Finding JK's Bugbear

No Dungeons & Dragons geeks.  I am NOT talking about the creature from the Monster Manual that I know nothing about, except for its fearsome level 3 attacks and Chaotic Evil alignment... oops.

No.  In this context, I mean something annoying and persistent that prevented JK and me from moving forward into fertility.

Dr. Sipe announced that she would be undergoing a saline ultrasound.  The uterus is filled with saline, and then a fairly standard transvaginal ultrasound follows.  However, the saline improves the "sight" of the ultrasound.  Sound travels best in water.  So it is here.  The saline ultrasound can see things that the normal transvaginal ultrasound cannot.

It begins with a big syringe - no needles thank goodness - and enough water to fill her up (down there).  After that, Dr. Sipe begins to fish around the wand and finds what he is looking for.  Two fibroids, both at least 12 millimeters.  They are big enough to cause a problem with any eggs wanting to implant.  They would have to go.

And so, we scheduled another surgery - JK's third.  And we still were scoreless in the kids department.  But this was a different surgery from the last two.  This one might help us keep a pregnancy, rather than end one that was no longer viable.

So off to the suburban hospital we went in the midst of a Chicago snowstorm.  As dreary a day as you could imagine.  That did nothing to improve my sense of dread, always present when JK was about to go under the knife.

I will say that a surgery that might help us seemed a refreshing change.  It wasn't all dread.  There was some anticipation.

The procedure hardly took any time.  A half hour maybe?  And then Dr. Sipe came and got me.  Pictures showed the two fibroids and a polyp.  There before, gone after.  One of the fibroids was dead and leaking toxins (like lactic acid, for instance) into the uterus.  It caused the blighted ovum that so abruptly ended our third pregnancy.

Without it, we had a much better chance.

And so it was that, despite JK's distress, I found myself feeling hopeful for tomorrow.  I knew that a big obstacle had been removed from our path.  It was hard to know if that was all we needed.

We perhaps needed one more thing: a good luck talisman.  Soon, we would find the perfect thing.