OMG! Follow-up!

So, here's how it went down...with parenthesis by the dozens.

We get to the office (no window in the door - is this really the office or a storage closet?) and the nurse (obvious by her wearing floral scrubs) at the front desk says I don't know how to do new patient paperwork. Huh? Well, it turns out she doesn't spend much time up at the front, but happened to be there when we came in. And since our appt. was short notice they hadn't had the time to send the "new patient paperwork" to me to complete before the appt. In the end, all it was was a double-sided form - short personal information on the front, privacy policy disclosure on the back. It took maybe 5 minutes to complete. And he does have "real" people up at the front who do know what they are doing.

Since this was the first appt. of the day (after a 7:30AM surgery), the Doc was right on time and brought us back to his office himself. Kind of goofy, and with a sense of humor, waited to let us talk, asked questions of both of us, made notes, and then suggested what we should do. We spent at least a full hour talking with him.

After looking at my current cycle BBT chart and hearing that I'm on cycle day 27, he said, you might be pregnant now but it would still be too early to tell from a vaginal exam or ultrasound. With clomid my charts have regulated to one temp average before ovulation and a higher temp average after ovulation (this is normal). This cycle the temp before ovulation was normal, the temp after ovulation has done nothing but get higher. Is it the progesterone? Or is is because we got lucky? In either case, day 30 is Saturday so I will be taking a home preg. test to see. Last night, the one I used laughed at me. I can tell this because the [-] to show it's working was very dark. The [-] indicator in the result section was barely there - I can only assume it was telling me something like "you are so not pregnant it's not even worth my showing you." Of course, this was a Wal-Mart knockoff which does not say it can indicate anything before the last expected day of your cycle. I'm feeling the urge to shell out a little extra and get a brand name for Saturday's test.

As it turns out, his suggestions happen to line up with what we had been thinking (of course, that would predispose us to like him, right?), and do not include jumping to the most invasive or costly without exploring other options first, and finding out more about what's going on with my and DH's issues. Though, he did say that 3% morphology was not horrible, and it wasn't causing him as much concern as my cycle issues. And he said that despite the length of time we had been TTC, we had only really had 4 or 5 actual months which could have been successful (length of time counting from the time we stopped the Depo to now - the months in which I didn't have a period at all after the Depo and in which I had multiple 11-15 day cycles don't count for actual ability to conceive).

So where does that leave us? Should the progesterone just be screwing with my temps, I'll go sometime between days 2 & 4 for blood work (thyroid with TSH, estrogen, FSH & prolactin), I'll schedule a HSG (where they shoot dye in the uterus to see if the fallopian tubes are open) with my local doctor, and a post-coital test with the Richmond doc for the day I anticipate ovulation. Oh yeah, I'm not going to do clomid and see what happens! He thinks it's been enough time (after 1 cycle at 50mg, and 3 cycles at 100mg) it's worth a shot to see if my cycle has reset (I started the clomid cycles due to the short cycles mentioned above). If not, that's helpful information in and of itself.

If the temps are telling a true story, well, you know what that means! I'll be calling him to say, no need. He said he likes to hear good news like that.

Best case scenario - well, we know what that is. (and it was worth the co-pay and time to talk to someone with more experience than my local doctor)
Worst case scenario - we'll have gotten some tests done that I was planning to do before the original May appointment anyway, and we will still be ahead of where we would have been if today's appointment hadn't opened up.

Overall, I think DH and I came out with a very positive feeling. It doesn't completely erase the worry that our issues are going to cause problems; but it feels good to know that we have a plan, and to have our thoughts on "what next" validated.