Paperwork

My medical records arrived last night from my old RE, Dr. M., so I copied them this morning, and wrote out a nice summary for the new RE, Dr. S. (oooh, see, how brave of me, I'm "outing" them with initials! But it was going to be too hard to keep track of if I just kept saying "the RE"). Then I went straight to the Post Office the minute that lunch time rolled around, and Priority Mailed it off. It should get there by Friday, I'm thinking, giving him plenty of time to review the records before we speak on Tuesday.

The records were very dull and boring. All very professional stuff. No snide comments about patient's fat thighs or farting under anasthetic or anything. Though I did see a comment about them recommending patient see a dermatologist about nevi on legs. OK, so I have freckly skin! Sheesh. And actually I did go to a dermatologist on their recommendation, who said I don't have skin cancer...yet. Anyway, I digress. The only thing I saw in all the blood tests that was a little off was that my TSH (thyroid hormone) was 2.2 whateverunits. It listed "normal" as being 0.5 to 5.5, but it seems that more recent research implies that normal really should be 0.5 to 2.0. So I'd be a teeny bit higher than that. I'd never been told the numbers of lots of the tests before, just that they were normal, so it was interesting to see the actual values. I shall ask Dr. S. if it is worth retaking that test. I mean, if they're going to send me for a bunch of blood tests anyway to prove that I don't have HIV and all that jazz, why not add on an extra TSH? I also couldn't see a test for the MTHFR gene mutation, which all my other IVF buddies seem to know about, so I'll ask him about that too.

In other news, I bought some ovulation predictor tests yesterday. Man, it took me back to when this was all new and exciting and when I actually used things like that. But Dr. S. is big into co.culture so if he recommends that for me (which I'm sure he will) at some point I will have to go to Big New Clinic on a day trip to have an endometrial biopsy done. Which has to be done on a natural cycle, and at a certain point past the LH surge. So, in the possibility that I could get that done this cycle (yikes!) I decided I may as well try to use the old pee sticks. In the hope that I'm not as crap as before at actually detecting the LH surge with the darn things. The good news is that I can hopefully tie it up retrospectively with a temperature rise, so I don't need to be hanging on the result quite so much as if I were timing an IUI from it.