Something I didn’t post about when it happened was having some extra medical tests done recently. It wasn’t anything urgent or needed, but I like to try to get as much done at one time as possible. And I knew that I would have blood work done after my annual appointment. So I figured that would be the perfect time to ask about doing a few other medical tests that I had been curious about.
Even though I don’t want to have kids right now, I’m aware of the biological limits of my body. And I don’t know if people are more open about infertility or there is more infertility out there now (I honestly feel that it is a mix of both), but I have dozens of friends who are struggling to get pregnant. Some of them are due to age, but some are because they didn’t know that they were in pre-menopause early or they had another fertility issue going on. And many of those friends have been telling everyone they know to try to test your fertility just to see if there is an issue you can be aware of before you spend money on fertility treatments that might not work.
For me, fertility treatments might not be an option because of my liver tumors. And even though being pregnant is a higher risk for me, my tumors are small enough that it wouldn’t be life-threatening. So if I get pregnant in the future, that is fine. But since fertility treatments aren’t necessarily an option for me, I know being aware of my fertility and what the realities are of my body is a good thing. So when I was at my annual appointment, I asked about some of the tests that my friends said they wished they had done sooner. Some of them aren’t really a good option for me right now (I could be fine now and in a month things would be different so the results don’t matter), but there were 2 tests we could add to my blood work that would at least give me a baseline idea of where my fertility is right now.
Because I was doing some fertility testing with my blood work, I couldn’t just do my blood work that day like I normally do. You have to do the tests on the 3rd day of your period. Of course, my period was late and I had to wait even longer, but I finally was able to do the tests 2 weeks ago.
The blood draw lab was being remodeled so it was temporarily in a weird place in the hospital. And they had fewer stations than normal so things were getting backed up. And because I hate needles and I already have issues with nausea during my period, I was pretty miserable while I was waiting. The staff noticed how sick I was looking (nausea makes me break out in a sweat and I guess my coloring was super pale), so they started to worry about me. I tried to tell them that I was fine and sadly this was normal, but I don’t know if they believed me. They kept giving me weird looks as I was waiting.
Finally, it was my turn for blood and I was really worried about how it would go. I was feeling light-headed and weird and I didn’t know what was causing it. I have been doing much better with needles lately so I was trying to tell myself that it had nothing to do with the blood. But I still let the nurse doing the blood draw know about all my issues so I didn’t scare them if I passed out. And I mentioned that I was dealing with some hormonal pain and nausea so that wasn’t a shock if I mentioned it after the blood work.
I guess I didn’t think about how it would sound when I said I was dealing with nausea because they started to worry that I had the flu, measles, or some other disease. They started to ask me about what immunizations I’ve had and if I had been exposed to anyone sick recently. I kept saying that this is normal for me during my period and explained I had to do day 3 blood work. Finally, they relaxed a bit but I could tell they were still a bit suspicious about what was making me sick. And when the blood was done (I didn’t faint which made me happy), they asked me how I was feeling and I just said the same as before so they wouldn’t worry. The nausea was awful while I was there and I was terrified I could need to throw up during the blood draw. I’m so glad that didn’t end up happening.
It took a bit of time to get the blood work back (I was warned it isn’t as fast as the normal blood tests I had to do), but I did get my results back last week. And everything with me is in the normal range. There is one fertility test where I am on the lower end of normal, but that’s actually normal for my age. If I was trying to get pregnant now, I should be fine. And I know that this can change rapidly because of my age, but it still was good to know a baseline for now.
And the fact that things can change quickly for me is something my doctor brought up when she gave me the results. But she understood I was doing the tests more to see if anything was really abnormal and that it’s good that everything is in the normal range. I’m trying not to keep my age and fertility in my head too much because I can’t do anything to change my situation. And I’m not going to date or marry someone that I don’t feel right about just so I can have a biological kid. I have to just hope that I will meet someone and my tests will still all be in the normal range. But for now, I’m just glad that there isn’t anything I should be worried about.
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