"About Us" - Miles leading up to Mile 19

Brad and I married in the summer of 2002. We are both from Midland and attended Texas A&M. We moved out here to Brady, TX August of 2005 (and we love it!). The only kicker is that we have had to go through a lot of medical stuff and are now far from good doctors, hospitals, etc., but we cannot complain! The reason for this ‘about us’ column is for those who are possibly facing infertility to know a little of our background leading up to this Mile 19 (and it wouldn't fit in the right spot ("Profile"). There is quite a bit left out about us and about our story, so if you are going through some of this and I can minister to you in anyway, or if you simply have any questions or want to share your story, do not hesitate to holler or post a comment!! (Warning: it’s a bit long!)
Growing up I was very very active in sports and used to have very infrequent periods... I was playing soccer at A&M when Brad and I got engaged, and right before Brad and I got married I went to the OBGYN to see about getting on birth control pills, etc. I explained to her about my cycles (or lack thereof) and she attributed it to athletics. Made sense to me so she gave me some meds to induce a cycle to then start on birth control pills... I started bleeding and then didn't stop for 3 months... right up until the week we were getting married I was up to 4 birth control pills/day (as prescribed by the doctor) to get my period to stop. I had trouble like that off and on for about 6 months but then finally (after switching b.c. pills like 3-4 times) my cycles straightened out pretty good, and stayed like that for about 3 years. Meanwhile I stopped soccer, we did our masters and moved out here. The first OBGYN I had gone to I told him about my health history and he said I'd probably be fine but if I didn't start a period (after getting off b.c. pills) to call his office. Well I didn't start back for about 2 months, wasn't pregnant and so they gave me Prometrium to start a cylce. We did this a couple times and things just weren't working right. We switched to another doctor that I knew had seen a couple of people with infertility issues. She did a series of blood work-ups and evaluation and diagnosed me with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). She said everything pointed towards anovulation and started me on Clomid. Well, I got a fat cyst the very first time... went in for an ultrasound, confirmed the cyst, and she confirmed PCOS with seeing all the little cysts around my other ovary. [(On a side note: we later have learned that I have ‘some form of PCOS’  (pretty much everything in my reproductive/health history has been ‘kind of’, ‘borderline’, ‘not textbook’… I do not fit the normal bill of PCOS, but what I for sure do have is anovulation (which translates into NO OVULATION – to clarify, this doesn’t mean I have ‘irregular cycles’ and ovulate every now and then like some women who have PCOS or even no condition at all; it means that I never ovulate. So when people tell you ‘oh just relax and you’ll get pregnant’ (or one of the million other things you hear), you just kind of have to laugh)]. Finally the cyst went down (At first, a large cyst was a really big deal - by now it’s really not b/c me and cysts go together like hamsters and cedar shavings). Oh and with the first round they said my blood test showed I was 'borderline ovulation'! Ha! Don’t you either ovulate or you don’t? So we started another round of Clomid and this time she put me on 600 mg of prometrium the second half of the cylce. I didn't feel so great with all this and before I could find out if I was pregnant or not, I started having this rectal bleeding (sorry for the details but, hey, this is the story). It worsened and continued to the point that I had to go in for a colonoscopy (right after finding out that I wasn't pregnant). [Another side note: I have had my share of serious stomach/colon issues in the past. All through soccer I had these horrible stomach attacks and would be doubled-over... had horrible reflux, migraines, and a dozen other things - I had spent my time after soccer trying to get my body as healthy as possible, and thought that I was. Little did I know I was basically masking the symptoms and some roots to all the problems that were still lingering].
After the colonoscopy, endoscopy and ultrasounds they said I had an ulcerated colon, colitis, an infection and gave medicine that didn't seem to do anything. Very long story short we were desperately seeking the Lord in what to do for my health, and were absolutely heart broken that we had to take a big detour to chase down these health issues when we thought God was bringing us children! A wise Godly woman told me about this specialist in Georgia (basically a one-of-a-kind nutritionist) - we flew out there and the journey with her was nothing short of miraculous. For the first time in my life, we nailed down stuff with my colon, problems with my ovaries, liver, gall bladder, skeletal issues... the list goes on and on (prior to seeing her I still could hardly do stairs or squats b/c of soccer injuries, wear and tear, etc. was having headaches daily and not realizing the amount of Aleve I was on just to ‘make it through the day’). After seeing her for 6 months, I was literally a completely different person from the inside out and feeling better than ever before. We got the bacteria and parasites gone, yeast candida under control, my joints were getting better and better, migraines going away... (During part of this I was also going to Austin often for work with a TMJ specialist, nerve studies, sleep studies, bloodwork, MRI, etc. (for compression in my neck causing the TMJ and migraines, the nerve issues and me having shingles, and some other fun stuff!))
