Taboo Or Not, Things Are About To Get Real...

First, let me apologize for the month long hiatus I’ve taken from posting.  It wasn’t really an intended break, but more a combination of life getting really busy and not quite being able to find the words to express this next part of the story.  The next part is probably the hardest to talk about, but as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, it’s the hardest parts of our stories that often have the most meaning and the biggest impact.  I’m going to attempt to tell our story to the best of my abilities and pray that God uses them to help someone else that may be going through something similar. 

Before we get to the tough stuff, I want to give everyone a quick update on Lauren and our precious little baby. 

 It’s a Boy!

Lauren is finally feeling much better and back to being more of herself again.  She still has some residual blurriness in her eye, but it is significantly better and to the point now that she doesn’t really notice it most of the time.  Praise God for this healing!  Lauren is still taking the blood thinner shots twice a day, but with no side effects and minimal bruising.  We are now at 23 weeks and little Graham has passed every test so far with flying colors.  We had the full anatomy scan a couple of weeks ago as well as an echo of Graham’s heart, both of which came back completely normal.  We appreciate your continued prayers for health for both Lauren and Graham!  Now for the main event.

When it comes to couples having a baby, there is one word above almost any other that for some reason is absolutely taboo to talk about, but that’s exactly what we’re going to do today.  Why?  Because it needs to be talked about…that and I kind of like to push boundaries. 

So what’s this incredibly awkward topic?  Infertility.  It’s not a four letter word, but it is often treated as such, if not worse.  You want to make someone uncomfortable at a dinner party?  Just comment that you and your spouse are struggling with infertility and you will have people running for the doors faster than if you started to do an interpretive dance to a Sarah McLachlan song.  But seriously, it is amazing how quickly people, regardless of how well they know you, will start to squirm and look for their exit when this conversation comes up.

I’m really not sure why infertility has become such of a taboo subject in our culture, but that’s probably not surprising to those of you who know me well because I really don’t shy away from talking about much.  I might not bring the topic up, but I’m rarely going to change it.  I’m also sure that the fact that I am a guy plays very heavily into my inability to understand.  As you’ll see through the next series of posts, I learned the hard way that issues of infertility attack and affect guys in an incredibly different way than they do you ladies.  I’m sure many of you are thinking to yourself, “Men and women are different!?!  Amazing conclusion Captain Obvious!” and you’re right, but you’ll just have to bear with me because I can be a little dense at times.

Approximately 1 out of every 8 couples of reproductive age will be diagnosed with infertility, so it is not at all uncommon, just rarely spoken about.  Infertility can take many forms and affects every couple differently.  About 40% of infertility cases can be attributed to male factors, 30% to female factors, and the remaining percentage to a combination of problems in both partners or other unexplained causes. The average couple, ages 29-33, only has  a 20-25% chance in any given month to conceive.  After 6 months, 60% of couples will have been able to successfully become pregnant without any form of medical assistance.  After one year of trying (or 6 months if the woman is over 35), a couple will officially be given the diagnosis of “infertility” and doctors, depending on their opinion on varying philosophies, will begin to start the process of running tests and/or prescribing medications. Source 

Notice that I always use the term “couple”.  I do so because infertility does not only affect one individual, but rather the couple as a whole.  Not only because it “Takes two to tango” if you catch my drift, but because that diagnosis formalizes a fear that has gradually been growing for several months and signals the beginning of an often long and torturous physical and emotional battle.  It will manifest itself differently, but it will affect you both, and if you let it, drive a wedge between you.  

After receiving the diagnosis, the coming days are a whirlwind of decisions and emotions, not to mention much doubt and fear.  Over the next few days and weeks, I’ll walk you through our journey, step-by-step, and let you have an inside view of what our struggle looked like.  As you read this, Lauren & I ask that you do two things.  First, say a little prayer for Lauren & I because telling our story makes us vulnerable and many of our wounds are still very fresh.  Secondly, please say a prayer for those couples that are battling infertility because it is so often a long, lonely journey that you probably will have no idea that they are on.  They likely won’t understand why things are working out the way that they are, so pray that God give them strength, peace, and patience.  Until next time…

In Him,

Chad

If you are wanting to know more about support for infertility, check out Focus On The Family, the Waiting in Hope ministry at our church, or you can watch a sermon covering the topic from Pastor Gregg Matte HERE. 

Draft Day...

If you read yesterday's post, we left off with Lauren having been diagnosed with a retinal artery occlusion.  Her ophthalmologist had determined that a microclot got stuck in a tiny artery causing her to have a mini-stroke in her left eye and resulting in some blurriness of vision. Though we now knew what had happened, we still didn't know why it had happened or if there was a chance for it to happen again.  Our next move was to assemble a team of doctors to get down to the nitty gritty and find a diagnosis.

