I am struggling so very hard to prepare for my finals at school. I attend York Tech here in Rock Hill, SC. I am taking one of the last few classes needed as prerequisites for my admission into the Physician Assistant program at MUSC in Charleston, SC. I hope that by the next application cycle (Early Oct. 2014) I will be fully ready! Currently, I am also seeking a shadowing or volunteering position to observe a PA working. In other words, I am extremely busy preparing for my future career!
In five days, our two year wedding anniversary will be here! I am so excited! We are finally taking a much needed trip that could be technically considered our honeymoon. Hmmm so could I call this vacation our anni-moon? Anyways, the trip we are taking is a cruise! Thursday night we will be leaving to travel to Miami, Fl. We will spend a day in Miami and then on Saturday the 14th (exactly our two year wedding anniversary), we will set sail on the Carnival Victory for five days. Our cruise destinations are Ocho Rios, Jamaica and the Grand Cayman Islands. I can not express how excited I feel, yet I can express how saddened I feel.
I can not help but feel saddened. With the dawning of our two year anniversary, it also almost marks the two year anniversary of us deciding to try to conceive. It feels like so much longer, but we are only two years into our dreadful infertility war. Who knows maybe history might be repeated and this will turn into a seven year or ten year war, except exchanging the bloodshed and bodies for tears and failed attempts. Indeed I have been preparing. I have been preparing for yet another disappointment in our infertility journey. I am waiting, waiting, and impatiently waiting some more for the unwanted, bad results we are bound to receive.
After our first, initial doctor's appointment, I received a call on Friday, December 6th. Since I was at work, the call went to my voicemail. It was a call from one of the nurses on our infertility team at REACH. She wanted to discuss some results from my blood test. OMG! Terror had gripped my insides and for a moment I could not breathe. My body stopped functioning and I panicked! I had never received a call pertaining to results from a blood test. I always received my other blood results in the mail, so I thought the worse. I feared that this was it, I would find the answer to our infertility problems: my malfunctioning body. I debated forever whether I would return the call. My husband, Willie, urged me to call, but I did not want to know especially if the results would be devastating. Once home, I returned the call and left a voicemail for my infertility team. Then I was off to shop with my favorite Canadian, Samantha, for a formal dress for the captain's dinner to be held on our cruise. While I was trying to unsuccessfully squeeze into a small, one shoulder white dress with gold designs trailing the arm, I received the return call. There in the dressing room, with my head halfway through the dress, my breasts smashed flat, and my arm dangling through the top of the dress, I received the results with bated breath. My nurse was relaying the results from the AMH (Anti-Mullerian Hormone) test. For those of you who are new to the world of infertility and its jargon (like me) the site, createhealth.org, describes AMH as the following:
Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) is a protein hormone produced by granulosa cells (cells lining the egg sacs or follicles) within the ovary. AMH can be measured in the blood at any time in the menstrual cycle as it is stable throughout the cycle. It is a marker for ovarian (egg) reserve.
Ovarian reserve testing, as defined by the American Society of Reproductive Society is:
Ovarian Reserve Testing: When attempting to test for a woman’s ovarian reserve, the clinician is trying to predict whether she can produce an egg or eggs of good quality and how well her ovaries are responding to the hormonal signals from her brain.
Another take on these two topics from thebump.com is:
AMH, or by its full name, Anti-Mullerian Hormone, is a hormone that’s produced by small follicles in the ovaries. It’s not something you’d tend to spend a lot of time thinking about, unless you’re debating trying IVF, in which case AMH’s importance goes up substantially. Fertility doctors use a blood test to measure your levels of AMH as a way to help determine your ovarian reserve -- or approximately how many eggs you have to work with. The higher your AMH level, the more follicles you have, and therefore the higher your potential remaining egg supply. And an AMH test is an indicator of the quantity of your eggs, not the quality.
The foreign results, a number given to me and coined "very good", was either a 42 or 43 (at the moment I can not remember). I was ecstatic that this was good results even if I did not understand what it truly meant. At the conclusion of my shopping trip, I researched the results and createhealth.org provided this:
Interpretation of AMH results (As per TDL Laboratories, London)
| Ovarian fertility potential | Values per 2nd generation assay (TDL) |
| Optimal fertility | 40.04-67.9pmol/l |
| Satisfactory fertility | 21.98-40.03pmol/l |
| Low fertility | 3.08-21.97pmol/l |
| Very low/undetectable | 0.0-3.07pmol/l |
This description of the AMH results does indeed show that my score of either 42 or 43 is "very good" or featured in the "optimal fertility" category. This newfound information was a huge relief for me. It helped to clarify my results and put me at ease, if only for a little while.
Lately I have prepared, prepared, and prepared, but I realize that some things in my life I can not prepare for. I knew that these results would be horrible, yet was pleasantly surprised. I guess you can not foresee the small blessings in life. Many times I am so optimistic, while other times I am surely counting down for the dawning of judgment day and the end of my world. From now on though, I think I will prepare myself for brighter outcomes because sometimes you have to have a little faith.
~Until next time....
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