We of course looked back at this point with the nutritionist and praised our All-Knowing Father for not allowing us to conceive when we were first trying b/c I wasn't as healthy as I thought I was! After our last great check up with her we continued for ~ 8 months to try on our own to get pregnant (through this process with her I actually I had some cycles of my own - wow!) but conception was not happening and we were not feeling very confident that I was even ovulating, despite things improving so much (during the course of this time we did get a positive pregnancy home test, but the blood test said negative – whole other story - that one was rough, really rough!). We were seeking Jesus with all our hearts through all of this, and not feeling a complete peace about moving forward with the doctors yet. I had seen an infertility specialist during this time in Austin, and he pretty much gave me the same evaluation as my former OB but we knew in our hearts, for whatever reason, we weren't to do anything with him yet (this was a separate clinic than the one I later ended up going to)... I tried acupuncture and all kinds of stuff but still not pregnant. After much patience and prayer we felt like the Lord was pointing us to Midland (we're pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, in between Austin and Midland). Our parents live in Midland and my mom knew of a doctor that she heard was good and was a Christian. He wasn't an infertility specialist but our hope was that with me being so stinkin healthy now ;), we would respond much better to the meds and hopefully not have to go through too much before conceiving. We had a great consultation with him and after visiting, bloodwork, evaluation, etc. he felt like the main problem was simply getting me to ovulate (not always so simple huh?). We did a birth control (b.c.) pack to restart my system, Clomid, and an IUI. The ultrasounds before the IUI showed no cyst (Thank You Lord) and a follicle on one ovary grew to a great size to ovulate. We didn't conceive, but the even more frustrating thing is I didn't even have a period. The other 2 times I was on Clomid I at least did have a period... and from the ultrasounds it looked so certain that I was going to ovulate! We were afraid this indicated something else was going on, but our doc said it didn't really point to anything and he recommended doing another round of Clomid and an IUI. The IUI went well – however, it was like, once again, my hormones just kind of disappeared in the latter half of the cycle and ovulation could not be confirmed. We then, per our doctor’s recommendation, tried doubling the Clomid. Well, we ended up with 5 cysts, each about 5cm. We did an HSG, tubes and uterus appeared fine, and started back on Clomid, this time adding an Ovidrel injection (the Clomid was helping me produce follicles but even with it, I was still not actually ovulating! The ovidrel is essentially a synthetic or recombinant hcG. With the combination of the Clomid with the Ovidrel, we finally confirmed ovulation for the first time ever… but no pregnancy). We tried this protocol several more times and each time no pregnancy. Needless to say we were hurting, confused, and what we thought may be one of those ‘oh just taking a little long to get pregnant’ was being realized as a serious infertility case – a hard one to swallow!
After a couple months break and much prayer, we decided it was time to go to the best and made an appointment with Dr. Hansard at Texas Fertility Center in Austin, TX. We had tried the natural route, a lot!, we covered all the ‘bases’ and nothing had worked. We knew that TFC meant more money and more drugs, but we were definitely ready to finally get some real answers and make some progress. So after almost 3 years and 5 failed IUIs, etc. we went to TFC. One specific thing we had been praying about was if there was another ‘piece to the puzzle’. We had asked our doctors multiple times about the chance of endometriosis or anything else and they replied with ‘most likely you do not have endometriosis. You have such a severe ovulation problem that is obviously causing the infertility. The chance of you having another issue causing infertility would be really rare.’ Well, turns out that I have did have endometriosis (Stage III out of IV) as diagnosed by Dr. Hansard (a laparoscopy was the first thing she recommended as she highly suspected she would see something) … and I did have ‘multi-factor infertility’ (anovulation, endometriosis, and adhesions).
We then tried two Clomid-Ovidrel-IUIs with TFC and we were devastated that neither one resulted in a pregnancy. After another break, and much prayer, we agreed that in-vitro was the next and basically only step (other than adoption). So here we are (3-12-09) half-way into our in-vitro cycle. As you can see, there are updates with more detailed information on almost all of this. Instead of writing more, I’ll just let you read those (if you want to) but maybe this gives a little more background!