Super Wonder Woman

There you go hon, I've retitled it, just for you. :-)
Now, on to the post. . . .

Today, we took the first steps toward getting Shrike checked out to possibly use her eggs for IVF, if I'm not able to get pregnant after six medicated IUIs.

Step one is to take a "Day 3" look at her hormone levels and antral follicle count, to determine her ovarian reserve.

It was a bit complicated, in that we had to go "on my way" to work, but the clinic is an hour from home, and an hour out of my way. We started out in two cars, left mine in a parking lot near the intersection of the two interstates, where you turn to go to OldWorkTown instead of NewWorkTown, and then rode the rest of the way together in Shrike's car.

When we got to the clinic, we had to wait quite a while - pretty much until they were finished with all the other monitoring, since we didn't actually have an appointment, and Dr E was doing the antral follicle scan on the down-low, for no charge.

We did eventually get in, though, and Shrike finally got the chance to get up close and personal with my buddy, the dildo-cam.

The first thing they told us is that her uterus looks "good and normal," but that she has a number of small (marble-sized) uterine fibroids, as well as a larger (but still fairly small) one. The larger one is low in the uterus, which Dr E said can cause more trouble than other locations. (I'm not sure why.)

This is probably the reason for the heavy and painful periods that she's been having, which is why she's been on the pill for a few months.

Other than that, they aren't a problem, given that she's got no plans for her uterus.

Getting her pregnant has never been one of our options, and as Dr E said, that's probably just as well.

Then they moved on to look at her ovaries. Dr E said right off, "Wow, you've got a lot of antral follicles!"

Dr E suggested that she might have more than me, so I pointed out that I'd had twenty-four this cycle. Dr E laughed at me and said, "Uh oh, this could get ugly. I know how competitive women can be!"

It turns out that Shrike's ovaries totally kicked my ovary's asses.

Thirty-freakin-six antral follicles.

None of which will get a chance to even mature because she's on the pill!

But, if we do need to get some from her in a few months, it's great to know that she's still making so many!

Everyone (me, Shrike, Dr E and the dildo-cam tech) was quite impressed, and at one point Dr E (who is just a couple of months younger than me, I believe) even said something along the lines of, ". . . and Doctor is jealous, because you've both got more than me!"

Which we found intriguing, since she's already overshared with us that she's single. So, we're wondering if she's trying on her own, or if she's just keeping an eye on such things.

Not that it's our business, but she's the one who brought it up!

When we finished there, we went over to the center where I used to work to drop off / pick up some stuff. Shrike got to meet ED1, PhoneGirl and Director, and they all got to check her out.

Then Shrike took me back to my car and I headed in to work, while she came back here, went to the lab to get her blood drawn, came home long enough to have a short nap, then went to work.

We should have the lab work back in a few days. We still need to see that to know how her hormone levels look, but the antral follicle count was very promising.

Dr E says that, as soon as she has the lab results, she will "present us" to the shared risk committee to see if we can get approved for that, even though Shrike will be 38.5 on Saturday.

She also said that, for now, she'll put Shrike's dildo-cam photos in my chart, but after the committee is done with them, she'll give them to us, so Shrike can show the fibroid to Dr B, our regular ob/gyn.

I asked Dr E when we would need to make a committment to IVF, if we were to go that route. She said "soon," which kind of worried me, but then clarified that "soon" means "within a few months."

So, our contingency plan is to continue the medicated IUIs, while working on approval (financial and medical) to do IVF using Shrike's eggs, if that doesn't work out within six cycles.

Of course, Plan A is for that to all be moot in ten days, because that's when we'll find out that the Peanuts have stuck!