I vant to suck your blooood!
January 21, 2008This morning I went to see a doctor to get myself a blood test to check for ovulation. It should have been simple, but the doctor I saw (not my usual, just a random one assigned by the receptionist when I made the appointment last week) had no idea what I was talking about.
I said I wanted to get a blood test done to confirm whether I had indeed ovulated eight days ago, as indicated by my temperature chart, and she said there was no such thing. Without the trusty internet, I couldn’t persuade her that I was right, especially as she told me that that particular clinic doesn’t deal with subfertility issues.
I decided to bite the bullet then and ask for a referral to a fertility specialist, which she was happy to give me. Then she sent me off for a gazillion tests, on the premise that I’d need to get them done for the specialist to look at. The tests range from simple girl hormones to prolactin, testosterone and a test for PCOS. I’m to go back in two weeks to collect the results, and once that is done, I can call the specialist and get myself and Mikey looked at.
Interestingly enough, one of the things she wanted tested was my progesterone levels – which is exactly what they test for in an ovulation confirmation test. Silly doctor. On a related note, I’m kinda happy that they call it subfertility and not infertility. This makes me feel a little better, a little more positive anyhow.
According to my FF chart, I ought to test for pregnancy next Friday, 11 days from now. The website suggests testing 16-18 days after ovulation, because I haven’t been charting for long enough for it to accurately determine your usual cycle length and luteal phase. Based on my little brain calendar, my period is due just after that, so by the time the results are ready to be collected, I’ll know whether we need to go to the specialist or not.
How lucky you are to have the internet. When I was going through my ‘infertility’ days we didn’t have computers like we do today. Information only came from the doctor’s and library books. Geez, how old do I sound?
Back in my day…when dinasours roamed the lands…
Hehe! Sometimes I think that as a 24/7 source of information, the internet does us more harm than good though. While it does make it easy to get lots of information at once and compare it all, there’s so much junk out there, well meaning or otherwise.
After all, who is to say that the websites I’ve visited aren’t written by people like me with no clue whatsoever.
That said, I’m grateful for the wealth of knowlege available – being able to read other peoples’ stories all collected in a few repositories makes it much easier to bear my own lack of results, cos there’s the proof that others have gone through the same sort of thing and come out the other side.
As an aside, to sound really old, you not only need to mention dinosours, but how you walked to school in the snow – uphill both ways, wearing nothing but a coal sack!!
[...] I am tired and crabby. After two weeks of waiting, I got a little message on my phone that my blood test results should be ready (courtesy of gcal – all praise the mighty Google). I called up the medical centre [...]