Thursday 12th - Gyno

Next up was the gyno, Dr Anusch Yazdani, who we were booked to see at 9.15am, and were probably in there by about 9.30. We had a very long and involved talk with him about options after chemo. He seemed to think that it was very likely that I would have chemo, but I'm still remaining hopeful that I won't!

The long and the short of it is that they're going to start me on on a cycle for IVF, so that we can harvest some eggs within the 6 weeks between the operation and the beginning of chemo (the 6 weeks is the normal period before chemo starts). What we will do with those eggs will be decided after the surgery and closer to the time of harvesting. At the moment the most likely scenario is to arrange a romantic date with some of L's little 'guys' and freeze them together for future use. They recommend waiting at least a year after chemo before trying for babies. I'll still probably have a 20% chance of being able to conceive naturally, but it's hard to know at this stage what will happen.

The downside is that it'll cost about $8,000 (AUS) up front, but some of that will be deductible through medicare (probably about $5,000). We look at it like this: Children are pretty expensive as it is - we'll just be starting the cost factor a bit earlier.

The whole thing is pretty amazing, and until 6 months ago it wasn't even available at the RBWH, and apparently it's the only hospital in Queensland, and one of few in Australia, where it can be done on the public system. It does mean that our children will probably have to be born in Australia - I hope you don't hold that against them :-)

We had a bit of a laugh when with the gyno - he did ask some rather 'personal' questions! He'd asked first if we were ok talking to him in front of each other. We'd said yeah, no worries, but hadn't really thought through EXACTLY the kinds of questions he'd ask. Let's just say there are no secrets now!