Cut, Wait, Hope and Pray.
The day after Thanksgiving 2013 Rob and I had his first appointment with a urologist in Fargo. Up to this point I had been in and out of doctor’s offices more times then I can count. Modesty is now a thing of the past for me. I’ve been poked, prodded, swabbed, you name it I’ve experienced it. I don’t even get nervous any more going to the doctor because honestly what more could be done to my body that hasn’t happened already. Rob at this point was a different story. Any interaction he had experienced up to this point had been in private behind a closed door with no witnesses. This was all going to change.
The entire drive to Fargo Rob was so nervous and honestly a little agitated. This was not easy for him to experience and his biggest fear was, to put it bluntly, having his prostate checked which if you didn’t know requires a finger where the sun don’t shine. I laughed it off, never in a million years did I think that was going to happen.
Anxiously we waited to be seen in the waiting room when finally it was our turn. It started off like any other first appointment with a new physician. Lots of questions, family history etc., then came time for a physical exam. I remember asking Rob if I should leave the room and he said "you can stay I don’t care". The doctor very quickly diagnosed him with a varicocele which is defined as an enlargement of the veins, this can cause problems as more blood is in the area where sperm are being released and this added heat can kill and damage the sperm. Once he found that we thought the exam was over, boy were we wrong and Rob’s greatest fear came true…he still won’t let me forget that painfully awkward moment that left my husband waddling like a duck for the rest of the day. If looks could kill...well you know the rest. We laugh about it now but I think he wishes he could go back and kick me out of that room! Ha
It was determined at this point that Rob needed surgery to fix the varicocele. The surgery was presented to us as minor, he’d be back at work in 3 days and our baby would be on it’s way 3 months after that. The surgeon made it sound like a slam dunk, wham bam thank you mam this is the answer to your prayers.
We went home on a high that day, this was it and the road to becoming parents would soon be over. There would be a litte cut, we would wait, hope and then say a prayer that this was it. Little did we know this was not the first or last time we would be given false hope leading to a big let down, I’ve said it before ignorance is bliss. That 3 day recovery lead to a 3 week recovery in which my husband could only sleep sitting up. I’ll spare you the gory details but it was, in his terms, the most horrific experience of his life. That promise of drastically increased sperm count so that we could normally have kids turned into a sperm count so low that they were worried if IVF was even an option for us. More than a year later he still struggles with physical pain post op but I think it’s the emotion pain of being lied to that still hurts the most. That surgeon was going to get us in the operating room even if it meant it was happening under false pretenses. We’ve since learned that our fertility doctors no longer use this surgeon or even send referrals his way because this has happened too often. They shared the real truth about the surgery that Rob had and the real stats that go with it. Had we known we still may have given it a try but we would have gone in with eyes wide open knowing our odds.
This operation failure lead to the scariest day in this entire process, the day that we would finally have to admit that IVF was now seriously on the table. I never thought we would get to that point yet here were. Determined, scared, tired, afraid, angry, hopeful. With bated breath.
