And Then There Was Biaxin

Just a friendly heads up -- I'm going to mention both endometritis (infection of uterine lining) and endometriosis (uterine lining grows in the wrong places) in this post. I warn you because they're easy to misread if you don't look at the word closely enough. I do it all the time. Oops! So there you go. Now on to the good stuff...

We met with our NaPro doc earlier this week for another one of them follow-ups. We're at the point in our treatment where our doctor just tweaks a few things, then lets us go for several cycles to see if new tweaks have worked. If not (AKA if we don't get pregnant), we meet back with him in a few cycles to do more tweaking, then more waiting, until at some point we're either pregnant or we've adopted a newborn and don't even have time to think about fertility treatments anymore. Both sound nice to me!

At my appointment, Dr. G took a look at our charts and asked us if there was anything we were worried about. I mentioned that pesky infection (endometritis) we found a while back, before surgery. John and I both took a few rounds of antibiotics to treat the infection, but I never really felt it was gone. During my surgery, Dr. G found some micropolyps, which usually indicate endometritis, but when he scraped some off and sent the cells to the lab be tested, it came back negative for endometritis. So we just left it alone and didn't do another round of the antibiotics. Which of course left me thinking that we were ignoring quite a big issue. But Dr. G said not to worry about it, so I (mostly) didn't.

Now that it's been 6 months since surgery, and I've been on Clomid and HCG injections for several months, I felt it was appropriate to bring it up again. And when I did, Dr. G was very responsive. There's a test you can do to check for endometritis, which I've had done before, way early in our NaPro workup, but it involves you being fully awake while they scrape off some of the lining of your uterus with this evil tool, and we both agreed we'd rather avoid that. So, Dr. G recommended just assuming the infection's back and treating it with Biaxin.

Dr. Hilgers, founder of the Pope Paul VI institute and King of all things NaPro, tends to focus treatment on the things he can see. And endometritis is one of those annoying things that is, in many ways, invisible. As far as I can tell, it's not painful, it doesn't have many (or any) signs to indicate its existence, and no one really knows what effects it can have on infertility, as it hasn't really been studied properly. So compared to other diagnoses, like endometriosis or PCOS, it doesn't really stand out that much and therefore, often gets pushed aside, ignored. Though Dr. G did mention that Dr. Hilgers is just now starting to look into endometritis, its causes, its effects on infertility, and its best treatments. You hear that, friends with infection? There's hope!!

As of right now, one of the recommended NaPro treatments for endometritis is Biaxin, an antibiotic to be taken on CD8-14. Hopefully that little antibiotic will be just enough to clear up all the icky infected stuff and make room for a little, precious baby to implant. Very hopefully.

But if not, we'll be meeting with Dr. G again in three cycles to discuss the next tweak. Unless, of course, we are blessed with a baby through adoption in the meantime. Then the NaPro treatments will go on hold for quite some time, I'm sure. :)

During our appointment, I did also mention that I'm quite worried about the egg-sized fibroid sitting at the top of my uterus -- is it heavy enough to weigh things down and close off my tubes when I'm standing?? But Dr. G assured me that that was not happening and that removal was way more risky (5% chance of losing your whole uterus!) than keeping it there, especially since it's on the outside of the uterus, far away from the all-important lining.

So that's all for now. Biaxin it is! And Clomid and HCG and pursual of adoption will continue like normal. I'll most certainly give you another NaPro update when (optimistically: if) we meet with Dr. G again in three cycles.

Oh, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about with all this NaPro mumbo jumbo, check this out. If you're struggling with infertility, prepared to be wowed. It's all good stuff!