Rundown

I'd really like to share a lot of what we learned yesterday in more detail to potentially help anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation (while keeping in mind that I am not a medical professional and am relying on my perception and memory after talking to the doctor). However, I want to wait until we get the letter from her before getting into the technical nitty gritty.

But here's a rundown of what we talked about:

• III has an inverted chromosome. The inverted section is fairly large, which is apparently good- it allows for more of a possibility that, in a conception, the chromosome would fix itself.
• There is a possibility that the miscarriage was a result of the chromosome. But not necessarily.
• There is a possibility that the chromosome inversion is hereditary. But not necessarily.
• The chromosome inversion is unrelated to our fertilization problems.
• There is no way to tell how much or little this could affect any potential fetus- no statistical numbers like we often get at the RE office. As I said to Dr. N- "It's kind of a crap shoot."
• Doing ICSI may actually be increasing our chance of the embryo being affected by the inversion since in a natural conception there's the whole "survival of the fittest" thing going on. (Unfortunately, without ICSI we have no fertilization...)
  

Our options?

• Donor sperm- certainly not ready to go there yet.
• Keep doing what we're doing and hope for the best. (With a potential for more miscarriages or even a child with birth defects... though the latter is the smallest possibility of all of them. We could have a "normal" child without the inversion or even a "normal" child who may have the inversion and, like III, not be affected at all.)
• Do IVF with PGD. (Meaning testing the embryos once they reach 8 cells for the chromosomal inversion)
  

I'm feeling very overwhelmed. I'm going to be thirty-four in a few weeks, and I feel like we've been doing this for so long and have done so much. And not only are we still here, but another wrench has been thrown in the mix. (Um... I think I'm mixing metaphors, but whatever...)

I'm just really, really sad and frustrated. :(