I am absolutely shattered this morning.
If you haven’t been reading this blog, myself and my other half have been trying for a family for the last couple of years - pretty much unsuccessfully - and were embarking on a series of tests to find out why. Late last week we got a bizarre call from GMTV (one of the national breakfast television shows) asking if we would like to take part in a week of programmes about fertility.
Yesterday we went to the Midland Fertility Services clinic, just north of Birmingham for a battery of tests on both of us - filmed in between for a spot on the TV on monday morning. It essentially meant that we jumped the normal waiting lists and found out exactly why we have been having problems straight away.
Following a two hour drive, we arrived pretty much on time and met the production crew. It turned out the camera and sound man were the same ones who do shows like “DIY SOS” from time to time, and we recognised the voice of the guy doing the interview bits.
Let me take this chance to dispel any ideas anybody may have about making a television programme. You have to do everything over and over again - we walked in the building four times. We walked through the door three times. We said hello to the doctor four times. We walked down the corridor about seven times in the end… it went on and on like that. We finally finished at about 6pm, and are reliably informed that our entire day’s filming would probably be reduced to about 4 minutes…
From the medical point of view, we ended the day feeling like we had dodged a bullet - if we had continued on with normal treatment through the National Health Service, and normal hospital specialists, my wife would have been put on numerous fertility drugs. What we actually found out was that she was fine, and I was the one with the problem.
Strangely, I don’t feel too bad about having a problem myself - although it was a bit of a shock to begin with, my thoughts immediately turned to what could have happened if we had not had these specialist tests; my wife would have spent a year on drugs she didn’t need to be on.
I guess when we go on live TV next week that will be the main message we’ll want to get across - there are probably hundreds of couples in the same situation as us where the normal hospital consultants don’t have a clue what’s really wrong because the normal tests don’t give a true picture of what’s going on.
For all those who are wondering what we did find out, it turns out that although my sperm tests looked fine, apparently of the sperm a normal guy produces, 85% is junk, and 5% of the remaining stuff are the ones that are able to fertilise an egg - they have a special group of enzymes in their head that allows them to tunnel into the egg - kind of like a warhead. It turns out that different people have different percentages of these (it’s random - like eye colour), and I am at the low end - meaning the chances of us turning out children easily is much lower.
If we do choose to do it, a form of IVF will be the magic bullet for us, with a huge chance of success because there is essentially nothing drastic wrong - it’s just a question of if and when we want to do it, and getting the money together.