Doctor, Doctor

(Originally posted June 9/08)

Statistics seen on a recent Good Morning Canada broadcast:

• 600 000 couples in Ontario are suffering from infertility



• 90 million couples worldwide are experiencing infertility

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About this time 10 years ago...

Sitting in the fertility doctor’s office, it hit me.

We are infertile. For a lack of any better way to think about it ... it sucked big time.

I had been focused on the school thing for the previous few months; getting the first term of the program under my belt was a good thing. Not bad timing at all, providing me with a distraction from this bigger worry.

Ian came with me to the doc’s. The lone man among a room full of women. It was rather obvious why we were there. The doctor was an ob/gyn, a specialist in endometriosis but he also dabbled in fertility treatments. Endometriosis is often a cause of infertility.

The doctor was punctual. We were called into his office, and he greeted us with a wide grin; a quiet man, with an ear-to-ear smile. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed this. He was voted “Smiliest Fertility Doctor” in this publication not too many years ago. The fact that they even had this as a category boggles my mind (talk about being bang on; it was actually a pretty quirky list of the "best of the city" and I could laugh about it).

He took a look at my records while we sat in front of him. He asked us a few questions, noted our ages and lifestyle. Then he announced that he had full confidence that we would get pregnant. This was even before getting into any real “testing” of us. He just knew … and looking at the wall of fame behind us (babies, babies everywhere) … we were encouraged.

So here was the plan. We’d do some investigation of our status quo; check my cycles, BBT etc, bloodwork on both of us. Check the man’s Spencer stats (you really should trademark the name, Xbox).

Next steps after that, if still not preggars:
1/ Hysterosalpingogram (HSG). Can help clear any tubes while they’re looking for potential blockage, don’t you know.
2/ Then consider drug therapy (Clomid).
3/ If drugs alone don’t work, add cycle monitoring consisting of blood work and ultrasounds of the transvaginal variety (gulp). And more drugs.
4/ If no success there, then we move into the Assisted Reproduction Technology arena. IUI’s, IVF, ICSI, GIFT … enough acronyms for you? But this last step, don’t even think about as we probably wouldn’t have to go there (yet...)


First things first. Take this graph, go home, be diligent with your temperature, and fill it out the form. Do your thing. Come back after the cycle and then we’ll talk.

He told us we should be pregnant in a matter of months. It was nice to hear that from someone, especially a professional.

We left there feeling great. Oddly excited. A new start. Some renewed hope.

(here comes the happy music ...)