The Post You've All Been Waiting For - Part 2

The Nitty-Gritty of The Back Story





This entry is a bit on the boring side. It's the informative piece. The piece that says exactly what we did to combat our diagnosis, once we finally got a diagnosis.
There will be more fun and storytelling in Part 3. I promise. 


The nurse injected a large needle of something into my leg. She smiled and said "most doctors make their patients do this without a painkiller. I'm always grateful for Dr. B, 'cause he won't let us do it if you haven't had something to help."


It kind of took my breath away to hear her say that. I don't know what I was expecting, but I knew I hadn't expected it to require a needle full of pain killers.  It was a "simple" procedure that was standard after the basics of progesterone blood draws and temperature charts and standard tests on Quinn. Everything so far had said we were ovulating, and with no other health complications there was no reason for us to be struggling to conceive, but here we were, 20-some cycles into our journey and they couldn't give us a reason why.

And so, we were there. I was under a massive x-ray machine thing, a radiologist, an OB, 3 nurses and my husband all in the room with me. It was cold.  My OB prepped the biggest needle I have ever seen and after a couple seconds of very sharp pain he showed me the needle on the display screen for the machine. Then he started the dye injection. He emptied that syringe of dark blue dye quickly, needing enough pressure that it wouldn't just fill my uterus, but shoot through my falopian tubes and fill my ovaries. The purpose was two-fold: To check for any blockages, collapses or cysts, as well as to potential "blast clear" any of the said blockages or collapses.

It was probably the most physically miserable 3 minutes of my life.

After 4 hours of transition and pushing out Mr. G's 14.5" head with nothing but a muscle relaxant, that's kind of a big deal for me to say.  If you're looking at a hysterosalpingogram
then make sure your doctor gives you a pain killer before he starts the procedure. You won't regret it.

But they found nothing. "Of course", he said, " If there was a collapse then we might not have seen it because the dye inflated it so quickly. Most people with unexplained infertility get pregnant within three cycles of this procedure, so if it didn't help, we'll know in three months."

20 minutes later I was sitting on the hood of our car in the hospital parking lot, my head in my hands, shaking like a leaf and trying not to throw up. The nausea and severe cramping were normal side effects. Nothing to worry about.

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6 months (and 8 cycles) later, Quinn had been re-tested but only because we didn't know what was next. If we were ovulating then the recommended fertility medication (chemical) shots wouldn't help. If Quinn was fine then there wasn't anything that would help him. Quinn had recently ordered another text book on fertility, as well as a package of LH strips so I could check LH levels.

And, frankly, the last test had jarred me enough that I wasn't sure I wanted to know what was next.

This would be the point when Quinn became the absolute hero of the story.

Why?

Because I gave up.

I was tired of crying. Tired of scheduling our marriage around graphs and charts. Tired of my piles of supplements and tired of being tired. Tired of calendars and thermometers and prayers and being told that there was nothing wrong with me, even though my body wouldn't do the one thing that a woman's body is supposed to be capable of doing, whether she's tall or short, strong or weak, and whether or not it's wanted.

But Quinn, being the research-aholic that he is, blasted through his text book and took over. He started sticking the thermometer in my mouth every morning when he got up (he's always been the early bird in the family) and keeping track of the charts. He started handing me my vitamins every day and he pushed me into talking to my midwife friend about where we were and what my symptoms were.

My sister in law had recommended several months before that I go gluten-free, since there were lots of links between gluten-sensitivity and unexplained infertility, and since Quinn was handling the emotional burden of the pills and charts, I decided I may as well cut wheat out of my diet. (My first cycle after going off gluten was 4 days longer than my cycles had been for the past 2 years, which was the first notable difference that ANY supplement or treatment we had tried had affected)  About that time my midwife recommended a saliva test to check essential hormones ( < link is an affiliate link)  that she could look at, and that we could use to start consultations with a hormone specialist if it showed up any abnormalities. We were in a somewhat tight spot, financially, but God put it on a friend's heart to offer to pay for half of the test for us, so we went for it.

And so in April of 2013, we got the test results back and they showed that all of my hormones were either truly elevated or borderline elevated. My midwife told me something I absolutely did not expect. Those results indicated PCOS. Especially the fact that both my testosterone AND estrogen were significantly elevated. And then there was the fact that my LH strips were almost useless because I could use them for 10 days straight and get a positive result every day. So I had elevated LH as well.

Now, PCOS isn't for early-20's girls who are well inside their healthy weight spectrum and who have super short cycles.

No, PCOS is typically symptomized first and foremost by cycles that go 2-3 months instead of 28-32 days. Doctors won't even test for PCOS of you don't fit a fairly standard set of symptoms:

Excess Weight
Excessively Long Cycles
Extra Body Hair
High Blood Pressure

PCOS wasn't me.

It couldn't be me.

And the dye test had shown that I didn't have any cysts. How could I be PCOS without any cysts?

Turns out that the PCOS disorder eventually causes cysts, but the actual disorder is a specific hormone imbalance, not a list of symptoms.

AND, since that's what my body was saying, that's what we were going to treat. Being gluten free already was the perfect start, since “…85% of her PCOS clients test positive for a sensitivity to gluten. When these women remove gluten from their diets they often see a marked improvement in their PCOS symptoms". As far as diet recommendations go, that was just the beginning. Gluten free was good, but it was essential to maintain as steady of a blood sugar balance as possible, so I was told to eat every 3 hours, avoid any large doses of sugar, and to supplement with chromium and cinnamon. The main goal of the PCOS diet was to eat only foods with a low glycemic index and to keep my sugars balanced. But of course, Quinn wasn't gonna stop there. He took it a step further and researched D-chiro inositol and Myo-inositol and ordered both for me.

Inositol regulates the reception insulin. One of the main reasons for PCOS (as I understand it) is insulin resistance causing overproduction of hormones.  That's why EVERYTHING gets elevated with PCOS. (Note, with a gluten sensitivity the body reads gluten as sugar, thereby creating even larger sugar spikes and causing the well-known gluten headaches. Not sure whether a breakdown in our insulin receptors causes the gluten sensitivity, or if the gluten sensitivity causes an overload on the receptors, but either way they are very closely tied together)  Inositol is being studied in relation to PCOS all the time, and every study seems to be more promising than the last.

He was still regimenting my pills and temperatures, and I was using LH strips. Now he was making sure I had food every 3 hours as well, and dosing me with DCI (D-chiro inositol). 

The DCI was brutal stuff. I thought I had the flu for the first 3 days I was on it before we realized that it was actually the DCI, so we switched to the Myo-inositol, which is a lot gentler. It also comes in a powder, so we were able to start with smaller doses and work our way up. We used it through June and July, accompanied by the diet changes, and had possible miscarriages both months. (one month was a faint positive at 24 days, but then a negative at 25 and obviously didn't maintain).

August is when we conceived, just 4.5 months after going off gluten and 3.5 months after fighting my invisible foe. It was 4.5 months of Quinn bringing me pills, sticking a thermometer in my mouth, charting the calendar, bringing me gluten-free take out at work, buying me gluten free snacks, and holding me night after night, telling me that we were so close. It seems like it was a daily ritual for him to point out all the specifics of how God had led those few months, and to recite the symptoms of progress that we were making.

He wouldn't let it rest.

And I'm so glad he didn't.


Part 3 will be some of the differences between a twins pregnancy and a singleton pregnancy, why we switched care providers, and more of the story of how the last 2 months of gone. For now, I'm healthy and happy and 26 weeks along.