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Friday, November 30, 2012

Another Date with the Dildo Cam

I had another check-in with ole' Dr. B yesterday.

Let's start with the good stuff, shall we?
  • According to his scale, I'm officially down 10 pounds! For once it was nice to see his scale match up with my scale at home. 
  • I had another date with the dildo-cam (that's not the good part,) and my ~3 cm cyst on my right ovary is almost gone. Now I just have several cysts on both ovaries that are 1 cm or less. Woohoo progress! 

Now the not as good as the "good stuff," stuff:
  • My insulin levels are down in the normal range (woot!) but are at the high end of normal (boo) which is why Dr. B increased my Metformin. He wants to get them in the normal end of normal...or something like that. 
  • My cholesterol is indeed higher than it needs to be, but nothing to be super worried about ("normal" for my age range is 189 (units) and I was at 192 (units.) As Keegan so nicely pointed out, it probably wasn't the best idea to get blood drawn the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I'm officially blaming my cholesterol spike on the turkey, rolls, mashed potatoes and pie I ate. All things I shouldn't eat, but in my defense, it was Thanksgiving. 
  • I am now on a low-carb, low-fat diet. I'll do a post specifically dedicated to this, but at a quick glance, it looks like I can eat salad.....and that's about it. I can't eat peanut butter anymore!
  •  We talked to Dr. B about actively starting and he's not 100% for it quite yet. He told me that my best chance of conceiving naturally is the three months after I go off birth control. Apparently it takes an average of 3 months for women's bodies to get used to this specific birth control (this is the reason I had a 6 week period last month.) Since I'm now halfway through my third pack, Dr. B thinks that my body is just now getting used to the birth control. He suggests that I continue the BC for at least another three months to really get my body used to having a regular cycle again and that after those three months, the next three will be our best chance of conceiving naturally. 
  • However, he said that if we didn't want to wait for another three months, we could start trying at the end of this pack of BC. He suggests that we use ovulation predictor kits (OPKs) to see if/when my body ovulates. I told him that I've been taking my basal body temperature (BBT) every day and he thinks that's going a bit overboard for this stage of the game. I'm going to continue doing it however, just so I have another way of telling if/when my body ovulates (or doesn't.) 
So that's pretty much it. In and out in about 30 minutes. I have another appointment with him in 3 months, as well as more blood work to see where my insulin and lipids (cholesterol) levels are. Keegan and I need to talk a bit more and decide when we feel comfortable actively trying with the new knowledge that my next three cycles off BC will be our best chances.

Oh! Anyone have any suggestions for OPKs? We took a quick look at Walmart and saw that 20 of the Walmart brand OPKs run about $20, and 20 of the Clear Blue brand run about $35. I'm considering buying in bulk off of Amazon, but I wanted some advice from ladies who have used OPKs in the past. Anyone suggest one over the other?

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