Pelvic Ultrasound

On Jan 19 I got a pelvic ultrasound. A pelvic ultrasound uses sound waves to make a picture of the organs and structures in the lower belly specifically the uterus, and ovaries. So much fun! The last one I had was about a year ago but my OBGYN said that it was too old and I needed a newer one. Before you get a pelvic ultrasound, they ask you to drink 32 oz of water one hour before your appointment time. I guess a full bladder makes it easier to see the uterus and ovaries. For those of us that are not math whizzes, that's 4 cups of water that you have to drink and then hold! I got to my appointment a little early only to find construction had taken out at least half of the available parking. The only place I could find to park was in a parking structure where you need to pay for parking - not something I was counting on, but luckily, I had just found $2 in the pocket of my jacket. I read the sign on the way in and figured I'd have enough money to park for 1 hour. That should be long enough, right?

Getting to the imaging center just a couple minutes after my appointment time, I signed in and filled out my paperwork. Lucy who worked behind the counter at the imaging center noted that my doctor's orders had not yet been faxed to the imaging center. So Lucy called the doctor's office and after 15 minutes on hold, the wrong order was faxed over. Lucy asked me if maybe I was mistaken and I needed to have made an appointment for an HSG (more on that in later posts). I told her no, that the HSG was for February. Lucy called me up to the window and said that she had called the doctor's office back and they had insisted that the doctor didn't need me to have pelvic ultrasound, but I could still get one if I wanted one. I told Lucy that my doctor had asked me to get a pelvic ultrasound, even giving me the number to call to schedule it and that I had no interest in getting one if it wasn't required.

After many more minutes of Lucy arguing on the phone with the doctors office, the correct order was finally faxed over. Now, it has been at least an two hours since I drank 4 cups of water and my bladder is about ready to burst. I had been standing in the waiting room reading old magazines because there were no new magazines and because I could not sit after drinking so much water.

The actual pelvic ultrasound was rather uneventful except for the painfully bulging bladder. You lay face up on a table and the ultrasound technician puts some conductive gel on the skin over your lower stomach. Then the technician presses the ultrasound wand against the gel thereby squashing your overfull bladder and enabling sound waves to make a picture of the uterus and ovaries that can be viewed on a monitor, printed, and/or recorded on a tape or disk. All this to find I still have cystic ovaries - imagine that. Anyway, by the time I got out of the imaging center, it had been several hours. I asked Lucy if they could validate my parking ticket. The answer was no, but she gave me a gift certificate for one pound of See's Candy as the customer of the week for my patience. Cool!

Finally, I was able to pull my car up to the pay booth for the parking structure and hand the man in the booth my parking ticket. He told me that I owed him $4, remember I only have $2 that I found in my jacket packet the day before. I handed him my two dollar bills and told him that this was all I had. He let me go, telling me I owed him $2 next time.

Hi, I'm HD.

Hi, I'm HD. I am a 36 year old married woman with a PCOS, or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, a health problem where the woman’s hormone (endocrine) system is out of balance. I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was 16 years old after many visits to many different doctors. My symptoms were facial hair due to high levels of male hormones (the boys were jealous of my mustache, so teased me much and often), and irregular, painful periods. Most doctors told me just to shave and that there was nothing wrong with me. Finally, an endocrinologist did a pelvic ultrasound and found lots of cysts in my ovaries. He put me on birth control pills which helped with my periods. I also had electrolysis for my mustache.

As I got older, my symptoms grew to include hair loss, acne, skin tags, high cholesterol, and weight gain. I eventually found an Endocrinologist who was very helpful, listening to my issues; she eventually took me off of the birth control pills and put me on several other drugs usually used for diabetes. She also diagnosed me with Hashimoto's disease, an autoimmune thyroid disease in which the immune system attacks and destroys the thyroid gland. Once I started taking the new drugs, my hair stopped falling out, the acne is almost completely gone, I lost the extra weight, and my cholesterol is back where it should be. When I turned 33, my husband and I decided to stop using any kind of birth control. Infertility is defined in specific terms as the failure to conceive after a year of regular intercourse without contraception, so I guess infertility is now another of my PCOS symptoms. At 36 years old, we are at the now-or-never point in my life as it pertains to infertility. We’ve waited as long as we have because of some outstanding debt that we have tamed but not yet killed. This is the story of our struggle to have a child without incurring any more debt.