From the Department of the Interior

I finally had my meeting with Dr. Ovaries yesterday, with the goal of his shining some light on just what the hell is going on with my lady business (Am I in menopause? Can we still have kids? Etc. Ad nauseum).

As to the first question, he said that despite the crap lab results to the contrary, all other signs--five straight months of semi-regular cycling, heightened emotions and sore boobs prior to my monthlies--point to my not being in menopause.

Not yet, anyway. Between the beating my body has taken over the last year or so and my less than favorable labs, the doc is concerned that my pre-menopause window may be rapidly closing. To that end, he strongly recommended that if I/we had even the slightest interest in having more biological children, we get moving.

Because while some women have achieved spontaneous pregnancy after ovarian transposition, my transposition surgery was different from theirs, specifically my fallopian tubes were cut to achieve the necessary distance from the radiation field, which resulted in cutting off their blood supply, so no more fallopian tubes for me (which now kinda makes the impersonation of a fallopian tube that I would do in college kinda sad or something).

Remember when I said I didn't want to take extreme measures to have more kids? Yeah, me too. Funny how your perspective changes you aren't looking into a basket at the bottom of a guillotine.

Even as recently as my appointment yesterday, I was pooh-poohing IVF, since I didn't want to spend six figures simply to have another child. What conceit, right? Haven't we moved past the whole Selfish Gene thing?

Well, a whole 20 minutes of research turned up that not only is IVF not that expensive, but our insurance covers it up to $20K.

So here's the new plan: Jody and I are going to get the wheels in motion to put some embryo pops on ice as an insurance policy. If we want to have another kid, we [hopefully] have the option of doing so, even if I were to go into menopause the day after the cells go on ice since they can pump me full of enough hormones to fool it into thinking it's a fresh and fertile youngin'.

I have an appointment at the end of next month to talk with one of the endocrine docs at UW that specializes in helping women that have been through cancer treatments have kids.

And before that, I've got some sun to soak. T-minus five days. Hooray!