Sperm Retrieval - The Pre-op Consultation

Well, we had our consultation with the Andrologist at the IVF clinic, as planned.

Having never visited an IVF clinic before, I was, to be honest, a little anxious. I thought that it would be like a typical private hospital: clean and functional in design. I was wrong.

The clinic we were referred to is a beautiful old manor house. At first, it was a little confusing finding the entrance to reception; we found an intimidating wooden door which I wasn't convinced was the entrance to the main building, until we saw somebody come out of it!

It did seem nice to be in such 'homely' surroundings (we both thought the building was lovely), but I think we were both a little nervous. We signed in, got our visitor passes, and were shown the way to outpatients, where we were to see the Andrologist.

Now, I don't know if this is a common experience - perhaps we have come to terms with our infertility better than we expected - but we found the atmosphere in the waiting room quite depressing.

My wife feels that sometimes there is such an expectation on having children, that finding that you are infertile, for whatever reason, can have a devastating effect. Of course, being infertile is not a jovial matter, but I don't think it should mean that you lose all sense of happiness or optimism. Maybe we were feeling a bit manic, but I just wished that some of the other people waiting would lighten up.

Finally it was our turn to see the consultant. He seemed a nice man, authoritative in an unassuming way, and went through a number of questions, pretty much re-hashing stuff that we'd already spoken about with the Obs/Gynae consultant. After examination, and a short discussion, he suggested that our next step should be to try to retrieve sperm from me by surgery (SSR - Surgical Sperm Retrieval), the outcome which would be 50/50 (hey, 50% is better than 0%.) Lucky me, the opportunity for an elective procedure under general anaesthetic: I even had a choice of surgery dates (I plumped for November 1st.)

First, I would have to have bloods taken to screen for HIV, Hepatitis B (and something else?), also Inhibin B and Y-chromosome deletion to see if these would show any genetic causality. Because we were self-paying patients, the Andrologist gave us a sheet with all the chargeable items ticked, a nice reminder that this was as much a business as a medical 'service'. (It makes you appreciate how much healthcare can really cost; I think that all NHS patients should be shown the real costs incurred when treating them, it might stop people whingeing about the essentially free service.)

I'm pretty tired of having bloods taken (when I was younger, I had adhesions following appendectomy, and basically had to be drip fed a specially prepared concoction of vitamins, minerals and fats, which required they check the levels of these compounds in my blood morning and evening so that they could adjust the quantities they 'fed' me), but irritatingly I had to wait a fair while before a nurse could get around to taking them. Apparently it was because the Inhibin B test wasn't commonly done (the Andrologist had to add this on to the list of chargeable items) so they had to find the right tube. Great.

So, we finish, we pay and sign out (we were undercharged, but I reassured the Mrs that they would pick this up, she wasn't convinced - she is very honest after all.) And then the heated discussions began.

Basically, my wife didn't want me to go through with it. She felt that it was a pointless exercise, and the fact that it was a GA procedure scared her (she had nearly lost her sister to a procedure under GA.) I didn't initially have a problem with the GA part, but I was a little anxious, thanks in part to her worrying.

Nonetheless, I insisted that I wanted to proceed: I wanted to do this as much to have a final answer, if you like, my scientific curiosity aroused. And in all honesty, I wanted to do this to help me make a decision on what to do next.