The Wait

Doctor's are so unfair to the normal population. I don't think that they truly connect and think about how they would feel in the same situations that many of their patients end up. Hubby and I went this morning to pick up the orders for his S.A. and figure out what to do from there. My doctor had originally sent us to a urologist for this but we had time constraints and we lived too far away to get the "specimen" to the lab in time. We talked to our family doc about this a couple of months ago and he just waved it off with orders to go to our local hospital and have the test done. No biggie right?

Well... men I suppose aren't as blase' about stripping down in a sterile environment, flushing their pride and dignity down the toilet and doing whatever is necessary, as we women are. We are frequently forced to don paper gowns and have some latex clad doctor probe every possible and uncomfortable spot he can find. This being said, hubby was less than enthusiastic about the procedure and put it off for a while. I know too that he was as nervous about the results as I had been about my hsg results so I didn't push.

My doc told me this week that the S.A. was all that we were waiting on for the next step and so hubby bared teeth and called the doc. We had planned to wait until his day off so this morning we slept in and we took longer getting up and getting ready. He called and of course it was much too easy for comfort. He was to come in right away and pick up the papers and head over to the hospital lab.

He asked me pleadingly to come with him and of course I did. We took the paper - which by the way thanks to our very funny doc gave a diagnosis of "Failure to father offspring" - into the outpatient sign in office and held it gingerly as we waited for the one other patient (thankfully) to be helped. Hubby was a bit nervous as he handed her the paper and the lady asked "Do you have your specimen?" Hubby said "Uh...we just came from the doc's office. He didn't say anything about that." The lady asked him "You do know what this involves right? You have to give us sperm." I almost slapped her. Hubby told her we knew what it was for and that we had been told that we would have to do that at the hospital because the test was time sensitive. The lady proceeded to tell us "Oh well yeah. They give you a cup here and you have to do it here but sometimes they don't tell people that they have to have produce a specimen for the test." Hubby and I gave each other a look of "Omg can you believe this chick?" and headed on down to the lab.

Once in the lab things were a bit awkward. They gave hubby a cup and he turned as red as I've ever seen him. He mumbled something about how embarrassing this was to have only girls in that lab room and the lady said "Look my husband and I had fertility probs too. It's no big deal I know what you're dealing with." I think it helped him a bit. They pointed him to the bathroom and stressed how important it was that he get it to them as fast as possible... like he would want to sit in the bathroom and talk to the swimmers before he turned em over or something. Anyhoo, I asked how long it would take to know something and she said she would put a rush on it and we should call in about an hour.

No one told me I could go with hubby or not but I did. It was rather funny to be honest but I guess I'll let you figure that out if you ever have to go help out a hubby with his "specimen."

We decided to go grab lunch and try to kill some time. We lingered as long as we could and then came home to wait. We're both scared right now. Anyone would be. These results determine whether our next step is a small sized insurance covered one or a gigantic, scary, non covered, expensive mess. We waited for our hour to pass and he called. They were at lunch. Who could go to lunch at a time like this!?!?!? We waited half an hour and called again. The receptionist answered and said "Oh let me call you back. I haven't even had time to check our fax machine yet." What?!?!?! Don't they understand how important this is? Hubby told her that it was very important that she call us back and so we wait....

We are silent and thoughtful. We have both tried coming up with different things to pass the time but I know we both have one thing on our mind. Our swimmers. I pray that those little guys do their thing and all is well. I feel like infertility should have a secondary definition in the dictionary...

Infertility - to spend most of one's assumed child productive life waiting in limbo for whatever the doctors and nature decide you should wait on next. See also cruel and unusual forced patience training...