THE START TO ANSWERS

January of 2022 we called and made our first appointment with the fertility doctor. My gynecologist wanted Jv to get checked first, so his first test was in March. His results shocked the both of us. Everything came back extremely low. He was diagnosed with Oligozoospermia which is unexplained low sperm count, mobility and morphology. After researching the risk factors of this, nothing made sense! Jv is healthy, works out, doesn't drink, smoke, do drugs, isn't overweight, his dad didn’t have any issues, none of it made sense. Jv especially was devastated and he went to blaming himself. We were told to re-test in 3 months. So we waited, waited and waited. 3 months came back around and his results were the same, with the morphology being lower this time. While he was doing this, I began my testing. They took about 8 viles of blood and did some not so fun ultrasounds. They said my bloodwork came back fine, minus my thyroid. They wanted to up my dosage to see if that could bring my numbers down. My ultrasound came back relatively normal, except for the fact that my egg follicle count was low for my age. I should have about 12-15, I had about 8-9. They said my egg follicle count is what a woman in her late 30's to early 40's would have. Later in the summer I had a HSG test done. This is where they put dye in your fallopian tubes to see if there are any blockages. I was fine and showed no blockages, and I enjoyed that valium I took beforehand. After our tests, we met with our doctor. She said based on both of our results, our only options would be IVF or for JV to have surgery. Jv was referred to a urologist which of course, took another month or two to get in. (not to mention the thousands of dollars we have spent thus far with no real answers). Jv got in with the urologist in August and within about 2 minutes Jv had a new diagnosis: varicoceles. Finally an explanation after almost 2 years. The doctor explained that most men with this diagnosis have it just on one side, but Jv has it on both. He said that this can just happen at puberty. Varicoceles is where the veins that lead to his scrotum aren't pumping blood effectively, therefore not creating a good environment for sperm to be produced and formed in. The doctor suggested surgery to correct the veins and said without the surgery, we are looking at under 5% of getting pregnant naturally. He said the surgery can take us from under 5% to around 40%. After talking about it, we decided to go ahead with the surgery. On top of the fertility aspect, this issue causes Jv a lot of pain. He was happy to finally get an answer to a lot of his discomfort.