Comments on: Oh, Help.

By: Thalia

Thalia — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 19:10:44 +0000

I was very glad I did the lap when it was suggested as it turned out I had extensive endo, even though I had no symptoms. Best thing for you is to wait for those results, as cass said, then figure out a next step.

By: Lindsay Wiley

Lindsay Wiley — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 20:29:24 +0000

I was diagnosed with “excess prostaglandins” by a very well respected RE back in college. When I came to him to see if he could tinker around with my birth control pills and improve my bizarre and painful irregular episodes of bleeding of all sorts, he immediately suggested a lap to rule out endo. There wasn’t any (though there were extensive adhesions pulling my ovary up into my rib cage, so he chalked the pain up to excess prostaglandins. When I went back to see him years later for infertility, he said the prostaglandin thing wouldn’t have caused infertility, the HSG showed clear tubes, and the u/s showed the ovary back in place, so he diagnosed me as “unexplained.”

If I were in your position, I’d wait and do a lap when you’re ready to try to get pregnant. Otherwise, if you do have endo, you’ll just end up doing another one when you’re ready to try to conceive.

Ugh. Doctors suck.

By: Cass

Cass — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:19:18 +0000

Wow, she’s really hard to impress! My apologies for the long (very long!) response, but I’m in writing (and not editing) mode these days…

Yes, 10 days seems long for results, but I guess if the tests are being sent off to central processing labs it can easily take that long. Annoying, but true. My old RE offered to do a lap even though I have no definitive symptoms of Endo – she figured it could be worth checking if we could find no other causes for things. I turned her down, because so far I really think it’s unlikely, but I’ll reconsider all my options if my upcoming IVF doesn’t do the trick. Endo isn’t my area of expertise, but I think I’ve heard some statistic about increased fertility following a lap that removed some endo, so you may want to put it off on those grounds if nothing else. Though pain is always an important factor.

Did she do (or have you ever had) a vaginal ultrasound to actually look at your ovaries? Not all PCOSers actually have polycystic ovaries, but it would be good to know, wouldn’t it? Depending on your other symptoms, I’d pay attention to that TSH result – sometimes thyroid issues have symptomatic overlap with PCOS and other endocrine issues. (If nothing else pops up from these tests and you match the symptom profile of a thyroid condition, there are other thyroid tests they can run.) And BCPs are not a treatment for PCOS. If you have it, they should look into Glucophage or one of the other insulin sensitizing drugs.

Once you get the results back from the bloodwork I’m happy to share what I know about those in terms of PCOS at least. If you haven’t already, you might look at http://www.fertilityplus.org/faq/hormonelevels.html for some of the basic info. And of course, you’ll want the actual numbers, not just whether the lab says it’s “normal” or not. But then, you’re really organized (Why are doctors so impressed with patients that care about their own medical details? Shouldn’t that be the norm?) so I’m sure you’ve got that covered.

By: Cass

Cass — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:05:01 +0000

“I have yet to see a mechanical bird come shooting out of my vagina at precisely timed intervals to tell me when I’m ovulating.”

Okay. This made me laugh so hard I had to get up and walk it off. Even now I’m snickering. (Did you know that if you have two babies – from separate pregnancies – within a year they’re called Irish Twins?)

Okay. Now I can go back and read the rest of it.