Trigger Testing - Ovulation Induction with Ovidrel

Introduction - My Infertility Story

My journey starts long before children were even a thought of mine. I was ten when the problems started; I went home sick from a friends house, didn't eat for days, could barely move from the pain, three days later and mum gave up thinking it was a stomach bug and sent me to Princess Margaret Children's Hospital (PMH, it was known as). After hours of waiting, running into a man covered in blood coming out of the toilet clutching my first ever pee cup, I was finally seen to, poked for a few seconds, told I was constipated (despite not having eaten in 3 hours... my digestive system had probably stopped from stress) and sent home with a single dose of painkiller that ended up very quickly out of my gut and on the nurse's feet in a pile of bile.

That was the start of many such incidents. I began to fear hospitals, fear doctors, fear every day life. I was scared to get up each day, waiting for the pain to worsen once again. I went to specialists, had a bazillion blood tests and an ultrasound, had a colonoscopy and endoscopy (a camera on a pole up BOTH ends). I was diagnosed with reflux, stress induced ailment on unknown cause, constipation a thousand times over, lactose intolerance (which a lactose free diet never actually fixed), and finally was referred to a psychiatrist being told that it was all in my head and I was crazy.

No wonder I ended up with severe anxiety and depression from a young age.

Life went on. I started getting my first periods. They were always irregular, always heavy, 7-14 days in length with an average of about 10, and the heavy flow at the beginning was so hard I couldn't last the 50minutes of class time between changing pads and had to ask to be excused every class, changing pads every half hour to keep up with the flow. I became anaemic (iron deficient). Iron tablets worsened my constipation. Everything was terrible.

I still remember my second ever period. I had finished it on day 7, and was at a friends house, and it was day 10. It decided to show up again, rather heavy (well what I thought at the time was heavy, I was soon going to learn otherwise). My friend was prepubescent, and her mother had her as a miracle child when she was hitting menopause (aka, her mum was well into menopause and had no supplies either). This was a family that had a bidet and rarely utilized toilet paper, so there wasn't even enough of that to stuff in my only pair of undies. I had to call mum to pick me up early.

Fast forward a good ten years from the start of my issues, and that's when I finally got my real answer. I developed a bad UTI out on a farm, so bad I was in a lot of pain and peeing myself constantly, and even busting to go to the toilet whilst I was going to the toilet and just after... my body was a mess of confusion. But antibiotics didn't do much to help, and despite the fact I had blood in my urine and something was setting off the dipstick bacterial test, they could never find what the exact bacteria was (I later found out I have mycoplasma, which can't be detected on normal cultures and requires a PCR to detect, but that's another story). I was sent for an ultrasound to check my kidneys and search for an answer.

I didn't find one. I had a polyp of some form on my uterus, and a tiny abnormality in my liver that wasn't concerning and actually resolved itself (or perhaps was just a blot on the ultrasound for all I know). The radiologist/sonographer that was checking me over ran the whole clinic, and he said he'd probably see me in a week for an internal/vaginal ultrasound as that would most likely be the doctor's next step. He then asked if I wanted to just do it there while he had time, against protocol but to save me going back and forth an extra time. So I did.

My ovary had a cyst so large and filled with fluid that it had been mistaken as my bladder. It was the size of an apple, and contained a full cup of fluid. That began my endometriosis diagnosis, leading to my laparoscopy and cystectomy to remove the endometriosis in May of 2018. For the record, in Year 8 many years prior, I did a project on endometriosis and what I found sounded so familiar I brought it up with my doctor and was shot down. Oh how I wish I could have recorded that and shown it back to them almost a decade later. But that's a tad petty.

In my post-op, as I was about to leave, the OBGYN smiled and said "hopefully that's it and I won't see you again until you're ready to start a family." And he basically explained that endometriosis had made me infertile, and the procedure I had had only increased the chances of me never having children, and that he'd be able to help me when I was ready to conceive.

By October that year, 5 months later, I was staring at a positive pregnancy test.

My son was born, he was a boobie-monster that breast fed on demand and never slept a wink. So when he hit 13months we started to try for a second baby, hoping it would take a little while since there was a chance I'd struggle a bit since I was meant to the first time. We both thought that because we were starting earlier than we were truly ready, that we'd fall pregnant straight away. Nope. Months passed. I was constantly told that I'd never be taken seriously while I still breastfed, despite my prolactin levels indicating that breastfeeding wasn't interrupting my cycle (I hadn't have a period since the one right before falling pregnant years earlier).

I eventually weaned, and still nothing. Had an ultrasound, discovered that whilst there was no visible endometriosis this time, I had an unusually large number of cysts on my ovaries and was presenting many clinical signs of having PCOS, or polycystic ovarian syndrome. Suspecting I could be insulin resistant, my GP started me on Metformin, and that did help. Going up to 3 tablets a day finally induced a period after 1.5months, though I still wasn't regular.

Having been referred to a specialist (considering I almost went 1000 days between periods), I found out that the exact person I'd been referred to didn't believe in endometriosis, was incredibly outdated in his knowledge, and believed that anyone under 26 is too young to be having kids, and refused to take them down certain medical paths such as IVF even if nothing else was an option. I didn't worry too much when his wait time extended from 1-2months to 5-6months (though that's still better than over a year if I went public).

Whilst I waited, I saw a GP that works out of a Fertility Specialist in Joondalup hospital called Fertility North. She was lovely, tested a bunch of things, said my normal GP was doing everything right, and that the metformin would start to fix things over the next few months on it's own. She suggested I start taking 2g of inositol daily as well, said to help the ovaries become more receptive to the hormones that help with ovulation and cycling. I was on the right track to falling pregnant "naturally" without proper intervention.

Then that cycle I thought I was pregnant. I thought I knew when I ovulated, due to LH test strips and all the symptoms and a stabbing pain in my ovaries that lined up perfectly together. A week later a blood test confirmed my period would show within the week. I had a few odd symptoms (not many, but enough to get my hopes up), and my period was 2 days late. I thought there was the faintest line on tests, then I went to work and my period showed up.

I called up the fertility specialist that day asking to go in right then and there for ovulation induction. I was sick of the constant waiting to see when I'd ovulate, of the peeing on a stick every day of every month for over a year hoping I'd catch when the egg was released only for it to never happen. When you only ovulate on average once a year, you don't want to miss it and not 'do the deed' in the window. So I was a POAS addict, and I was sick of the suspense.

I wanted some control, some knowledge of what was happening in my cycle and when. So I booked in for Ovulation Induction, and that is where I'm at now.