Hi ladies
AbFab woohoo that’s awesome! So pleased, that’s brilliant news
Ain I feel exactly the same way about FB. I’ve had 2 births and 2 pregnancy announcements in the last 10 days alone. I’m that age where friends are popping out kids left right and centre, like shelling peas! I try not to go on now, as although I’m obv really happy for them, it’s just too hard. I try not to go ‘why me’ (after all, why not me) but there are days when I do a bit of a pity party for myself, feeling that it’s not fair to have broken my back and have chronic pain AND epilepsy AND fertility issues AND for my Mum to have passed away. I’ve got so much to be thankful for, but I think we’re all allowed days to have a wallow!
I’m feeling that way today tbh, after an appt this morning. I went for the fertility MOT scan I mentioned last week (www.createhealth.org/ivf-treatment-services/one-stop-fertility-mot/) and really wish I hadn’t
Apologies in advance for a v lengthy post, I’m a bit all over the place and need to vent, and hope you ladies will excuse my waffly ramble!!
When I called up the clinic I asked if it was OK to have this even though I’d just come off the pill, the admin person checked with a nurse who said it was. I go in yesterday to get blood taken, and this morning I go in for the scan. Dr - who is not my consultant, this is a different clinic - says there wasn’t any point having AMH done if I’d just come off the pill, and nurse told me wrongly, and I should have waited 3 months before having the test. She apologise for the mistake and said the retest would be free of charge.
She goes ahead and does the scan, but in my mind I’m thinking, if an AMH test isn’t likely to be accurate in assessing ovarian reserve, is a scan to assess ovarian reserve by looking at the number of antral follicles going to be any more accurate? (given AMH directly correlates with the number of antral follicles present). She doesn’t tell me to go home, maybe because I’ve turned up and will have to pay for it, and the scan will look at other stuff besides the AFC (antral follicle count) e.g. thickness of lining, blood flow etc
Dildo cam shows a VERY different picture to the scan I had in 2010 where I was diagnosed with PCOS. That scan showed I had tonnes of eggs, and v obviously PCO (with elevated LH on the blood tests, so Dr said she could see immediately from those test results that I had PCOS)
This morning, instead of the 20 / 22 follicles on each ovary, she could see only 3 on each. So very definitely not polycystic, but also indicating massively depleted ovarian reserve. She said this didn’t make sense, as she wouldn’t expect to see a decline like this in someone my age - things should have looked pretty much the same at 33 as at 28.She said she wanted me to come back to repeat the test at the end of August, as she was “worried” by what she saw, and that if this was still the case we would ‘need to get me pregnant quickly’, and consider IVF.
She also said the lining of my uterus was quite thin, but that this was v likely to do with the pill, and having only just come off it, i.e. it hadn’t had time to build up properly.
I’m shitting it as it appears my eggs have almost literally disappeared overnight, and I’ve gone from being polycstic with (in my consultant’s words) ‘lots of eggs’ to being non PCO and with low reserves.
I come home and bawl my eyes out thinking I’ve dried up and my fertility has for some unknown reason fallen off a cliff and oh god oh god oh god.
DH is v supportive and says well we’ll go and see our consultant and get his opinion, cos this sounds v v strange - consultant had said no reason to think things would be meaningfully different 5 years on at the age of 33, so to have everything dried up out of the blue doesn’t make a lot of sense. But if it has, then with his advice we’d work out a plan of action.
DH points out the fact that given she said the AMH test wouldn’t be accurate so soon after coming off the pill, might v well be plausible that the scan would be equally inaccurate. Especially given my neurologist had doubled my dose of the pill, due to the possible interaction of my epilepsy drugs with my pill - so any misleading impact of being on the pill would be magnified in my case, surely? I had told her when taking my history that I had been on a double dose of the pill, but I hadn’t seen her write that down, so not sure how well she’d taken that on board.
I can’t help googling as I’m panicking, and I find that every other clinic who offers these fertility MOT scans says you have to wait 3 months after coming off the pill before coming in. I also find that apparently the pill can make fertility levels appear MUCH lower than they actually are - especially the higher dose pills (and I was on a double dose of the higher pills)
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/10936765/Contraception-pill-could-mask-future-fertility-levels.html
“New study suggests women who come off the contraceptive pill cannot get an accurate assessment of their fertility for months…women who have been on the Pill are now advised their ovaries may look old with small volume, a few small antral follicles and low levels of AMH."
Which suggests that she should never have done the scan at all, and that she might well have put the shits up me unnecessarily. As DH said, which is more likely - that my eggs all mysteriously vanished out of the blue, or a test which has been found to be misleading if done too soon after coming off the pill, had given a misleading picture.
I’m clinging onto this, and will see what my consultant says. I’m fuming that despite saying the pill affected the accuracy of AMH & the thickness of my uterine lining, and telling me she’d like to repeat the test once I’d been off the pill for 3 months, that she went ahead and did the scan anyway, and that she didn’t listen to me telling her I’d been on a double dose of the pill. Which it turns out has a significant impact in giving a misleading picture!!
Obviously it is possible I’ve magically dried up. But I’m desperately hoping that the laws of probability mean it’s far more likely that the test wasn’t accurate.
She did see one dominant follicle, which in theory could mean I might ovulate (!!), and to test with OPK from day 20 (I'm currently day 11), as she said it would be a long cycle, estimated 40 days, because the lining of my uterus was so thin, so if I do ovulate it would be later. No idea what to think, as I was reeling from the whole ’it’s showing your eggs have vanished’ bombshell. I’m clinging onto the hope that the test was a load of bollocks and shouldn’t have been done, and the possibility I might lay an egg this month and that when I have the test done again, the picture will be more positive.
Sorry for massive post, just needed to get that off my chest! xxx