My wife and I got married when I was 25 and she was 30. We had been dating and engaged for about three years already. We were in no hurry to have kids as we were both gleefully working our hearts out and figured we had all the time in the world. Add to that the fact that I was still very much in the single guy mindset that getting a girl pregnant is the worst thing that can happen in life (death is a close second). Getting married does not change this mind set AT ALL! It actually take several years before the thought of pregnancy and kids sinks in and you can start thinking about it as a positive thing.

You must remember that men are trained from their teenage years that the rules of the game are simple: if you can get laid, you win. If you get laid BUT get the girl pregnant, you lose. Game over!

After we were married for about a year, my wife started kicking around the idea of having kids. It took more than a bit of convincing to get me to agree with this idea. Ultimately, we compromised. We agreed that she’d stop taking “the pill” and we’d stop using any other protection. “When it happens, it happens” became our mantra.

I was content when month after month she still was not pregnant, figuring that I had been given a little more time to enjoy being young and married. Unfortunately, the months kept on going with not even a hint of a pregnant wife.

My wife went to the OB/GYN for a checkup after a year of trying and mentioned to her that we’d been unsuccessful. The doctor did a bunch of checks and tests and told her that she didn’t see anything obviously wrong, but recommended that we go see a fertility specialist just to get checked out but that there was still nothing to worry about.

So she books an appointment with the clinic she was referred to by her OB/GYN – “Reproductive Specialists of New York”. She was given a consultation with the founder, Dr. Gabriel San Roman.

She came back home from the appointment feeling positive. Dr. San Roman had assured her that we were both yound and healthy and he felt that, barring some negative tests, we’d have no problems having a child. The next step, he told her, was that we’d both need to go in and have a full battery of tests done to find the problem.

THE WALK OF SHAME

Testing day comes. We head to the clinic first thing in the morning. I’m expecting the normal stuff that goes into physicals. I am about to be suprised…

First off, I fill out a several page questionaire on my medical history. Next they send me off to the blood room where they take tube after tube of blood. I’m watching all of my blood getting packaged up and start to envision a secret cloning lab somewhere making an army of me’s – hahaha…

Now the fun starts. Just when I thought I was done, a surly looking older woman comes over to me and introduces herself as a nurse. She tells me that we’re off to “produce a sample”. I’m suddenly struck with a vision of being on “The Apprentice” and tasked with creating a sample product to be sold that night on the home shopping channel. Oh, but the truth was much more brutal than “The Donald” could ever be. I was led through a hallway right and left and right again until I was thoroughly lost. Surly nurse lady is not up for small talk and literally says nothing the entire time. We make our way to a door on the left that is slightly ajar, with a big sign on it that reads “DO NOT ENTER OR KNOCK WHEN DOOR IS CLOSED!”. Eyebrows up, I know this can’t be good. Surly nurse lady leads me into the room I will forever remember as the “Ejaculatorium”. Inside, it is a surprisingly large room based on the intended use. The lighting is quite dim and might be almost romantic if it wasn’t in the middle of a doctor’s office. Surly nurse lady gives me the grand tour. To the right of the door is a sink with a full list of instructions. Of course she decides that I may not be able to read and proceeds to go over the instructions in painstaking detail: Wash your hands thoroughly with soap water.

“Wash your penis thoroughly with soap and water from the base of the shaft to the tip. Take an alcohol swab and wipe the head of your penis thoroughly”

(right about this point I’m ready to freak out laughing harder than I ever have before OR watch blood flow right through the skin of my face because I’m blushing so hard). Now, remove the sample cup from the sterile plastic packaging and unscrew the lid. (Let me tell you, that cup is huge! I was hoping beyond hope she didn’t say “please fill this”) Now that we got penis prep instructions out of the way, we continue the tour. Inside the room is a stall with a toilet with one of those hospital type curtain divider things for privacy. She says I can use that if I prefer (What???). To the left of the odd toilet setup is a table with a TV and a VCR on top with a collection of VHS movies next to it. I’m now half interested to see what the professional clinical movies are like and I wonder to myself if they’ll be cheesy or not. To the left of the TV table is a full sized leather couch. It instantly dawns on me why the couch is leather (easy cleanup) blarff!!!. To the left of that is a (leather) La-Z-Boy recliner.

 

 

 

 

 Surly nurse lady tells me how to operate the VCR (ya know, cuz these are so new I may have never seen one before) and points to their selection of tapes. She then tells me that when I’m finished, I must bring the ‘sample’ I’ve ‘produced’ down the hall to the lab door, where I will leave it for processing. Then she says very sternly “Make sure you leave the door OPEN when you leave! Open!”. I give her a “Roger, that” and try to look as ready as I can so she’ll leave me to my shame. She’s standing there like there’s more to say and I’m now fully expecting her to give me a lecture on how to masturbate, since she’s explained every other facet of this operation in such excruciating detail. Well apparently that’s the one thing she decided I probably knew how to do already and left.

