sheer panic

I'm super swamped at work. Like crazy. I work at a large university in undergraduate admissions so, as you can imagine, this is our busy time. Trying to get all of those high school seniors to apply and commit takes a lot of hard work, a lot of long hours and a lot of man power. This morning I was at my desk all morning working on materials for an event I'm hosting this coming Saturday. I stepped out of my office for literally two minutes and, of course, I had a missed call when I returned. From my nurse. At the RE's office. What on earth was she calling me for? I hadn't been in since my IUI on Thursday. I didn't have any blood work drawn. In her voicemail she said she needed me to call back "As soon as possible, as she had some important and serious matters to discuss with me." HOLY FREAK OUT! I returned her call immediately but, of course, she didn't answer. So I had to leave her a voicemail. I called The Coach and was on the verge of tears, throwing up and was shaking like crazy. I could not even begin to fathom what she had to talk to me about.

Maybe our very, very limited insurance coverage had changed?

Maybe someone was, for some reason, reviewing my ultrasound pictures from last Tuesday and saw something that was concerning?

I really had no idea.

She finally called me back two hours after her initial call. First she told me that they've reviewed The Coach's sample in depth and his morphology was right at 12%. 12%!!! That is fantastic! Prior to his vericocele repair surgery the highest it ever got to was 9% but most often it hovered right around the 4% mark. His post-op SA in January showed 12% morph and to see that it is still there 8 months later is awesome! They want the morph to be around 14% but I've have heard "rumors" that the standards are being lowered because hardly anyone actually meets that 14% mark and she confirmed that they aren't rumors I've been hearing..so that was good. She also said that with his count, motility and morph, the sample was incredible for an IUI--much, much higher than what they normally see. YAY! Hopefully one of the 12% of the 32 million can find one of the 3 eggs! Wouldn't that be special? :)

Then came the "important and serious matter"...The Coach's sample also showed an abnormally large percentage of round cells. Round cells either mean immature sperm or they are white blood cells--which indicate an infection. We dealt with this a few times last summer at the start of this process. The Coach was put on anti-biotics 3 times for an infection. Apparently that is back. The sample is still out for culture so they don't have any official diagnosis but it is likely The Coach will have to go back on anti-biotics soon.

The nurse did tell me that it isn't that big of a deal..that had they known about the high WBC count prior to the IUI, they wouldn't have changed anything or done a different protocol. So I guess that is reassuring. If this IUI doesn't work, we likely need to have a sit-down with our RE to discuss why these infections continue to show up.

I have to admit, I'm highly annoyed that the nurse freaked me out like she did, for the length of time that she did, over that. Of course it isn't GREAT news but it isn't something we haven't dealt with before. It isn't something that is really going to affect the outcome of this cycle. I'm a little disappointed that she didn't have more understanding and sympathy in her voicemail...to realize what a message like that would do to an IFer.



::deep breaths::