There is a reason it's called PRACTICING medicine

Paging Dr. Google...

     This is what I will hear everytime I go to the doctor from now on.  My wife went to get her physical last week, and the doctor had to look up the answers to most of her questions...on Google.   Now,  I can understand if she was looking things up on a professionally monitored and maintained website, but typing in a search on google to verify what my wife was trying to get verified seems like a waste of our insurance money and my wife's time in the appointment.  If she could have just asked google the same thing, she could have saved the visit.  What exactly did the doctor spend years and years and thousands upon thousands in school for, when I can open up my own google clinic in the abandoned strip mall down the street for next to nothing?  I mean sure, there's licensing, but I'm sure a good hardcore Republican lawmaker can see to it that those petty regulations are peeled back to allow marketplace freedom, right?  I can buy a white coat, a stethoscope, and 'scrip pad just to add some theatre legitimacy, to save my precious time, I can even just set up "self-help" kiosks that people can look up the answers to their own questions.   Ah, I digress.

      Maybe not.  So yesterday my wife was at a pre-op physical for this D&C procedure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilation_and_curettage, and when she asked the nurses about whether or not it was absolutely necessary, the nurse blankly stared at her and told her "I just know it's protocol."  Even the doctor didn't know with any certaintly, he just knew that their protocol was to perform a highly invasive, psychologically traumatizing, potentially dangerous procedure on my wife just to rule out an ectopic pregnancy.  Even if, they have no way to know if it is the correct action to have taken until it is done.  If it wasn't the correct action, they will then give her chemotherapy.  Let me say that again:  CHEMO-FRICKIN-THERAPY!  The thought being that chemo targets rapidly growing groups of cells, ie., an embryo.  I am at a complete loss as to why our doctors are taking such an agressive approach, when it seems to be (statistically speaking, at least) safe to leave well enough alone until they can definitively tell what they are dealing with.  If my wife requires a chemo-shot, we are strongly recommended against trying for children (even on our own) for at least three months.  The emotional roller-coaster of this is truly terrible.  It tends to leave one feeling hollowed out and dull.  It takes all hope and color out of the world, and makes you afraid to hope for anything.  At any rate the road is currently bumpy, and I'm hoping the suspension can take it.  Any advice on how to deal with greatly desired genetic fatherhood with the growing likelihood of not attaining it is welcome.

Infertility is Like a Minimum Maintenance Road

Infertility Sucks

      More specifically, unexplained infertility sucks.  If you have low sperm count, there's a lab technique to fix it. If your wife has a uterine problem, most can be fixed.  Unexplained infertility is just that : unexplained.  Medically speaking, my wife and I are completely fine from a fertility stand point.  My counts are extremely high and healthy, her hormone levels are great...but after four years, no kids.  We've tried IUI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_insemination (Intra-Uterine-Insemination) either 5 or 6 times, I've lost count.  For anyone who doesn't know what IUI involves, your wife will take hormone shots to make lots of eggs mature at once, then you give her a "trigger shot" to make the eggs release.  The next morning you go into the clinic and awkwardly spank your monkey and let your swimmers fall into a little cup that you then hand to a lab tech.  The lab tech "cleans" the sperm (removes the seminal fluid, leaving just the sperm themselves) and places them into a sterile solution.  Your wife shows up at the clinic a few hours later and they use a tiny catheter to inject the sperm into her uterus to meet the egg(s).  Uncomfortable socially for you, socially and physically for her, but not painful. Then you go home and have sex that night as "insurance".  But like most insurance, is a waste, because it does no good, and in the context you're doing it, it feels like a chore; taking out the trash or mowing the lawn.

      Now, we've tried IVF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_fertilisation(In Vitro Fertilization) once.  This is where the truly desperate go to try to have their own kids (who can't afford a surrogate).  You have to be approved to do it from a physical, psychological and financial perspective.  Once approved, your wife will begin weeks of hormone shots that you may have to administer.  Her ovaries will go from being almond sized to the size of oranges, clothes won't fit, mood swings will be had.  Fortunately, my wife came through that part virtually unscathed, without the mood swings.  Then when the doctors think she's ready, you take her in to the clinic, they drug her up good and  pull out the eggs that the hormones produced with a large needle they repeatedly jab through her vaginal wall into her now oversized ovaries.  About 15 minutes later they have you go into that little booth and drop your swimmers into a specimen cup.  Depending on your infertility issue, they either directly inject the sperm into the egg, or give the boys and girls a prom in a  petri dish.  Our issues (whatever the are) allowed them to mix "naturally".  This produced 4 fertilizations for 5 eggs.  Of the 4, two were placed back into my wife 3 days later, and one was able to be frozen.  

      After two more weeks of her taking it easy, the doctor did a blood test for pregnancy and yay!, she was.  Begin the celebrations!  But, after another week, her hormone levels weren't rising...meaning there was a problem.  It has now been determined that it is most likely an ectopic pregnancy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ectopic_pregnancy, which can be extremely dangerous for my wife.  So, after all this time, ups and downs on an emotional roller-coaster, money (insurance helped...alot), and physical pain endured by my wife, the doctor has to go in in two days, and literally scrape the embryo out of her uterus, along with all the support stuff.  It is basically a controlled miscarriage, and it sucks.  To come all this way, and to be back to square one is completely devastating, and I think it broke my wife.  I'm not sure I can watch her go through all that again, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the adopting type.  It's looking more and more like we will not have children, and that is a pretty terrible thing to think about.

     I don't honestly expect anyone to read this, anything I post, really, but if someone IS reading this who is going through what we have, that your story is happier in the end.