jump to navigation

The Gory Details June 24, 2004

I guess I should actually get to posting about the events of the last few days. My hubby had his surgery on Monday. We arrived at the hospital at 8:30 am for his 10:30 surgery. We sat in the waiting room for an hour before anyone got to us. We then paid our copay and got to go to pre-op. They did all the standard stuff: IV, vitals, consult with the anesthesiologist, etc. Right around 10:30, they wheeled him off to the OR.

The doctor had told me that someone would bring out the extracted sperm around noon for me to take over to the other facility for cryopreservation. Well, noon came, 12:30 came, 1:00 came, and I was getting very nervous. Finally at 1:30 my husband’s doctor came out to talk to me. He let me know that they were far from done, but he wanted to give my an update. Here’s what I jotted down after we finished speaking:

1:30 pm My husband’s doctor just came out to give me an update. He found a blockage low in the vas deferens and a secondary blockage in the epididymis. Not good news. He said that they’re going to be able to retrieve some good sperm and that it will be ready for me to transport in about 45 minutes. After the doctor finished explaining the technical stuff, he asked me, “Are you ok?” I automatically answered “yes” but, in all honesty, I don’t really know. I’m sitting here in a hospital waiting room doing my best to hold back tears as some cute little toddler waddles past my seat. So I guess IVF here we come. Can’t say I’m all that excited about that thought.

I then went to the ladies room and tried to compose myself, and then returned to sit and wait for the sperm. It should have been ready around 2:15, but I sat nervously waiting for it until about 3:45. I was supposed to grab something to eat while I was out on this errand, but since I was still waiting, I didn’t have a chance to eat. That made things even worse. Here’s what I jotted down at 3:30:

3:30 pm I’m the only one left in the waiting room. There’s no sign of the sperm that was supposed to be ready at 2:15 for me to transport. I’m getting nervous. If that’s our only shot at having biological children, I sure hope someone hasn’t dropped the ball, so to speak. We already know that today isn’t going to be ending in the best case scenario. I just hope it won’t be ending in one of the worst.

One of the nurses finally brought out the sample for me to bring to the other facility for cryopreservation around 3:45. Here’s what I had to say when I returned to the hospital:

4:15 pm I’ve returned from dropping off the sperm. The other facility was close to the hospital, so it didn’t take too long. The people in the lab were expecting me, and everything went smoothly. When I asked if I had to pay then, they told me that everything was going to go through my husband’s doctor’s office. It should be interesting to see how much we end up paying for it.

At about 4:45 my hubby’s doctor came out to talk to me again. He let me know that they had finished the surgery, and it was unsuccessful. One side had blockages in both the vas deferens and epidiymus. The other side was open, but it appeared that that testicle was not producing sperm. They did a biopsy to find out what was going on with that testicle. They attempted to take the vas deferens from the side that wasn’t producing sperm and cross it over to the other side to bypass the blockages, but the blockages were too low to make that plan feasible. He let me know that he did retrieve good quality sperm from the epididymis of the productive side. I asked him his opinion of the various IVF clinics in town. He let me know of a couple of them that he recommended.

Just after I had finished speaking with the doctor, a nurse came out and let me know that I could go back to the recovery room. When I walked in there, it was obvious that my husband had only been out of surgery for a short time. He was barely conscious, but it was nice just to be able to sit with him. My first concern through all of this was to make sure that he came through ok. After sitting there for a while, my hubby started to wake up a little. The first coherent thing that came out of his mouth was, “Did it work?” It broke my heart. How could I tell him that he had gone through all of that and it didn’t work? I whispered to him that we would talk about it when he was feeling better and then sat down and cried. After he had woken up more, I did end up telling him that the surgery was unsuccessful. That was so hard to do.

We stayed at the hospital for quite a while until he was physically able to come home. He’s been recovering pretty well since then, although, as he puts it in his blog entry, “My groin looks like someone used it for a piñata and then stitched it back together as a baseball. Fun.” I’m glad his sense of humor is still in tact, and I’m doing my best to take care of him while he recovers.

This entry has turned out to be quite long, so I’ll save the saga about trying to move on to the whole IVF thing for another time. The only way to make it through this in one piece is to take it one day at a time, I guess.

Comments»

no comments yet - be the first?