The path to IVF:
Diagnosed with mild Crohn’s Disease on my 30th birthday, the list of things that caused me physical and emotional pain over the years just grew from there. I had minor endometriosis and had serious pain for years, a great part of that pain was Lesion’s which caused a spider web of scars over my reproductive organs. I think I was in pain for approximately 6 – 10 years, although it did get worse the longer I ignored it. I finally had a Laparoscopy and had it removed. When I went in for the surgery - they didn’t know what they were going to find, it was a kind of gamble surgery. I was told that both tubes were blocked, however one was completely freed up but the other had been more seriously blocked, although they did get it to clear eventually. 6 months later after weeks and weeks of feeling like I had a cold, nauseous and dizzy, I went to the doctor who claimed I had a water borne infection, that I likely picked up in a developing country – as I hadn’t been travelling to those areas for at least 5 years at the time, I found the diagnosis to be a rather bizarre one. Coincidentally I had to take pregnancy test before I was allowed to take the medication for this diagnosis – as it is so strong.
I was totally confused when I saw a positive test, I could not fathom how that was possible, I still had my period and basically it just didn’t make sense. I went back to the doctor and I told him it must be an ectopic pregnancy. Why did I think that? I just felt something wasn’t right, I hadn’t been pregnant before but this just didn’t feel right. They rushed me to get some tests and I was told that I had an ectopic pregnancy and I was quite late into the pregnancy. I was at least 10 weeks pregnant when I realised what was going on and I didn’t just have dizzy spells as the result of having the flu. The process that followed was quite strange, I felt like I was in a movie and all these things were happening around me. I had no choices, it was a life or death situation, so I just did what they told me to do. It was rush here, no actually - go there, ok come back here for days on end. I was sent to the Early Pregnancy Clinic every couple of days to be assessed. My HCG levels were all over the place and that was the only conclusive evidence they could find. I was rushed into surgery shortly after and as a result I lost my left Fallopian tube and was told I was in danger of it happening to the other one. IVF would possibly be my only future.
This had not been a planned pregnancy and it was at quite possibly THE worst possible time in our relationship. Yet it still knocked me for six and I was astounded at how long it took me to recover. I was kind of numb about the whole experience in the lead up to the operation and I had thought it would be like the laparoscopy I had 6 months earlier. It was the same surgery for the most part, except that they removed one of my Fallopian tubes. I figured it would take one to two weeks to bounce back, but I didn’t, I had to keep extending my sick leave. And then it just got worse and worse. In that time I knew I could never go back to the stress of my job, it was a fight to be there every day and I just did not have the energy in me anymore. Just as I was starting a new job that demanded a minimum of 50 hours a week, my body started to fail me further. I had to push harder and harder just to get out of bed and function. On the weekend’s I was stuck on the couch all day, every weekend. Even the thought of moving the TV remote back on the table, required a massive spout of energy that I just did not have. I would plan in my head all day to take my plate to the kitchen, but getting up to do it was just not even a possibility.
I thought this was all a side effect from being tired from such a demanding job…little did I know that I had adrenal fatigue and a very bad case of it. The thing about adrenal fatigue is you can function to a point, you can work and get home but as soon as you stop for a second, you are frozen with tiredness. It feels like walking around with concrete blocks on your legs each day.
Once the dust had settled from the ectopic pregnancy, we started think maybe it was time to start trying to conceive, we had put the last year behind us. Yet it took what felt like a lifetime to recover and over that time I was seeing a kinesologist as I was trying to conceive and a friend suggested they might be able to help. I find kinesiology a very personal thing and finding one that suits your needs and style is the hard part. When I found someone who I thought suited me at the time…..she told me the same thing every week she would say ‘your body is saying it needs to recuperate’ and would give me all these readings and quotes and essential oils to take. I got incredibly impatient with my bodies request to recuperate week after week, I mean how much time did it need?? And recover from what??? I was so one sighted about wanting to ‘move on’ that I never really took stock of what was really going on, listening to my body and giving it what it was begging for. I was impatient as usual and not really looking at all the clues.
I was starting to lose hope in her ability to heal me and I was not listening to my bodies desire to have more time to heal. I had already lost precious time – all I knew was that I was ageing by the minute – I had been given the all clear for my right tube to work, so I wanted to get started. This was now almost a year since I had the operation and I was getting pretty pissed off to be honest.
