The Endometrial Function Test

      Yesterday my husband and I took a trek to SIRM-CT to visit with Dr. Wang and allow him to stick another fun tool into my uterus in the name of infertility. On the plus side, it was my husbands birthday and I gifted him with a sperm DNA fragmentation test. He got to jerk off and I got pieces of my uterus scraped out. Fun day.

    Truth be told, I've tolerated all of the invasive infertility tests like a boss. And yes, I'm pretty damn proud of this. There isn't much my reproductive system does well, so if pain tolerance is something I can brag about on behalf of my ute, then so be it.

   To date, I've had the HSG, an in-office hysteroscopy and a 3D saline sono and haven't really had any difficulty or great discomfort with any of them, but this test had me a bit nervous. I couldn't find my gluten free ibuprofen (yup, the life of a Celiac patient...) so I decided to go commando on the pain control front. I was stationed in a typical obstetric room and Dr. Wang showed me the tool he would be using. It looked a bit like this:

Source

     Basically, it's a plastic catheter that has an inner portion. You insert it into the uterus and gently pull back on the interior portion which creates a vacuum-type force that aspirates the endometrial contents into the catheter. The goal is that the RE will continue to aspirate as the catheter is slowly removed so a variety of endometrial tissue is obtained, and not just tissue from one spot. Basically, you need a representative sampling of tissue for the most accurate result. Dr. Wang had to go in twice to get enough tissue. It wasn't uncomfortable getting the catheter in, but I'll admit there was some discomfort as he was aspirating, but nothing that I couldn't deal with. I felt some intense cramping but it wasn't anything beyond what I have felt with my period. However, I will say, if you wanted to die during the HSG or any of these other in-ute tests, then this once won't be a piece of cake. It was pretty quick, and then it was done. My husband was allowed and encouraged to be in the room, which I really appreciated. Its high time he sees some bloody catheter action and realizes that my portion of IVF treatment isn't all illicit back-alley patient rooms with porn assortments at the ready.

   All-in-all, I believe the test is costing us $595 + shipping. We chose the EFT over the E-tegrity test because Dr. Wang felt that it's the "safest" test. He said that there have been incidences where the E-tegrity test has come back normal, but the EFT came back abnormal, yet he hasn't really seen it come back the other way around. So, worst case scenario, the EFT comes back erroneously abnormal and you receive treatment for it....but I think that is much better than getting an incorrect normal result and wasting more embryos on a shoddy uterine environment.

   Now, we wait. The DNA fragmentation results should be back in a week or so. We are doing ICSI regardless, it's just a matter of whether we add PICSI into the mix instead. It will take about two weeks to receive my EFT results, and I have my follow-up with Dr. KK in about two weeks as well. Then, as of February 8th (hopefully!) we have our baseline and start stims for IVF #3.

 I really feel confident that once we sift through all of the results, we will really have our full infertility picture, which, for better or worse, will be such a relief.