me. He said my results of the same tests were so completely opposite from one another that he had a hard time believing they were both mine. He wanted to do them again! Jeez, people. But of course I did them; he wanted to get a better picture of what was going on. Well it turns out that my ovaries don't work right. It's all very technical and kind of hard to follow, but the pituitary gland releases a hormone called FSH to the ovaries to tell them to release the egg from one of their follicles. The doctor said that when he sees the FSH level at a 10, it causes him "anxiety"; he likes to see lower numbers. Well mine is a 44. Obviously he doesn't like this very much. As I understand it, this high number means my FSH is working so hard to get my ovaries to work, but they just aren't. He said he wants to do some more tests first before officially diagnosing me but thinks I have Ovarian Inefficiency. He said if I was 48, he'd call it Menopause, but since I'm just 28 it's called Ovarian Inefficiency. He said that's really just what he likes to call it because the real name is something Ovarian Failure and thinks that's too negative. He said after running more tests, we'll see, but if it is Ovarian Inefficiency, getting pregnant is going to be very hard, very expensive, and will take a very long time. It's a good thing I prepared myself for bluntness.
I cried myself home and told my husband what the doctor said. We both cried about it because it was just kind of a punch to the gut. It's a very weird and eery feeling hearing those words. Who would have thought this would have happened to us? As upset as I was, I felt like giving the doctor a hug as I left his office. I didn't, but I felt like it. He is just so nice and open. I was and am thankful he is going to try to help us. This might sound silly, but when I was in the waiting room, they were playing the same Christian radio station that I listen to. God's really good at giving you just the right amount of peace right when you need it.
