Firing Blanks

Firing Blanks A journey into male infertility. Want to share? Email me [email protected]

[firingblanksco-blog]

Project Conception: Timeline

Conception: A sequel to the smash-hit Christopher Nolan epic 'Inception', an early-mid-thirties couple attempt to plant a baby into the female...

Nope, scrap that, not a blockbuster movie pitch...

Here's a quick summary of our timeline thus far:

2015

April: Got married - Loz, my wife, came off the pill on our honeymoon Sep: No sign of Loz's ‘monthly visitor’ for 6 months or so - visits docs, has blood test. Dec: Loz gets test results back - very high levels of prolactin in her blood; docs say conception at these levels is impossible. MRI scan reveals a micro-prolactinoma. Doc suggests drugs to bring the levels down to a normal level.

2016

Mar: Loz's prolactin levels down to normal levels. Dec 1st: Despite best efforts, lack of conception suggest may be further complications. I visit docs to request fertility tests. Dec 14th: Sperm Dash #1 (separate post to follow on this later) - fertility sample produced and dropped off at the hospital. Dec 15th: First results; not great (see last post). Doc suggests second test. Dec 21st: Sperm Dash #2 2017

Jan 6th: Second results - much like the first. Doc suggests we may wish to be referred for NHS fertility consultation. Due to our circumstances (under 40, no previous children/pregnancies), we're eligible.

Feb 24th: First hospital consultation, Frimley Park, Surrey. The consultant wants to do bunch of tests - blood, sperm, tubes - then we'll be back in May for results.

What next?

Bar any humdingers, the consultant told us that most likely, we'll begin the application for IVF funding at the next appointment.

It's not a categoric 'no' to whether we'll be able to conceive naturally - but the consultant said that it's unlikely at this stage. That being said, we'll keep trying as by the looks of it, anything else we can do will take a long time to set in motion.

It's been a few weeks since the appointment and I'm feeling less low about it now than I was to begin with. I'm certainly feeling better now than I was when I got the initial test results. That's been the lowest point of the whole thing so far.

I'm a pretty rational person - but back when I got the initial test results, I couldn't help feeling fairly irrational thoughts about letting people down and questioning my 'manhood' (whatever that means). Having let myself feel low about things for a few days, I did reading around it all online and it seems to be a fairly common problem to have. The only thing is that most blokes aren't bringing it up over a pint.

Loz is in good spirits about things - and is very supportive about my results. Her view is that at least now we've had the first consultation, we now have a bit of control back and are on the track to getting to where we want to get to. I agree with this is in moments of clarity and optimism; however I think I've still got one foot in the 'it's all so unfair, why can everyone else do it' camp. I'm sure I'll never quite shake that off but hopefully it'll get better.

I reckon that if the tables were turned and if it was Loz who had the problem, I'd be feeling much more positive about things. I think that perhaps when it's you who's the "problem", it can have more of a negative effect.

For now, we'll continue to have tests and continue our best efforts in lifestyle changes to improve the situation naturally. More on these changes to follow soon.

[firingblanksco-blog]

The Story So Far

I'm firing blanks.

Well, mostly blanks.

My last fertility test (taken on December 21st 2016) revealed the following results:

Count: 4 million per ml (anything under 15 million is considered low, so I'm told) Mobility: 35% (40% is ‘normal’) Morphology: 2% (4% is ‘normal’) Period of abstinence prior to 'sample production': 2 days.

I'd had one test prior to this which revealed similar, though slightly better results (5 million per ml). Period of abstinence prior to this first test was 6 (!) days. Turns out, the longer I leave it, the better my guys are. Talk about being kicked when I'm down.

As the doctor put it, I've got not very many, not very good sperm. Double negatives aside, it's not a great start. Natural conception isn't impossible, but it's unlikely.

I've started this blog to document mine and my wife's journey from the discovery of the above to, well, who knows. We're really keen to start a family and although the situation isn't ideal, we're eager to do what we need to do to make it happen. What this will involve, I'm not 100% sure at this stage.

After receiving the above news and having wallowed for a while, I turned to Google for more information. Although there's a lot written about infertility in general, I couldn't find much in the way of personal stories, told from the male perspective. If I've missed a gold mine of this kind of stuff, please let me know. In the meantime, I thought it would be good to document our story and tell it from the male perspective; in the hope that it may help other people who are going through the same kind of thing.

My hopes, goals and pre-cursors for this blog:

I wanted to keep a record of what we go through; whatever that may be - in the hope that other people may find that useful. I should highlight that we're based in the UK; so I guess different people may experience different things elsewhere.

I'm no medical/scientific/infertility expert and I'm not going to make any recommendations of this sort for anyone else. It will simply be my/our experiences.

I'm going to try and be as honest as possible throughout the whole process; and will do my best to be open about how I'm feeling as time goes on.

I'd like to keep my sense of humour - my typical reaction to difficult situations is to make a joke out of it. "If you didn't laugh, you'd cry" kind of thing. I'll be continuing to try to do this throughout.

I'm going to try to stick to it - I'm occasionally guilty of starting things and not finishing them. Please prod me if I don't post for a while. I sometimes get lazy.

Finally, bit of a long shot - but I'd love to raise awareness and open the conversation more around male infertility. For every blog/online article about male infertility, there's about 100 for female infertility. My hunch is that the reason for this is that men who are affected do not want to talk about it - and I totally understand that. However, I would like to talk about it and if I manage to remove any sort of stigma for at least one other person, then that'd be grand.

So there we go. My next post will be a timeline of events so far.

Thanks for reading,

Chris