I. HATE. This fucking disease. I am so SICK of this goddamn fucking disease. Or disorder. Or deficiency, or defect, or whatever you want to call it. SICK of it. NOT giving up the fight - NO - but... damn. Every time you think you've seen the worst that it can throw at you, every time you think you've finally knocked it down to the mat - here it comes again, with another gut punch you didn't think it had left to give you.
Semen analysis #6 last week, to test the results of the HCG injections that I've been on since November. After a 9 million count at SA #4 in June, the Clomid-affected SA #5 dropped to 1.5 million, so we quit the Clomid and started HCG (Pregnyl) in hopes of bouncing back up to 9 million and beyond. Not so. I was afraid to let myself hope that the results would even be as good as 9 million again, though I knew there was a chance they could be significantly better. I was scared of the possibility that the count could be down to nothing at all, though I told myself that was unlikely, that we had no reason to believe that would be the case. I rationalized that neither extreme was very likely, so expect something somewhere in the middle, and then you won't be surprised when that's exactly what happens. Ha. Hahahaha. I guess the results weren't truly at either extreme, so I had that right, but they're damn near close to the bad one.
I am so. FUCKING. Sick. Of my body betraying me at every turn. You think you're getting better? HA, shut the fuck up. Surgery, even if it only helps fertility in 30-50% of cases, should at least eliminate pain 90% of the time. Guess what? You're in the 10% that made it worse. Clomid, most guys respond well to it, many with really dramatically improved results. Guess what? Let's CUT your sperm count by 75%. HCG! You're an ideal candidate, lots of guys in your situation respond well to this even when Clomid doesn't work. Give it a go! Guess what? You've been taking consolation all along this road - however minuscule that consolation may be - that while you're infertile, at least you're not sterile. Well, guess what? HAHAHAHAHA you damn near might as well be now! Take that, you bastard. And stay down this time.
So now we know our next step HAS to be IVF. So now I get a second helping of guilt for putting my wife through all of that physical strain, on top of the emotional strain that she's already been besieged by, all thanks to MY. GODDAMN. FUCKING. BODY. But wait, there's more! On top of your own physical and emotional strain, on top of that guilt upon guilt, on top of the weariness from fighting this battle now for nearing three years - let's add an assload of worry! We'll be seeing our fertility doc again next Friday the 5th, and I'll probably get to do SA #7 while I'm there then. (Joy.) I'm thinking, Hoping, PRAYING that the piss poor results we just got were a fluke, so that even if our doctor doesn't want another SA for his purposes, I want another one now with better results for my own peace of mind. I want to PROVE that it was a fluke. Because, if it wasn't, what if then we do proceed with IVF, we get to the day when fertilization is supposed to happen, and my body decides, oh, hey, let's just not make any sperm today, okay guys? Yeah, fuck me.
I want to know what the HELL is going on with my body. Did I do something wrong? Did I do something before or during the SA to result in such terrible numbers? If I did and it was a fluke, then thank God, but apparently that means that my body is so slow to recover the numbers it needs that I get to schedule ALL of my orgasms from now on to give us the maximum possible chance of having good numbers when we need them. Ain't that fun? And on top of the worry about how this latest twist might affect our chances with IVF, I've got the worry now that something ELSE, something worse than "just" infertility might be wrong. The urologist did warn us when I started on the Clomid that it has the chance of shutting down your sperm production entirely. That was a scary statement, but he said that it was a very small chance, and that even he, as a fellow male, would take that chance were he in my position. So I felt confident (enough) going forward with that decision, and now I wonder - did I win the "this only happens in 2% of cases!" lottery again? I don't honestly think that's it... I would have thought that quitting the Clomid would have stopped any trouble it caused. But I don't know. I don't know how these things work. I have no idea if the HCG injections have the potential to cause similar bad results, either. So... I don't know.
And if it's not the Clomid... if it's not the Clomid, or the HCG, you know what else can cause a drop in sperm count? Hello, Lance Armstrong and yellow wristbands. You know what age group comprises more than 90% of all cases of testicular cancer? 15-45. You know what the highest risk group in that spread is? 25-35. Guess how old I am right now? And you know what race is five times more likely to get this cancer than any other? Guess what race I am. The surgery I had increases that risk, too. And did you know that men with low sperm count before testicular cancer are TWENTY TIMES more likely to develop that cancer than guys with normal numbers? Well, guess what. Lucky me. Maybe this time my uncanny knack for ending up in the vast minority of cases will be a GOOD thing, and that's one bullet we'll dodge no matter how "good" the odds are in my favor.
Heh, irony... so if there's anything in this latest bad news that I can take consolation in, at least there's this: that this was NOT the worst SA result I've had yet. Back at SA #2, the one just before my surgery, they found ONE active sperm. One. At the count prior to that, they found 4.25 million, and I always had somewhere between 1-9 million at every subsequent SA since then, until now. So we've seen a fluke terrible number before, and my body seemed to recover from it just fine. At least this result was six times better than that one (woo)... and if they only found 10 sperm but 6 were moving, then hey, that's 60% motility! Take comfort in the little things, I guess...
So yes, hoping that this bad result was a fluke... and I (very cautiously) believe we have reason to believe that it was. I want answers from our doc next week as to what is going on that could cause this, so that I can end my uninformed speculation, and I want another result of at least 1 million to put my mind at peace that I'm not barren. If I am, there is even then still hope of IVF, but then they'll have to get the sperm by testicular aspiration (TESE), so... guess what? Let's make your ball that doesn't hurt, start hurting! Or, let's make your ball that still hurts, hurt even worse! I'd rather not, thanks. But if that's what it takes... so be it. I've been all in so far. I'm still all in now. I look EAGERLY forward to the day when terms like "semen analysis," "motility," "morphology," "in-vitro," "ovulation" and the rest are no longer anywhere to be found in our regular vocabulary. Still praying. Still fighting. One step at a time.
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