Doctor Visits

Well, I can finally announce that John is having weight loss surgery on March 5th! We are still in the process of figuring out which of the options he will have, but we are leaning toward a gastric sleeve procedure which is somewhere between the Lap Band and the Gastric Bypass that I had. We are very excited that he'll be able to move forward with this, and I've put him a ticker up at the top to track his progress as well. He has started his preop diet - which is self imposed as he only is required to diet for the 7 days before his surgery. So we'll see where he is when the surgery happens - he loses quickly - so he might be well on his way before that time.

Tomorrow night we're going to a seminar on the gastric sleeve, and possibly check out the surgeon's support group as well. His surgeon requires 6 appointments with his nutritionist as well, and the cool thing is that they've welcomed me in on those appointments along with John - and have invited me to join the support group as well. I am very excited for him, and I know that this will be every bit as rewarding for him as it has been for me.

This afternoon we met with our new fertility specialist, and you guys - it was an AMAZING experience. Dr. Mac (McWilliams) is the best... we at first got tickled because while we were waiting to see the doctor - they'd given us a packet of information on all the different types of fertility testing to read through, and one of the tests for men involves them trying to use the man's sperm to fertilize a Chinese Hampster egg... oh did we laugh... until we cried. Mainly because I started calling it our love child, and asking if he thought we'd be able to bring it home and raise it. HA!

We then met with Dr. Mac, and from what it sounds like - the last 7 years have gone perfectly according to my medical therapy. Everything has worked like a charm, and as it turns out - we went in at the perfect time! (God thing - for sure!) I stopped taking the pill at the end of January, and it just so happens that next Monday - I am prime for some blood work to be drawn to test if I'm ovulating properly.

That is step one of the process, and he told us some things to do right from the start to help ourselves. He made us promise that if we got pregnant this month that we'd still allow him to claim it as another baby he'd brought into the world... and we happily agreed.

We are going to start with the blood work on me, and see how things are going from there - there are several steps of testing and therapy that we could go through - but we'll just start one step at a time.

He did give us all the stuff we'd need for John to go ahead and get his tests done - and explained to us about using frozen peas to help raise sperm counts. Apparently - if a bag of frozen peas is applied daily for 30 minutes... you can drastically change the motility and count for sperm. He didn't recommend that this be started just yet, but that it could be a possibility down the road.

For right now, I have the most hope that I've ever had in this process. Mainly I guess because he cautioned me against saying that I've been infertile - because really I have never been allowed to try to have a baby consistently for any period of time. So according to Dr. Mac - we are just getting started, and the perfect timing for this visit and all has God's hands all over it.

Interestingly enough - he confirmed a couple of things that I've thought all along....

1) That PCOS is a predetermining factor for Type II diabetes, and if it had been treated and controlled back in 1995 - I might never have gotten as out of control on the blood sugar roller coaster as I did.

2) The last fertility specialist we saw was a QUACK! He said there was no reason that he would have ever told a couple that they couldn't have a healthy pregnancy with my Hemoglobin A1C level being out of balance.

3) Yes, having a high A1C can cause birth defects - but it is not as common as we were led to believe.

So all of that being said, Dr. Mac thought there was a real possibility that we could even get pregnant this month... we'll know how viable a possibility that really is on Monday, and we'll see how things go. I am so at peace right now - I don't think I've ever had this much hope that I could become pregnant and carry my own baby. (EVER!)

It has been a fantastic day, and I feel very blessed. We'll see how things go... I'm off to cook dinner now and then to relax. I probably won't get in a workout tonight or tomorrow, but if I work every night the rest of the week - I'll still hit my goal of 5 workouts this week.