Getting the all clear – I think!

Yesterday I set off towards Edinburgh very early in the morning as I had an appointment at the Royal Infirmary at 9am. I was ushered into a small cubicle and asked to change into a hospital gown and then led into the x-ray department and into a small room. There was a large monitor with Milo/Evie displayed in the centre of the screen. I was introduced to the nurses and then the x-ray lady came through and explained the procedure in full detail.

I was then asked to lie on a very strange platform inside what looked like a human sized photocopier – it was all very surreal. Basically I was getting an Hystosalpingogram – HSG for short – to find out if my fallopian tubes were blocked. I’ve been waiting for this appointment since May, so glad that I managed to get a date that fitted in my cycle at long last.

A liquid dye was injected into my uterus and then x-rays were taken to see where the dye went. It was quite a painful procedure, quite like having period pain, so nothing I hadn’t felt before, it was just very odd as the pain came quite suddenly and I wasn’t allowed to move in order to get comfortable.

It was amazing to see the screen afterwards and the images that had been taken. It was so surreal to come face to face with images of my insides – there on the screen was my cervix and my pelvis etc. My left tube is completely normal and the dye gushed through it straight away – looked like all the classic text book images. My right tube on the other hand could’ve been blocked as the dye didn’t travel through it immediately and the x-ray lady was a bit concerned about that, but pushed in more dye [more pain for me] and eventually got it to flow through the right tube too. This tube looked a bit bent and twisted and pointing in completely the wrong direction – but I’m no expert and the x-ray lady said it all looked normal to her.

So now I just have to wait until my appointment next month to get a full breakdown from the consultant and maybe see if I can get a copy of the images too. Yet again I’ll hear the same old story – that what I have is “unexplained infertility” – this is the category I’m in at the moment – not a nice place to be, as although it’s great to find out there is nothing wrong with me and that my hormones and tubes are all normal, it’s very frustrating that I still haven’t got pregnant after trying for so long.

I have read lots of positive stories though, of women getting pregnant soon after having an HSG as it flushes the fallopian tubes, so I’m feeling really optimistic at the moment. I also read my horoscope in the paper on Sunday and it freaked me out  in a good way:

“You’re in the gestation phase of last week’s new moon, favouring long-term thinking and long-haul travel. Don’t let the daily churn get in the way of plotting where you want to be in nine months – the start of a crucial professional phase. Events this week may provide a clue.”

I picked up on ‘gestation’ and ‘nine months’ and that ‘events this week may provide a clue’…maybe I’m reading too much into it, especially as I don’t believe in horoscopes at all, but my brain picks up on these kind of things and ignores everything else  – the main reason I can’t watch TV anymore, listen to the radio or see pregnant friends etc – all I see is pregnant bellies, babies, mothers etc – it’s quite annoying to have baby-tinted vision.