I decide to at least git ‘er going so I wander over to the video tape collection to the what we have. I see two things that suprise me. One is a sign that reads “All movies are inventoried before and after each use. Any missing movies will be billed to your account”. Ohhhhh Kay… The next thing I notice is that these movies are not the innocent clinical type that I expected. This are hard core porn movies with titles that explain that in brutal detail. And not your regular porn either! There are ones with lots and lots of participants and several other “niche” varieties.

At this point I’m starting to considering making a run for the exit, but I quickly resign myself to the fact that this is going to happen one way or another.

Fast forward

After producing my sample, I wash up and button up and make my way to the door. I open it hoping beyond hope that there’s no one outside to see me leaving the scene of the crime. Well my hopes were dashed when I realized that there is a woman in an office directly across the hall from me. Her desk is facing the door I’m trying to sneak out of. She looks up at me and then quickly away. My face turns beet red. My eyes drop to the floor and I turn down the hallway and head for the lab to make my delivery.

I arrive at the drop off door for the lab and luck is with me. It’s a dutch door (the top can open separately from the bottom creating a counter) and no one is there. I’m spared further humiliation. I leave the cup on the little counter and make haste back toward the waiting room. I almost make it there when surly nurse pops out from a doorway and catches me!

Her: “Did you leave the specimen with the lab tech?”

Me: ”uh, yeah, on the counter”.

Her: “Did you give it to a person or not???”

Me: “Uh, no there was no one there”Her: “You can’t do that!!! It MUST be given to the lab tech directly!” 

What is an IUI??

Now that both my wife and I have been tested for just about everything and come back normal, we are officially diagnosed with “Unexplained Infertility”, which basically means they have no idea why she hasn’t gotten pregnant.

So my wife heads off to the doctor to have a “what next?” appointment. I have to work so she goes alone. They suggest we do an “IUI” which is short for Intra Uterine Insemination”. This is basically when you take some home tests and/or an Ovulation monitor and wait till your wife is ovulating. Once the tests say she is, you produce a “sample”, the docs office processes the sample stripping out everything except the sperm. Now they put it in a thin straw, put the straw through the vagina and inject the sperm directly into the uterous which will hopefully have an egg on the way.

My wife agrees and they give her a prescription for Chlomid. This drug is supposed to help you ovulate and can make you produce two or three eggs, which should help your odds of getting pregnant.

So wifey starts her drugs. We get an Ovulation Monitor and a bunch of ovulation tests (which work just like home pregnancy tests – pee on a stick) and we’re off to the races. She watches her monitor religiously and when the little symbols say she’s about to ovulate, she calls the doc and asks what next. They said we should come in the next day for the IUI. My wife tells them that I will be at work so it’ll need to be either before or after. The nurse replies “oh he doesn’t have to come in, you can just get the sample at home and then bring it straight here”. WHAT WHAT WHAT THE HELL????? I went through the most embarrassing, forced sexual experience in my life and didn’t have to??? No, says the pleasant nurse on the phone. We can get a sterile cup from the drug store, I can fill it and give it to my wife. They suggest she puts the cup between her breasts on the way up to keep it close to body temperature. As long as she can get there within an hour, it’ll be fine.

Attention men and women that love them: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WHACK IT IN THE DOCTORS OFFICE! Save yourself the trauma and embarrassment! Do it at home and maintain what little dignity you can in this process!

So we go fetch a cup from the drug store the night before, I set my clock and wake up early to do my deed. My wife and I try to time it so that she takes delivery just before she’s going to leave so that we are well within the time limit. It works out, she dutifully drops the cup between her breasts and heads off to the doctor while I head off to work.

When my wife arrives, she drops off the cup. They tell her to come back in two hours for the procedure. She heads over to Starbucks, has a coffee and kills the time then heads back to the docs. The procedure was done within about 10 minutes. They brought her in the room, brought in my “washed” sample. Showed it to her with a name label on it to double check it’s the right guy’s stuff (a bit disturbing as you know this process was created because they’ve made mistakes before). Once she confirmed it, they popped the straw in and fired the boys into the uterous. They told her to relax and hang out for a few minutes, then she was free to go back to work or whatever she wanted to do.

We waited and waited for the results. When we finally did the home pregnancy test, it was dissapointing. Negative.

That was the beginning of our journey into “Unexplained Infertility”.

Suffice it to say that “Reproductive Specialists of New York” and Dr. San Roman was a total body shop and a waste of time. They just kept upping our doseage of chlomid and doing IUI’s forever. Eventually we got suspicious that they were milking us for insurance money. After substancial research by my wife, we moved over to North Shore University Hospital where we did finally get pregnant and are currently expecting a baby girl.

I will write detailed posts about the rest of our experiences with Reproductive Specialists of New York and our eventual move to North Shore University Hospital.

Technorati Tags: Chlomid, Infertility, IUI

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