In case you don't get the "Nitty Gritty" reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rdCQjfN2CE

The next few days I kind of felt like I was a General Manager for an NFL team and it was draft day. With the help of Dr. Hilgers (the OB), we had to go about finding a cardiologist, a neurologist, and a maternal fetal medicine specialist (I didn't even know that this specialty existed before this) to join our team and figure out what the source of Lauren's problems were.  This process turned into quite the ordeal.  Not only did we have to find doctors that would accept our insurance, but then we had to get each doctor to sign off and actually accept Lauren as a patient.  This meant that each doctor wanted to review Lauren's medical records before they would accept her as a patient.

At first we didn't think this would be a big deal because each doctor said that they would request the records, review them, and then get back to us, but as any of you that have dealt with this type of situation before might have guessed, records never were sent and therefore never reviewed. We ended up having to round up all of the records ourselves in order to get them to the appropriate places.  Once this was done, then the waiting game began.  This in itself was rather frustrating because we still didn't know if Lauren was at risk of throwing another clot.  We figured that the records review would just be a formality, but that turned out to not be the case.  For whatever reason, we actually had a couple doctors deny her as a patient which meant that we had to start the entire process over again.

It ended up taking almost a month to finally get Lauren in to see all of the different specialists.  Each specialist ran their own battery of tests to try to nail down the ultimate cause of all of Lauren's problems.  This post would never end if I went through explaining all of the test that Lauren had to undergo so I'll just fast forward to the diagnosis.

If you remember from yesterday's post, I told you that Dr. Chang, the ophthalmologist, actually diagnosed Lauren over the phone the day of the stroke.  Of course, at the time we had no way of knowing if it was an accurate diagnosis, but it ended up that he was right all along.  Lauren was diagnosed with a large grade PFO (Patent Ovale Foramen).  In short, a PFO is a small hole in the heart that didn't close the way it should after birth.  It's actually fairly common, about 20% of the population has them and just never know it.  PFOs very rarely cause any problems, but unfortunately for Lauren, a complication arises. The combination of a large grade PFO and the increased blood volume/hyper-coagulation from being pregnant ended up to be the perfect recipe for a much more eventful pregnancy than we would have hoped for.

The doctors believe that the microclot was produced as a byproduct of all of the changes going on in Lauren's body due to the pregnancy.  Instead of continuing through the venous system to the lungs where it could get filtered out, the clot then got very sneaky, sneaky and snuck through the PFO into Lauren's arterial system where it eventually made its way to her eye.  Because the PFO was considered to be large grade, the neurologist decided to change Lauren from the aspirin therapy to a drug called Lovenox.

The positive to changing over to Lovenox is that it does not cross the placenta so there is no risk of it affecting the baby in anyway.  But as seems to be par for this course, with every positive comes a couple negatives.  Lovenox can only be taken as an injection so Lauren now has to give herself a shot twice a day until 6 weeks after the baby is born.  Needless to say, she wasn't too thrilled about having to inject herself almost 400 times and I can't blame her.  The other negative is that Lovenox can really complicate the delivery process because it is a blood thinner.  Unless Lauren is able to get off the drug at least 24 hours before the delivery, she will not have the option of an epidural and any type of c-section could prove to be troublesome as well.  (I'm now trying to figure out a way to get the baby to call ahead and make a reservation so that Lauren can stop the Lovenox 24 hours in advance. Right now the leading idea in the clubhouse is to teach the baby Morse Code so that he/she can send us a series of kicks 24 hours before his/her planned appearance.  All suggestions are welcome...)

I need to wrap up this post because it's getting long and I want you all to keep coming back, but I would be remiss if I didn't point out one of the major ways that God has provided throughout this process.  We are absolutely positive that God has placed each of our doctors in our lives for a specific reason.  Both Lauren's OB and ophthalmologist ended up being very strong Christians that have not only have provided top notch care, but have committed to praying for us as well.  That commitment means more to us than anything that either of them could ever do medically.

You'll also remember the saga I described of trying to get doctors to accept Lauren as a patient.  All of the doctors that refused Lauren as a patient happened to be neurologists.  Looking back, I now know that this was God working to get us with the right doctor.  The neurologist that we finally ended up seeing actually is in the middle of doing research over PFOs and their long-term effects. Think about that for a second.  A neurologist, a doctor that focuses on the brain, is doing research on a defect in the heart.  More specifically, he is doing research on how clots passing through PFOs can cause strokes.  We could not have found a more perfect doctor for Lauren and his research has already affected changes in how Lauren is being treated.  He is absolutely a Godsend and we are so thankful that we were able to draft him to our team.  More tomorrow...

In Him,
Chad