Adrenal fatigue was one of the hardest battles I have ever fought, trying to put one leg in front of the other became a mental game that seemed impossible to act out on. Every day was a battle where you feel trapped inside your body, I guess the toughest thing was I didn’t know what I was dealing with. Doctors just treated the symptoms, there was never any pieces put together of what it could be. And as with a lot of things, I found out by a natural practitioner, the kinesologist. She explained that with Adrenal fatigue your body uses up every organ – one by one to try and supply the energy you need – until you burn right though to you last organs. The adrenal glands. Once these burn out – you have to re-build each organ and this takes time – a long time.
The way I recovered was long and slow. I started out by changing my diet, to get my hormones in check – my Oestrogen was so out of balance, I would get the strangest ‘fake’ pregnancy symptoms and get excited, only to find out my body was so unfit for pregnancy that was never going to happen. I found a fertility specialist online and booked an appointment to see her and get my hormones and health back in check I wasn’t quite ready for the baby trying at this stage but I knew that in time that would be the case. She started me on a strict diet and tons of supplements and the big one - cutting out alcohol and all social life. Fun? No! Essential? Yes.
And it took time. I am talking a year or more to fully recover. In fact I still believe I haven’t ever fully recovered and I was very scared of how my body would recover Post-Partum as I had such a poor base to start from. After approximately 6 months she gave me the green light to try to conceive. As always seemed to be the case, I had a thousand things going on and I didn’t really know just how bad I was. And then started the carousel of miscarriages and chemical pregnancies. My body just couldn’t hold a pregnancy as it was too stressed out. It was not a happy camper and here I was asking it to carry a baby. Of course I know this all in hindsight – but back then it was just hitting wall after wall. Pushing myself and coming up short every time. I wish I had realised earlier that my body was scared of a pregnancy as I had a traumatic experience when I had the ectopic. The thing I wanted the most was also what scared me the most.
My body started to play tricks on me, false pregnancy symptoms confusing me further. In the end a routine test at the Doctors caused panic and the doctor sent me to a renowned gynaecologist who happened to work at an IVF clinic but took me as an outside patient. By this time, I had my first miscarriage only weeks beforehand. She clarified I was misdiagnosed and shrugged off the miscarriage, then she saw from previous tests that I had endometriosis. She took one look at my files, told me to bring in my partner and suggested we start IVF once I had the all clear. I was excited about the ‘all clear’ but what devastated me was the rush to start IVF. We hadn’t even discussed it and next thing we were signing legal forms about the rights of an embryo if one of us dies! Things moved fast, too fast and red flags and warning signs went past at a speed you see when looking out of a window on a fast train – blurry and insignificant. The cost per round was expensive and as we hadn’t planned this far ahead, we were digging into our pockets for money without realising the final cost.
So here I am diagnosed with Crohn’s, adhesions damage, slight Endometriosis, one fallopian tube, 41 years of age – recovering from Adrenal burnout and they suggest I go on a round of IVF – just to see how we go. The fact that I had fallen pregnant 6 weeks earlier naturally was dismissed as me having old eggs – hence the hurry.
I spoke to my naturopath who I had been seeing for the last year to treat all my Adrenal burnout and hormonal imbalance (as a result of the burnout) and specialises in Fertility. Gabriella Rosa is well known and respected to helping women become pregnant by overcoming major health concerns. She is a guru and I totally trusted in her from the first skype call we had. She believed I could fall pregnant naturally and that we were rushing IVF before our time. Meanwhile I had a well-respected specialist calling me to say ‘tick tock’ let’s get this moving!
So I guess one of the first lessons on this journey here is be careful who you put your trust and listen to for advice. Especially if you only have one stream of information, how do you know that what they are saying is right for you? In the lead up to this point, Gabriella had done so many tests that a regular doctor would dismiss as a waste of time. And thank god she did. It turned out I have a mutant gene - MTHFR (which at the time no – one tested for – now it seems to be coming up in blogs, forums etc. everywhere) which means I am more prone to miscarriage and need more Vitamin B than the regular person.
But here I was unsure which way to move. Let’s call it impatience. I just wanted to cut to the chase.
I took everything that was told to me by the IVF specialists verbatim because they have the degrees behind them to give you this valued information. If only that was true. Quite often you will find they are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are sales people. They need customers, their company needs to make shareholders happy. I was just a part of this viscous cycle and was seen as the perfect candidate. And maybe on another person or with different help or body make up – this could all be true but it didn’t turn out that way for me.
IVF Cycle 1:
September 2015
