Evil-FSH-Pee-Sticks Part II

Following up to my post on Evil Pee Sticks for FSH this week, my blogroll popped up this post today from the High FSH Info Blog. I discovered this blog when I was trying to find the IVF clinic in Massachusetts of Dr. Car.done. Em, my acupuncturist, told me a story of a client of hers. She was young, late 20s/early 30s, but had high FSH. She did try cycling at BigShotFertilityClinic, but she ovulated while stimming and had to be twice cancelled. She finally decided to work with Dr. Car.done's clinic because another friend of hers got pregnant there.

There are two camps of REs. The first camp believes that once you have one high FSH, you are doomed for the rest of your life to have poor egg quality. All the REs I have been to are in this camp, including BigShotFertilityClinic. Those of you who commented that I can get this test done with my RE or Gyno, of course I know that after having gone through two IVFs and many other fertility procedures, but I don't want to be branded for the rest of my fertile life by a high FSH. That is the reason I would buy the evil-FSH-pee-sticks.

The second camp of REs, like Dr. Car.done, will do IVF on patients with high FSH, but only in cycles in which the FSH has dropped to an acceptable number. They believe that you can get pregnant in a cycle when your FSH is low. The client I described above had her FSH tested monthly. Once her FSH was low, she started her stim drugs for that cycle, no suppression ahead of time. She did end up getting pregnant.

The first FSH test I had done was very high, almost 18. Since I had it done at a lab that was not at a fertility clinic, I did have to repeat it at my clinic at the time. After getting the first donor egg speech by RE#1, I was devastated. I scoured the internet for information and found a reference to Randine_Lewis' book "The Infertility Cure". After reading in her book that "eggs do not have an expiration date", I had hope! I started acupuncture and Chinese herbs immediately. After a couple of weeks, I had my FSH tested and it was 6. However, my estrogen was high, over 100, so I was not out of the woods with a poor egg quality/DOR diagnosis. My theory is that the fibroids were causing my estrogen to be high. I went on to have them removed and passed a Clomid.challenge test with flying colors at age 40, which I did acupuncture and Chinese herbs through. My RE#3 didn't know what to think of that first FSH, but he was kind enough to brush it off as a lab error.

For those of you with high FSH, you may also be interested in checking out the High FSH Info website. You can find a list of Reproductive Endocrinologists there who work with high FSH patients.