Wednesday, October 01, 2003

I cancelled the myo

I posted yesterday about being depressed about my upcoming abdominal myomectomy. Thank you to all who replied. I went back and looked at Carla's book, and reflected on the other information I have obtained over the past year. I also thought about how the surgery was making me feel, right now at this point in my life.

I wasn't going shopping for new fall clothes because I knew I wouldn't be able to wear them for some time. I couldn't sign up for a printmaking class I wanted to take because I was going to be recouperating. I couldn't audition for a modern dance company this month, even though I'm dancing the best I have in my life. There were so many other things too that the surgery was going to prevent my participating in.

Then I thought about the fact that a myomectomy won't definately improve my fertility and that with male factor infertility (MFI) we hadn't even tried any less invasive procedures first.

I talked with my partner last night and we agreed that I'm not ready for the surgery right now. The prospect of surgery, when I'm not feeling ill and don't expect to for some time, was akin to torturing myself. I would have cried for days prior to surgery, up until the time they put me under and then when I awoke I would cry again, for the discomfort, the impacts (albeit hopefully short-term) and for not knowing that the surgery fixed anything. I know myself and how I react to things, I'm not making this up.

I have decided to shift my plan back into the wait and see strategy that has worked fine for me to date. We'll continue to look into treatment options that will deal with the MFI; I'm figuring that if surgeons are so quick to operate on me for a fibroid that I should at least have the option of trying ART (assisted reproductive technologies) first.

Here is an interesting article that I found (after I decided):
http://www.obgyn.net/displayarticle.asp?page=/infertility/articles/myomectomy_infert

There is also this study, but it is $19 for 1 days access:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=10402378&dopt=Abstract

Wish me luck. I may decide to go ahead with the myomectomy but for right now I'm not in the right place to move forward with that option.

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