A week had passed and we arrived at the day of the appointment.
I was going there with much more gravity than when I was in Marseille about ten years ago.
Heading to the polyclinic, where I prefered to go alone.
I walk into her office, she is a woman and I am reassured.
I have a feeling that I already know what she's going to tell me and the fact that she's a woman reassures me.
I thought naively that if she had to tell me terrible news, she would do so with more care and empathy than the gynaecologist from Marseille.
I gave her my medical file, which had been expanded, taking care to classify the documents in order of importance.
I explained to her the minimum and I would not even speak about my past.
I was there because we had been trying for a year to have a baby and my GP had referred me to her.
It took her about ten minutes to get to know it, and then, without ever looking at me, she handed me the file. She did not finish consulting it.
This is a bad sign, why doesn't she bother to look at everything? Why won't she look at me? I have a heart that beats like a whirlwind. I can already feel the tears and the panic is mounting.
"You are menopausal and fully menopausal! (Silence, long silence without a look)
Unless you have a miracle, you'll never have a child.”
— “But I'm an atheist, so miracles... there's no medical solution?!?
I'm thirty-one years old!!!”
— “I can do nothing for you, as I have told you. Unless there is a miracle, which I do not believe in, there is nothing you can do."
I was able to pronounce audibly only these few words, before bursting into a crisis of tears, feeling sensations that I would not wish on my worst enemy.
She didn't even offer me a Kleenex, no words of comfort, not a bit of empathy. But worse, and I didn't understand it until later, if she wasn't mistaken about the diagnosis, she made a huge mistake, voluntary or not, by not informing me of the solutions--of THE MEDICAL SOLUTIONS--that were available to me.
It was impossible for me to take it upon myself. I had to cross the long corridors, which never ended, in a huge crisis of uncontrollable tears, hurrying to reach my vehicle where I would feel less exposed.
I couldn't call my husband, it was impossible. He wouldn't understand what I was saying, and I was going to worry him too much by phone, so I decided to wait until the evening.
"I tried to put my foot on the gas pedal when the bottom of my heart sank and my whole body began to tremble..." I couldn't drive.
I decided to call my cousin. I had to talk about it, it was too hard, too violent.
She had always been and still is very present for me. Always with good advice, she would know how to calm me down; she always has solutions, she would know!
She picked up the phone and even though she knew me as if she had made me, it took her a few minutes to understand what I was saying.
I don't remember very much in detail (even though I have an elephant memory) of what she said to me, and in retrospect, I think I was in a very poor condition.
I only remember the end when our communication lasted a good, 3/4 of an hour.
"Even if the doctor is right about the diagnosis, we will find a solution. Wherever she is, whoever she is, we'll find her," said Marjorie, my cousin.
I regained my spirits enough to be able to drive on the road and return home. I was afraid to go home, to find myself alone in four walls, my husband being at work and not coming home until late in the evening.
I then spent a week in bed, without eating almost anything, washing myself just enough,and constantly crying. Only when I was sleeping did I manage to stop crying without any words or gestures, and find relief.
It took me a week before I was able to face my PC. I had "forbidden" my husband to do any research on the subject.
A week later, I was a little better, in front of the computer screen, and I had in mind the thoughts of my family and friends.
"But go to another doctor...
On the internet, you can see everything and anything, you have to go to a doctor...
— Are they all crazy or am I crazy?"
Go see a another doctor?
A doctor. You didn't have to talk to me about a doctor anymore. I was so mad at them:
the Marseille gynaecologist who had all the elements in hand to diagnose ten years earlier, ten years lost, irretrievable. I didn't find out until later, but she didn't need more than two constants of my BS (blood work) to make the diagnosis. Two levels taken at two-month intervals, two levels she had in front of her eyes...
the Bastiaise gynaecologist, who came out of another era, who with this same assessment in front of a patient over thirty years old, advised to wait...
What advice!
I had lost my absolute confidence in medicine.
Don't look on the internet?!?
So I had a well-established opinion, which I still have, by the way, on the issue. On the Internet, you can find everything and it doesn't matter. You just need to have the capacity, the knowledge, and the culture to sort and use the mines of information within your reach.
So I had a diamond mine in front of me and had to pretend it was a mirage...
Come on, I had to put aside all those negative thoughts that were overwhelming me, the anguish and sadness that paralyzed me. I'd have time to lament my fate if the endocrinologist was right.
I finally managed to type, with my shaking hands, these two words:"early menopause."
I immediately understood that I was suffering from IOP (Insufficient Premature Ovarian Disease), and since that day, I have never uttered the word ‘menopause’ again. I don't know why IOP was less difficult to say. Maybe because I could say it without crying.
Like 0.1% of the population under thirty years of age, I was deprived of my period before I could even give birth.
I discovered that there were several possible (causes) etiologies:
iatrogenic (caused by, literally, caused by the doctor) due to chemotherapy administered in childhood or young adults.
In this case, before the introduction of chemotherapy, which has a high chance of destroying the ovarian reserve, vitrification of the oocytes is proposed.
I will explain later, how magical it is and the notion of ovarian reserve.
It is also proposed, when the risk of transmission of maternal-foetal disease is certain or highly probable;
viral;
genetic;
autoimmune.
Six years later, I will discover that my etiology was autoimmune, in connection with the disease I have.
In 80% of cases, the etiology is idiopathic (no known cause).
I knew a little bit more about my situation, but then I had to take my courage in two hands and type,"IOP / have a baby."
I'd need half an hour at most to find the solution, to regain hope. More precisely, I was going to have to go through the miracles told by some couples, and then finally discover a medical solution.
Half and hour was the time I needed to understand and suddenly start screaming under my man's astonished gaze,"There it is! I found it, I knew it! There is a solution, a chance for us to have a baby.”
This chance--this hope--was called IVF DO (Fertilization In Vitro Donation of Ovocytes).
I had found the solution, I was smiling again, and I was convinced that we would succeed.
I did not look at anything more, nor statistics, nor where we could be cared for. I wasn't ready for any more. I needed to grasp that this magic solution, however magical it may be, in a snap of my finger, could help me carry a child that would resemble me, that would receive my genes as an inheritance, that would have my dimples (dominant gene)...
I didn't wait very long, and there I was, two days later. I went to Marseille because it was clear that I had no options in Corsica. This time, I took the utmost care in choosing the doctor.
Our choice was based on the Saint Joseph hospital and I made an appointment in PMA (Medically Assisted Procreation), as soon as possible with the department head.
I got a fairly quick appointment, a month later, at his private consulting office!
I promise, you won't wait a month to find out what happens next. 😃
So long, Steemiens.
One journey for a CHILD Part 1
Si cela t'a plu, clique sur la bannière et viens faire un tour à la maison !
