Cysts 5, Chee Chee 0

As you can probably gather from the title of this post, our baseline ultrasound and bloodwork on Thursday did not go well, to say the least. It seems that I have 5 large endometrioma or cysts (the technician could not definitively tell me how many of each I had). All five measured over 30mm and one was over 40 mm. Also, my estrogen level was over 600 and so we are on hold for, at least, another cycle. It's back on the pill on Wednesday and hopefully, things will look better in a few weeks. Needless to say, I was totally stunned. I didn't ask any questions, nor could I find any words at all. Thankfully, David was with me and had the presense of mind to ask some good questions like -- Could this have been caused by the stims from last cycle? Do we need another rest/suppression cycle? What are our next steps? I felt like (and still feel like) I am on a continuous road to nowhere.

As it turned out, things only went downhill from that point. I had the most excruciating menstrual pain in recent memory. I popped every type of pain pill in our house. I rolled around in agony for most of Friday and Saturday. I begged one of the doctors at Ginormous Fertility to prescribed something, anything, stronger than the stuff I had at home. Thankfully, mercifully, he did and two short hours later, I was on the road to recovery. I returned to Ginormous on Sunday morning for another scan and their thoughts on my situation. The doctor, who happened to be doing monitoring on Sunday morning mentioned that surgery (SURGERY!?!?) might be my best option. It just keeps getting better.

After learning of this weekend's events, Dr. L and Supernurse called today to check on me. Dr. L advised me to take the BCPs and return to Ginormous in three weeks for monitoring. He confirmed that it had been difficult to distinguish between the endometrioma and the cysts and that although the endometrioma would not be affected by the BCPs, the cysts should re-absorb. (We know that the endometriomas hadn't been so large and numerous at the start of my last cycle, so hopefully they are mainly new cysts and not new endometriomas). He also mentioned that the pain was "to be expected" given the cysts and extent of my endometriosis. That's easy for him to say with his male parts and office full of family photos! (Down, girl). So I made an appointment to return to Ginormous on Monday, June 26th. Dr. L is scheduled to do monitoring himself that morning.

In the meantime, my best infertile friend suggests that we travel to NY and seek second opinions with the fertility doctor to the stars. I am having difficulty making any sort of decision right now but maybe it couldn't hurt . . .