Back when I was working (and had insurance that covered infertility treatments pretty well), I had made the decision to make an appointment with a Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE) as soon as we hit the 1 year TTC mark. Luckily, we live in an area that isn't as populated, so I didn't even need a referral... I just called. I got an appointment pretty much right away, and didn't need to go through infertility seminars that many RE's make patients go through. Score!
But I was cautious too. I knew my husband's stance on medicines, and I knew my stance on assisted reproductive technology (ART), so how the heck would the RE be able to help us? I told myself that at the moment, we were just going to be getting some testing done to see what was up, and that we'd cross whatever bridge we needed to, when it came.
So came the first appointment. It wasn't too bad... just a lot of cycle history info given while the doctor wrote it down, a ton of blood taken (quote from DH to the phlebotomist... "you're going to leave some for her, right?") and finally, a transvaginal ultrasound. Honestly, I thought it would be worse, but I hardly felt anything. Anyway, they wanted to get a look at my ovaries to see if they were polycystic.
They were. The tech showed them to me, and pointed out the "string of pearls" that indicated many developing follicles on each ovary. At this point, I kind of knew about PCOS, but not really, so I wasn't concerned about it. But then a day later when I got the lab results back, I got a jolt when I realized I would need to learn about it in a hurry... my LH level was super high, which when combined with the presence of polycystic ovaries, gave me the diagnosis of PCOS. Awesome. Not.
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