It’s interesting to visit both a public ob-gyn and then go visit a private one and then draw your conclusions about the health system from there.
I saw a new, private Gyn on Monday.
Honestly, it’s been a while since I walked out of an appointment that was for me, feeling like I had a plan and that I’d been listened to.
To recap, my last appointment in the public system was a bit of a shambles. My periods are very irregular, insanely heavy and very painful, I’ve been trying to get someone to take my claims of suspected endometriosis seriously, and fighting the system every step of the way.
So I went private, just to see if paying for the appointment would help with the whole listening thing.
And oooooh boy did it.
I told him my tales of woe, we talked about EDS a bit – but he knew enough about it that it was a conversation about my specific issues, rather than an educational speech on my part and then we got to the question and answers.
Both my children were conceived within a month of coming off the pill. I’ve never managed a pregnancy on my own – even my brief foray into possible blighted ovum territory had had some help from the pill. I have acne and body hair, lots of cramping etc etc etc.
He thinks it’s very likely that I have Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. We’ll be doing some investigations to see if there is underlying Endometriosis as well, which is likely and he also thinks there is a good chance I have something called Adenomyosis, which is practically undiagnosable at 21, because our medical imaging systems aren’t sensitive enough to detect it in early stages.
Which hey! I’ve always done health problems with style.
Yes?
Heh.
He was lovely. I’ve spent so long battling the system to be taken seriously (7 years for an Ehlers Danlos diagnosis anyone?) that I had really forgotten that when doctors are good, they’re very very good.
So, my uterus. It doesn’t work so well.
I haven’t really talked about it here because SOMEONE is completely against the idea, but Nathan and I had been trying quietly to get pregnant. We had been trying since Isaac was about 5 months old and for anyone not counting, he’s 21.5 months old now.
Almost 17 months.
And nothing.
However, when I told the public system that I’d been having trouble conceiving, they raised their eyebrows at me, looked at my age and the fact that I have 2 children and told me that there was no way, no how that I had fertility issues.
When um, yeah, it’s sort of looking like I probably have some fertility issues.
We’ve since stopped actively trying to get pregnant, Amy’s ASD issues and Isaac’s regression meant that we didn’t really have time to add another baby to the mix. But not actively trying and taking steps to avoid pregnancy are two different things. I still can’t take birth control and a latex allergy puts paid to condoms, so we’ve just been plodding along, waiting to see what happens.
Which incidentally, appears to be nothing.
It’s not surprising really, is it?
So. Bloods have been taken to check for PCOS and I’ll have an ultrasound at my next appointment to check my ovaries (which at last ultrasound, sometime before I conceived Isaac, my ovaries were irregularly shaped and the sonographer asked if I’d been doing IVF, because they were much larger than they should have been) and various other things.
Likely a laproscopy will be scheduled for sometime too, to have a look inside my uterus and see how it looks (I’m putting bets on black, gloomy and with little to no chance of sunshine) and then we’ll move on from there.
And in the meantime, I’ll just try not to panic about how much this is all costing me.
The private doctors might be good, but sheesh, they’re expensive too!
