A trip to Dr. French--the Male Urologist

Today Glen & I made a trip to the urologist, Dr. French, to talk about our options for obtaining sperm. What they will have to do is locate the tube that carries the sperm, then from the epididymis which is the part they will be retrieving it from, they will insert a needle into that tube and extract the fluid within which should contain LOTS of sperm...which we're all hoping and praying for both Glen and all parties involved that this tube does contain millions of sperm! :-)

So..these are both the positives and negatives we heard today from Dr. French. The positives first!

Positives

• He will get sperm NO MATTER what.

• Before we could even ask...he told us that we did everything right with the reversals and that  regardless of the doctors we chose Glen was just one of those few that fell into the irreversible category and unfortunately vasectomy reversals just aren't 100%. Which made us breathe a sigh of relief because so many times you go to a doctor and they say...."Well if you would have come to us first we could have prevented all of this and saved you a lot of money."  Which only makes you feel like  complete crap!  Also I think we REALLY needed to hear this because deep down... I think BOTH of us have really been beating ourselves up for years now....because we have spent SO much time and money trying to have this damn vasectomy reversed instead of going straight to IVF with sperm aspiration which we knew was a option when we started down this journey 3 years ago...when we decided we wanted kids together....and we started saving for the first reversal....when we were so sure it would work...when we thought we would be able to have kids the wonderful, natural, fun, AND... well....the almost free minus the cost of the reversal, way! LOL  Little did we know then what journey this would entail....

• When he examined Glen he could feel the tube on the left the most so he is going to try that tube first to find sperm and then proceed to the other if he doesn't get enough. But he thinks he should definitely get enough for this IVF and maybe enough to freeze for future IVF's.  

• Dr. French said he felt we were in the best of hands and that the lab director at SIRM is one of the best when it comes to dealing with sperm that has been aspirated and that he will find the best ones out of the bunch to inject into my eggs to fertilize them!

• The IVF clinic let us know that the partner of Dr. French is good at sperm aspiration as well

Negatives:

• The cost!  We are looking at an additional $3,000 on top of the $16,000 we are paying for this two IVF cycle plan we paid for!  YIKES  We just keep telling ourselves it's just money and we can make it back, it will all be worth it in the end when we are holding our baby or babies...Twins would be awesome!  Two for the price of one!   We swear if this child(ren) ever back talks us or says we didn't want them or love them we will got postal on them...LOL

• The doctor will be out of town from June 9-11, so hopefully my eggs won't be ready for egg retrieval during that time.  He said if I did have to have egg retrieval during that time then there was another doctor in their practice that could perform the surgery. 

• If they can't find sperm in the tubes they have to go to the testicle and it will be very painful for Glen after the surgery, but he doesn't think that should happen. Please cross your fingers and pray the left tube has lots of sperm so they don't have to poke around much!!!  

So all in all it was a good day!  IVF is still a go and we still have the 60% chance the doctor gave us of getting pregnant this time around.  I start the Lupron which suppress everything May 18.  I can't believe how soon that is!!!!

Hope you are all doing well and thank you all for your support and following our blog!  Thank you for your comments we LOVE them!!!

S & G