The battle with infertility begins....

The past few months have been very hard on me physically, emotionally, and financially. First I found out that I had several ovarian cysts and polyps in my uterus that needed to be removed. Then, I had to undergo surgery to remedy the problems. Then, my husband was diagnosed with a genetic condition that causes his infertility. Next, we discovered that one of the cysts removed from my ovaries was a serous cystadenoma (the kind that grows into ovarian cancer if left untreated). Now, we are facing huge medical bills for all of this (so far, my surgery is OVER $30,000 and still counting....and we're not sure how much of that the insurance will pay).

Now, our fight with the cysts and surgery is over, but our battle with infertility is just beginning. We've had to go from healthy adults to an infertile couple to a couple fighting infertility in a matter of a few months. We've gone through so many emotions, so many tears, so many worries, and so many fears. We're both still young (my hubby's 33 and I'm 28) so they say that age is on our side, but with a miscarriage in 2004, a son born in 2005 who is healthy (but doctors thought he had down syndrome until birth), and now our current situation, it's a very scary and depressing road to travel.

On top of the emotions that you go through dealing with infertility, you also have to go through the financial strain. For instance, we've been referred to the best fertility doctors on the West Coast. And, the best doctors charge the highest prices. I have an appointment coming up that will cost me $400 for just ONE office visit (not to mention the cost of getting there, since it's about 6 hours away). My husband's appointment a few days later will cost us another $300 (plus travel expenses). Because of the nature of the tests we're doing and the doctor and lab technician's schedules and our schedules, we were NOT able to schedule our appointments the same day, so we'll have to make two separate trips.

Then, depending on the test results we recieve, we'll know what our treatment options are. Nothing about fertility treatments is cheap, though. So, unless we both receive a clean bill of health (God willing) our treatments will cost between $1,000 - $25,000 per cycle (IF we choose to go thru with treatments).

We've almost decided that we would much rather adopt a child who needs a home then go thru lengthy and expensive procedures that may or may not work. But, we've also decided that we are at least willing to do these tests to see if there are any major problems or not. We feel that once we recieve the final results, we can better make a decision as to how we wish to proceed.

So, now that my surgery is behind me, and I thought I'd have a moment to breathe and relax, I realize that is not possible. I thought that surgery was the worst part, but now I'm realizing that the battle itself, the waiting, the uncertainty, and the stress that comes along with it all is really the worst part.