Lisa and I were married on November 9, 1997. We had a beautiful wedding and wonderful honeymoon. My mother, Joy, was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer back in September of 1995. When Lisa and I met and got married, it was a wonderful inspiration for mom. Lisa and I talked about starting a family relatively soon after our marriage so that mom could be a grandmother again. My brother has two boys and fraternal twin girls. My sister has two daughters. This is where our saga begins:
Lisa and I began in earnest, at first having a lot of fun trying for children. We started in August of 1998. At this point mom was doing well. She had been in remission for about a year, after having been through a couple of rounds of chemotherapy. By February of 1999, 8 months of trying, Lisa and I still had not conceived and were becoming concerned. We knew that we should give it a year of trying naturally, but late in 1998, mom's cancer returned and could not be controlled. We knew it was just a matter of time. We sought the advise of Lisa's OB/GYN and he felt starting some basic fertility treatment might help us along. We were tested for all the basics, antibody reactions, problems with Lisa's plumbing, sperm counts, motility, morphology, etc. Sure enough, Lisa checked out fine, but I had some issues with the morphology of my sperm. Had a great count with strong motility, but only 20% good on the morphology. The result is a significant reduction in the viable sperm that could actually make the journey and then penetrate the egg.
Lisa's OB/GYN, Dr. Donald Nishiguchi, is an experience Doctor and handles infertility treatment as well. We began with standard artificial insemination right after Lisa's February 1999 cycle. Unfortunately, it didn't work, so we tried again in April, May and June. No luck. We were set to try again in July, but something happened to Lisa's cycle (regular as clock work) and we missed another attempt altogether.
At this point we augmented the treatments with the help of fertility drugs. We tried two more times, August and September of 1999, using Clomed. Again, no luck. Six tries at artificial insemination failed.
Lisa's OB/GYN did not recommend continuing the use of clomed beyond two tries due to the increased risks of ovarian cancer. A subject with which we were all too familiar. Lisa's doctor had run his course of treatment and referred us to an infertility specialist, Dr. Michael Vermesh. Dr. Vermesh ran some more tests, this time, my sperm was looking much better. Dr. Vermesh was confident he could get us pregnant using artificial insemination as well. So we tried again with him in October 1999, and guess what!