Ist Ultrasound~~ It's a Dildocam!! Endometriosis Discovered..

My dear hubby and I had went to LPPKN two days after our last hormonal injection to get my first ever ultrasound scan. We had been going to a local GP to get my hormonal injections once in every two days as instructed by Dr. G. When we arrived at LPPKN, the waiting area was already full of couples as usual and we had to wait a while until my name was called in to see the doctor. He had some IUI procedures scheduled that morning so the waiting is a bit longer than usual.

When my name was called, a nurse asked me to empty my bladder before undergoing the scan. After that was done, she ushered me into a small examining room attached to Dr. G's office. There was an examination bed with stirrups and an ultrasound machine at the right foot of the bed behind a curtain. I was instructed to undress from the waist down and lie down on the examining table, with both my legs up in the stirrups. I am not used to being exposed so I felt a little bit uncomfortable and a lot shy. While I was lying down waiting for my doctor to come, the kind nurse talked to me and soothed my anxiety a little bit by telling me how all of this is necessary and how the whole procedure works.

Dr. G came in about 10 minutes later apologizing for running a bit late. He then sat at the foot of the bed and asked me about my injections and was I taking my medications on time as instructed and I confirmed. Then he proceeded to explain about the ultrasound he's about to carry out. It is actually a transvaginal ultrasound which is a type of pelvic ultrasound used to look at the reproductive organs. He will then place a probe which is covered with a condom and gel called a transducer (I am going to call it a dildocam from now on!) into the vagina and the picture of my insides will be seen on the TV monitor attached to the machine. In my case, he's using the probe to check on how many eggs I have produced after being injected with Menonys and measuring each egg's size to foresee the possibility of IUI. After making sure that I understand the procedure, he told me to take a deep breath and went on with it.

The placing of the dildocam was not as painful as the speculum used during my HSG scan (seriously, that one really hurt!!). There was a little bit of discomfort while the doctor was moving the probe left and right. He started on my right side which he said was clear. There were 4 eggs with ideal sizes and the rest were too small. Then he proceeded to my left ovary. He told me that he couldn't see clearly the eggs on the left side. It was as if they were squished behind some large unidentified growth which looked like some cystic growth to him. He probed in a little bit harder and was able to detect the presence of some eggs and got the measurement of those. Then he went back to the unidentified growth and did some more probing. Finally he confirmed to me that it was endometriosis and most probably a chocolate cyst and it was quite a large one too. He took the measurement and announced that the size of my endometriosis was 8cm long.

I was panicking thinking that it might be cancerous but he told me that it was not. Dr. G finished his ultrasound and told me to get dressed and get my husband. My husband came in and Dr. G explained about how he discovered that I had a large endometriosis growing on the left side my uterus. He told us that the scheduled IUI for us was to be aborted because the endometriosis must be removed since it was large. He told us that any endometriosis larger than 5cm must be surgically removed. It the size were smaller than that, usually the cyst will shrink because a growing baby inside the womb will take up space and push the cyst and finally flatten it. Well, in my case, it would not happen. He told us to call and set up an appointment on the first day of my next period cycle because he needed to rescan my cyst to reconfirm his diagnosis.

Dr. G told us not to worry and asked us to start thinking about which hospital we would like to get my operation done since LPPKN does not have the facility to do operations. Since it is a big operation, he advised us to choose carefully and whether we a going to go with Government hospitals (free for Government staffs but need to wait a long time to be scheduled for operation) or private ones (lots of cash needed but can get operated immediately).

I felt quite heartbroken about the abandoned IUI procedure and quite scared and shocked about the cyst. An operation! Oh my, I have to go for an operation to get the cyst removed! At this stage, I didn't have any inkling on what to think and how to react. All I could do was lean on my dear husband for emotional support and words of encouragement. It seems that our path in trying to conceive had stumbled upon a thick wall and becoming more difficult. All we could do was pray to Allah SWT and try our hardest.

Will explain about endometriosis more on my next post. In the mean time, please pray for us.. ( T T )