Feeling Better Leads to Long Overdue Updates...

So I was corresponding to a couple of women who were going through the same thing as I did about a year ago and realized I got to feeling better and got busy with work and life and never updated my blog.  So it goes!

I am now 1 year post-op and feeling great.  Any residual minor side-effects of the surgery are now just my "norm".  The only things to mention are a little difficulty emptying my bladder without effort and some mild lymph swelling in my pelvis/inner thigh very rarely with only very mild nerve pain or "twinges" at times.  It is hard to do the same intensity of workout that I was doing a year ago but low intensity exercise like walking/hiking/cycling are no problem whatsoever.

Let me go back and fill in the missing time:

My next follow-up and first pap smear was on December 6th, the day before my 35th birthday.  My doctor surprised me and gave me the green light to go ahead with fertility treatment again if the pap was clean because everything looked perfect on my exam.  GREAT Birthday present!!!  I thought he wanted to wait until at least 2 paps came back clean which would have meant another 3 months wait... A few days later I got the results and the pap was completely normal - no abnormal cells.

So we went ahead and started the process with the fertility clinic once again.  Long story short...  I made it through one cycle of IVF and they were able to get LOTS of mature eggs and we got a total of 6 high quality blastocysts.  My fresh transfer didn't work but my doctor thought it was because I responded so strongly to all the medications and hyperstimulated so my uterine lining was twice as thick as what is ideal...  So now we have 5 "snow babies" and five more tries.  I'm hopeful since he thinks the frozen transfers may be more successful for me.

As far as my nerve pain and difficulty sitting, by 3 months I had some days that were pain free and by the 4th and 5th month I had days or weeks at a time without much pain.  I would say month 6 was when I really started to feel normal (or very close to it).

I have had two more pap smears in March & June and both were CLEAR!!  They will continue doing a pap smear every 3 months for 2 years.

I may have more news soon but I wanted to update on my recovery time-line in case anyone was curious...

Life is good.
Cheers!