Wednesday, March 5, 2008

what the hell does this mean

OK, I just got a call from my RE's office. My cultures have come back positive for ureaplasma. The nurse was quite matter of fact about it, this is not a big deal, everyone has it, your culture just showed an overgrowth and I'll call in a prescription for antibiotics for you and your husband. I asked if it might play a role in infertility and she said no one really knows.

And of course you google when you get new medical information, right? And the info is all over the map, ranging from a majority saying it's not a big deal, up to 80% of women have this and it's easily passed between couples for years, to a few saying this is an STD though not one that causes any problems and it's only called an STD because it's in the reproductive tract, to a very few saying this is an STD that definitely causes infertility and is extremely hard to treat.

Great.

Have I been tested for this before? Did my cheating husband pass along an STD? What the HELL.

I am breathing. The thing is, I have to explain all this to him, and we have to both start taking the antibiotics. So I need to process through this inorder to be able to present it in a neutral way. In, out, in, out. The reputable sites all pretty much said no big deal, fairly routine. I'll hold onto that for now.

Also. I have been thinking the 17th is a long time off to wait for all the results. I considered calling the office to ask for a phone reading of the straight results. And here I had the nurse on the phone, with results right in front of her. So I asked.

Surprisingly (to me) I tested fine for everything. HSG fine, hormones fine, all fine. Honestly, I'm really surprised. I think I've noticed subtle signs of aging - lack of cervical mucous, vaginal dryness, slight changes in cycle. All subtle, but there. Which probably means my clock is ticking, but not done yet.

And then my husband. Remember 5 years ago he had varicoceles removed. Quantity and density - fine. Well above threshhold range. Mobility - they'd like to see greater than 50%, and his was 40. Morphology, they like to see greater than 20%, and his was 11. But - turns out he went to make his deposit during my cycle, which means, actually, it had been longer than 7 days since an 3jac.ulat1on. Prolonged storage in the body can affect both mobility and morphology. We'll have to tell the doctor that. Should we just have him go make another deposit before the 17th, to make sure?

And the nurse emphasized she was only giving me raw results, only the doctor could interpret them and talk about a path forward. Perhaps I should not have asked, as the 17th is still along way away. Sigh.

I know I've got some experts out there reading. I'd love any thoughts on what this all means. Are we having fun yet?

5 comments:

niobe said...

I've got nothing.

CLC said...

I'm not an expert in this. I read it and it all went over my head. Sorry.

meg said...

Yeah, this is over my head too. Don't know anything about it at all. Sorry.

Antigone said...

Until the HPV vaccine started to grab headlines, most people didn't understand that an abnormal pap result was an indiciation of HPV which is an STD. Its prevalance in the general population is about 45% last I read. There are a lot of bacteria and virus out there. I know a pathologist I can ask about this tomorrow...

Antigone said...

Ok, so Dr. Pathologist tells me that it can be transmitted sexually but it can also be transmitted by other means. Pretty much anything in the repro-track can be sexually transmitted but it isn't an exclusive relationship.