So after my last post, I was feeling good. I had a plan. I was going to follow that plan, but I didn’t feel attached to the outcome. I felt like our child would come to us in whatever way he or she was meant to.
But what ever goes according to plan? Nothing, you say? That’s right. Nothing.
Warning: this might get long. And boring. Long and boring, yay!
This week we had our two second opinion consults. First up was CCRM. We spoke with Dr. Surrey and he was quite lovely. He had some interesting suggestions. One was that Tim get a next-level sperm test, the name of which escapes me now. Then he suggested I do a double trigger shot. He was thinking that the reason I had half as many mature eggs as follicles both cycles was because they weren’t responding properly to the trigger. He also does not consider someone DOR if they have normal FSH, AMH and antral follicle count. Finally, he said that I might as well transfer our frozen embryo at my current clinic before coming out to Colorado, and send him a thank you note if it works. We liked him. I think CCRM is a great clinic. I think they have amazing labs. Other than the labs, though, I didn’t feel like they had much more to offer us than our current clinic. And the multiple trips to Colorado alone would put us in a bad financial place, not to mention the out-of-network costs for the actual treatment. Case closed.
The next day we spoke with Dr. Braverman. He is a reproductive immunologist. This is a very new field, like so new there are only a couple of these doctors in the country. I first heard about him through my friend over at Spirit Baby Come Home. She has had a lot — way too many — miscarriages. She worked with Dr. Braverman and is now a few weeks away from giving birth. As soon as I heard of him I thought, Hmmm, that guy sounds interesting.
One of his main areas of research is endometriosis, particularly “silent endometriosis,” which is where you have the condition, but experience no symptoms. This piqued my interest because a close relative had this exact thing. She was diagnosed with unexplained infertility and had multiple IVF failures. They accidentally discovered that she had endometriosis during a surgery for something else. They removed it and then her next IVF worked. I’ve asked both of the doctors at each of the clinics I’ve been to if I should be concerned about endometriosis based on my family history. They both said that, no, I shouldn’t be worried. Even if I had endometriosis, the way to work around it is IVF.
Braverman completely disagrees with my doctors’ assessment. Through his reasearch he’s learned that endometriosis negatively impacts egg quality, often making it look like a patient has DOR, when in fact they don’t. He also says that Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome typically goes hand in hand with endometriosis.
With every mishap that happened these last few months — miscarrying the genetically normal embryo, getting diagnosed with a blood clotting condition — I started to wonder if I should contact him. But he is a recurrent miscarriage specialist and I’ve “only” had two, so I felt weird about that. Plus, I was comfortable at my clinic (I really do love them!). And finally, Braverman is beyond expensive. So I never pulled the trigger. I kept thinking about him, though, and wondering. Then after that last failed IVF and DOR diagnosis, I was like, ok, let me at least talk to the guy.
So I did. I had read a bunch of his articles before we spoke to him, so I was not surprised in the least when five seconds into the phone conversation he was like, BOOM, I think you have endometriosis. He said my family history, combined with my elevated anticardiolipins, combined with my diminished ovarian response, points strongly towards that diagnosis.
Even if what he was saying was true, the fact remained that we couldn’t afford to get treatment with him without sacrificing every penny we had and then some.
But then he told us that he would collaborate with a doctor about 45 minutes from us. This is huge. That means I could be under his care and still in-network with my insurance. Then his financial person got on the phone and said that if I needed surgery to remove endometriosis, the hospital they use is in our network. Meaning the surgery would be fully covered, too. This is even huger. I figured he would be recommending surgery, but I knew there was no way in hell we could swing out-of-network surgery. But it turns out that the only out-of-network things we’d have to pay for would be his initial testing and consulting fees.
Uh, so all of a sudden this doctor that I thought was totally out of reach just became a real possibility. It felt like the Universe had tipped its hat to me and said, “Here you go, wish granted.”
So we’re doing it. We figure the only thing we have to lose is time. The soonest we’d be able to do an IVF going this route would be September. We were just about to start a cycle at our current place in two weeks. That means we would be done with that cycle and, if needed, a frozen transfer and potentially be onto adoption by September. Now everything will get pushed back by several months.
But it feels like we would be doing that next cycle at our clinic just to do it. Which is kind of a yucky feeling. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Dr. Braverman is a miracle worker, at least not for everyone, but I do think that immunology is really the only avenue we haven’t explored yet. And, provided that he actually finds an issue, I think we have a better chance with him than our current doctor. How much better, I have no idea. It’s still nowhere near a sure thing, or even on the right side of the odds.
Then there’s always a risk that we do all the immune testing and get the surgery, and he finds absolutely nothing. I think in that case I would feel pretty stupid that my hunch led me nowhere.
In the end of the day, there is no right answer. But I do think it’s worth giving Braverman a shot.
In the meantime we plan to continue researching and saving for adoption. We’re going to try and do as much of the adoption leg work as we can so that if this hail-mary IVF doesn’t work we can jump right into it.
But who knows, maybe it will work. You just never know.