Take that you stupid eggs!

So I've taken up golf lessons. A good way (and bad way) to blow off some steam. Here's me, looking down at my golf balls, pretending they are my stupid eggs. Take that you stupid egg! I'm actually getting quit good. Still a novice, but I can hit a mean ball. That is what I am hoping this blog will help me do. Blow off some of my anger.
I heard somewhere that 70% of adult conversation is centered around kids. When you don't have any children of your own, it feels more like 95% and when you live in Utah, it's 100%. I work at a dental office as a dental hygienist. And unfortunetly since dental tools are in my patient's mouths, I am limited to small talk. Small talk is ofcourse centered around kids, jobs, and the weather. I had a soon to be grandmother in my chair the other day. She was going on about how her pregnant daughter was, and how horrible it has been for her living back east with the hot weather and how she has to stay indoors because of the humidity. I hardly felt any sympathy for her daughter, but faked it ofcourse, because if I said what I was really thinking, I would probably loose my job. I feel like people look at me, assume my age, and automatically think I have children and think I can relate on a certain level with their poor daughter, themselves as moms, or sister, or whomever. I feel like a lot of my conversations at work go somthing like this: "Oh, blah blah blah...my children...Sorry I'm late. My children....blah blah...Do you have any kids?" "No. Not yet." "Oh, well I love being a mother. It's the best thing! So.....(akwardly trying to change the conversation) what does your husband do?" "Well, because of the economy and with construction managment jobs not available, he's decided to go back to school to get his MBA. He's got about another year left." (Basically, using going to school as an excuss for being unemployed. And with todays economy, it's not like having an MBA will qualify him to have a job right after he graduates either. ) Anyway, not to be depressing, but that is what our life is like right now. I try to avoid talking about us not having kids or my husband's unemployment, because I really don't feel like talking about it. Usually at work, I am best at sticking to topics like the weather and teeth.
As far as a diagnosis, the doctors consider us at this point as "Unexplained Infertility." Basically they don't know why. And let me just say something right here. It's not my husband who has the problem. When we handed our fertility doctor his sperm anaylisis. The doctor's eye's widened, and he was impressed with his results. YES, my husband is a MAN! He also passed his hampster egg penitration test with flying colors. 100% When it comes to me...all my hormone levels are normal, normal thyroid, normal healthy sonohystogram, no clotting disorders were discovered. One thing the doctor did notice was my follicle count for someone my age was low. Let me explain here. Each month a woman has so many follicles. And out of those follicles, one egg will develop, and be released. With fertility meds, the follicles are stimulated to produce more eggs. Clomid or Femara will give about two or three eggs. And injectable hormones, like they use with IVF, will give you, depending on your age, many eggs. From what I understand. Someone my age should have about 18-20 follicles to hopefully produce 18-20 eggs. I only have 8-12 follicles. Out of the 12 eggs that were extracted with our IVF cycle, only 8 were healthy enough. 8 were fertilized thanks to my husband, but only two were left to transfer. The other embryos didn't survive. So the doctors believe that it is a genetic problem. Especially since our other embryos didn't survive. And the embryos we did use, well basically didn't develop properly. Genetic testing is not covered by our self-pay insurance and would cost us some where around $4000.00 which we don't have.
I also inquiered with my doctor about checking for endometriosis before we did IVF. I feel like screaming because this is what I think I have, but the doctors have been so conservative. I don't have the obvious symptoms of extreme pain with endometriosis. But my mother has it, and just recently my sister found out she has it. I have two aunts on both sides of my family who have it and couldn't have kids because of it. The reason why the doctors are wanting to be so conservative is because the surgery for it can damage my eggs/follicles. Possibly leaving me with no eggs. They say the only way to determine if you have endometriosis is by going in surgically with laproscopy. Once they are in there and discover if it is present, they cauderize it, (burn it off) Most of the time, endometriosis is found around the overy. Burning it off my overies is what can damage my eggs.
My plan at this point, it to obviosly wait and give it some time. Then when we are ready. Finacially ready. Have the genetic screening done, and consult my doctor, once again to see if they can still do the laproscopy and just not touch my overies. Down the road we could do IVF again. If there is an issue with the genetics, the next step is IVF/PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) Basically too expensive at this point.