A strange thing happened last night...well maybe not strange, but unexpected due to the fact that I’ve been waiting for it for two weeks now...but Dr. Ahlering finally called! And I had planned to be really mean, or like pretend I didn’t know who he was, or something to let him know I was upset, but of course as soon as he said he was sorry, I was like “it’s no big deal.” Ha…I’m just too easy! The good news though is that we finally got some answers that have been a long time coming!!
First, our test results...for the most part these came back good, but there is yet another issue that was uncovered. Ugh...like we need anything else working against us! He did a DNA Fragmentation test on Jacob and his DNA fragmentation index (DFI) came back normal, but his High DNA Stainability (HDS) came back abnormal. From what I’ve read this indicates a high percentage of immature sperm. Anything greater than 15% is considered abnormal and Jacob came in at a whopping 42%. According to Dr. Ahlering this means that our chances of getting pregnant and having a successful pregnancy with IUI are very low and that IVF with ICSI is really our only option. Which I believe him, but there is still a part of me that has doubts about this theory…because one, we did get pregnant before with IUI and two, some of the literature I’ve found (on the internet so we all know how reliable that can be) indicates that the jury is still out on HDS’s impact on pregnancy rates. So I’m still a little unsure about how big of a deal this really is. But the second bit of news was we do qualify for the low stim IVF protocol! Hooray! This was originally going to be the decision maker of whether or not we move straight to IVF or give chlomid a few more tries...but that was two weeks ago *smile*
So now we have all the information, but I don’t feel like we have all the answers…and I don’t feel like there is necessarily a clear path laid out for us at this point. Do we continue with the surgery as planned next week? Do we have the polyp removed and the lap to look at my tube in the hopes of trying chlomid again? Or should we pass go and head straight on to IVF land? I’m pretty confused and torn at this point. We have two appointments scheduled for Monday that will hopefully help us decide. The first is with Dr. Pearlstone to discuss my surgery. I am going to tell him about the new findings and get his opinion on it…and if he agrees that IVF with ICSI is the best option then I think we’ll plan to just do the hysteroscopy on the 16th and skip the lap. If he strongly discounts that HDS has a role in our success, then appointment number 2 with Dr. Ahlering’s office will likely be the decision maker as we are scheduled to discuss all the lovely financial details around signing up for the September IVF cycle…yikes! Either way please keep us in your prayers that the decision on Monday is an easy one...or at the very least that we can make a decision and finally begin to move forward again!
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