15th June 2010 , Posted by Yi Lin
Testing Testing 1, 2, 3, …6
Conception can be a tricky affair and for some couples, getting the woman pregnant doesn’t always come at the flick of a (bedroom lamp) switch. For dutiful candidates who have been clocking a year’s worth of sweat and tears (the happy orgasmic kind, hopefully) and still haven’t produced any buns in the oven, it’s probably a really good idea to get some fertility tests done.
For guys, such intimate examinations – as my husband can attest (no pun intended) – can be rather nerve-wrecking. Nevertheless, the men have it relatively easy. One test, one set of results. DONE.
A woman’s plumbing, on the other hand, is terribly complicated. There’s plenty that can go awry with all those tubes, pipes and squishy things inside us – it almost makes the Battlestar Galactica ride at Universal Studios look like a kiddy slide in comparison. Seriously – we’re just short of topping our interior decor with bells and whistles.
Just look at the chapters in your ‘O’ level biology textbook on the male and female reproductive systems. There is three times as much information about the female reproductive wiring than the male’s. The charts and diagrams explaining the carefully-timed release of progesterone, oestrogen, luteinising hormone (LH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), studying-is-killing-my-brain-cells hormone were absolutely mind-boggling. If I had been able to decipher all those squiggly lines charting a woman’s hormone levels then, I would have been able to trade in Forex at the age of fifteen.
It’s no wonder then that KKH provides nice nurses who take the time to sit down with you and schedule in your fertility rites. Yes, schedule – just like how you pen in meetings in your diary. Organising your hormones is akin to trying to get all the important bosses within your company to meet on the same day – it’s impossible. One hormone will insist on making an appearance on Day 2 of your menstrual cycle. Another hormone is only available to meet on Day 10. And of course, you can’t tell when the Day 2 VIP and the Day 10 VIP are actually coming until they ride in on the Red Carpet aka your period.
Once all the meetings have been penned in, what’s left to be done is to run the actual tests over the span of a few weeks:
1. Blood sample to test for progesterone;
2. Blood sample to test for TSH;
3. Blood sample to test for FSH and LH;
4. Blood sample to test for immunity against rubella;
5. Hysterosalpingogram (we’ll explain this wonderful 7-syllable tongue-twister later); and
6. Ultrasound pelvic examination (to spy on and try to figure out everything else that is happening inside and around the womb)
Yups, that’s a whopping six things to test for. It kinda reminds me of the six stations of the NAPFA fitness test we all had to go through in school. Thankfully, some of the blood samples could be drawn on the same day, thus saving me from having to make too many trips to KKH (which has a food stall selling really good teh-C and kaya toast, but that’s still not attractive enough a reason to keep going back there.)
Getting the blood tests done wasn’t a biggie. I just wished that I had Edward Cullen/Robert Pattinson (*sigh*) passionately drawing blood from my jugular with his mouth instead of a well-muscled female nurse industrially stabbing needles into my arm (*sigh*)
Even the ultrasound pelvic exam was a run-of-the-mill routine by now, given the annual Pap Smears that I had been clocking over the past few years: nurse props pillow under bum (mine, not hers); nurse warns that cold gel is about to land on my belly; nurse issues the command to RELAX; nurse expertly and ambidextrously maneuvers the camera-on-a-dildo inside me with one hand while furiously clicking on the computer mouse with the other. I twiddle my thumbs, stare at the ceiling and try to RELAX. Laa-dee-daa.
The results of the tests proved that hormones were in order (well done, gals!) as all the readings all fell within the normal range for a female of my age. This was really good to know, because trying to regulate out-of-whack hormones through the ingestion of meds can be pretty tricky. So I was glad to have crossed that hurdle rather easily.
The ultrasound results were good too: both ovaries and the uterus appeared to be in good shape (I don’t mean literally, although odd-shaped organs are probably not a good sign.) The only statement that I didn’t quite understand was a reference to “the Pouch of Douglas”. Who is Douglas and why is his pouch (money pouch? cosmetic pouch? kangaroo pouch?) inside me?! Just try explaining THAT to your husband!
So we’re left with the hys-ter-o-sal-pin-go-gram (there, can pronounce it now? It took me a few tries. Dannie still can’t say it.)
And that, is another story in itself…
(to be continued)
4 Comments
Celine Yeo
June 16th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
WOW 6 TESTS!! So aptly described in your adventure. What’s this ‘pouch of Douglas’? Haha, thought about sushi then…
Deanna
June 17th, 2010 at 7:00 am
One of my friends went for hysterosalpingogram. May have side effects and risks involved. How did yours go?
Tina
June 17th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
‘fess up Yilin! Who is Douglas???
Yi Lin
June 25th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Celine: I was seriously baffled why you would think of sushi and it’s only today that I get it…. aiyoh!
Tina: Douglas owns Sakae Sushi… haha..
Deanna: Hello, thanks for leaving a comment. Risks associated with a HSG are relatively low, such as allergy to the dye. Side effects are mild – mostly cramping. The nurses made me stay within their sight for 15min even though I was feeling good to go immediately after the test. Read my next post on the HSG experience!
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