Real Life Comradery

Comradery, sympathy, empathy, knowledge, prior experience, whatever you want to call it. It's very important in this infertile world to be able to relate to someone else going through the same thing. In fact, it might be just as important for surviving infertility as fertility treatments themselves.  

We're not friends (yet), but I found someone local who can relate to what I've been going through.

I saw a patient yesterday who came in to look at new hearing aids. She is now 34 and has worn hearing aids since she was 7. We had a lot to talk about, but I saw in her medical chart that she was seen for hoarseness after a thyroidectomy. She had thyroid cancer. Given my recent problems, I asked her about it. She told me that she was infertile and they found out she had thyroid problems after doing several tests. She said with additional testing she found out that she had thyroid cancer and had to have her thyroid removed.

This freaked me right-the-fuck out given my recent problems.

So I told her about my recent thyroid problems and she told me about a local endocrynologist that she highly recommends. She then asked me how I found out about my hypothyroidism and I told her about my infertility. We had so much in common! She said that she has been trying for 4 year (I hope I don't have to wait that long) and that she also had endo. Between thyroid cancer, hearing loss and endo, she sure got the shit-end of the stick, didn't she?

Anyway, we just sat there and chatted, happy to have someone else as a comrade in this battle against infertility.

She then told me about a great doc she goes to in El Paso that has high success rates and that she is currently seeking treatments from him. If it doesn't work out with LuLu in Las Cruces, I think I'll take her advice and see her doc. She should know, she's been around the block a few times in this area.

It was nice to meet her and have the time to talk, but I guess another lesson is that it could always be worse.

Side note: I did get a call back and get my appointment scheduled for the right date/time. I felt like an ass though.