Varicose Seal

...is the diagnosis that J received from the doctor today. Five years of infertility and nobody ever referred us to a urologist. How frickin' annoying.

The doctor examined him said he has a "varicose seal". Which - in my 30 seconds of googling appears to be a varicose vein that is cutting off his dudes, and can back things up enough to raise the temperate in the Dude Cave enough to damage ongoing dudes. Something like that...I need to do some more research on it. But apparently surgery would open it back up.

The doc says he wants J to have another sperm analysis done. The first analysis was VERY low (like 2,000 working dudes). The second analysis showed about 2 million dudes, but only about 200k working. So there was quite a descrepancy between the two tests. If this next test comes back and it's on the 2k level, there's no point in doing the surgery. But if it's more on par with his second test, then it might be worth it.

Assuming he qualifies after this test, there's about a 1 in 5 chance that it will make a significant difference in his count. Doctor said that even if it does raise it, it's doubtful that we'll be able to conceive naturally (zero times a million still equals zero). BUT...he said it was likely that if it works - it could put us in the IUI range. So basically it would open up more treatment options. He also said that our fertility clinic did us a great injustice by not referring J to a urologist to start with. I think that was 3 (4?) clinics ago...I've lost count...I'm not even sure who I should be pissed at.

So now we just need to figure out if insurance will cover it. J seems to be really excited about this. Which surprises me, because I was thinking, if it's not going to make a big difference, what's the point? But J's thinking seems to be: if it could put us in IUI range, let's do it. Rock on, right?

We're still set for this next IVF cycle - it will start around June 1st. We're already paid for the next 2 cycles, so we're going to go ahead with it.

J's going to go ahead with his semen analysis. But we may push the surgery back just to see if the next 2 ncivf cycles will work. Or if they can get him in for surgery quickly (after this next ivf cycle), then he may go ahead with it. Not sure...still up in the air. But it's kind of nice to know that ncivf #5 isn't a last option anymore...oh my GOD we could be talking about IUI's...that sounds like a day at the spa.