# wedding or treatment



## XXDDxx (Oct 6, 2009)

hey

Just wanted to find out if anyone is in the same position as me.....
here goes.........
well to start off my partner and i have to use donor sperm as my dp has a zero sperm count, before we found this out marrage before children was never somthing that mattered to me, but after finding out about dp i decided that maybe it was best to put treatment off untill we were married. 
i started to plan our wedding and set a date for sept next year, this worked out fine as we would have to go on the waiting list for donor sperm through the nhs as we couldnt afford to go private. After finding out that our clinic had no donors we started to panic and it seems that things wont plan out the way we wanted. i have allways been the one pushing for treatment my dp allways took it in his stride he is very laid back and was happy to wait on waiting lists.
Recently i have noticed he got a bit down when ever we were around babys (i have two nephews we look after alot) after days of arguments and trying to get out of him what was wrong he told me that he wants to put the wedding off and concentrate on treatment, it has been a bit of a shock to be honest as i had no idea he felt that way and actually thought he didnt want to have treatment at all and would be happy to have no children. He says we can get married at any age but cant have children at any age. i am only 25 so i am still young as he says by the time we have treatment i will be 27ish if we go ahead with the wedding.

i suppose what i am trying say is im a bit scared at the thought that it is actualy going to happen now it isnt just somthing in the future anymore.

I really hope this makes sense, kind of had a bit of a rant! my head is all over the place just now and we have decided not to tell any friends or family apart from my mum  about treatment, so i have no one to ask advice from. kind of feel really alone.

Donna xxxx


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## XXDDxx (Oct 6, 2009)

excuse the terrible spelling in that post


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## Sheilaweb (Mar 21, 2006)

Donna you have my utmost sympathy hun, but you really have come to the right place.  Has your partner had any mri scans to check his tubes, he could be classed as non abstructive azoospermic, or his tubes could be blocked.
My hubby had a zero count too and was diagnosed as non obstructive azoospermic at our IUI consultantation (I kid you not!!!) I found the NOA thread here on FF and read up on TESE/PESE etc - but our clinic refused to even do it as they felt the 'payback' wouldn't be worth it - I also read that a number of NOA couples had had success with Wellman vitamins.

Our clinic advised us to go donor sperm route, but the waiting list would be 6 months - so we gave the wellmans a go, and hubby went from zero to 1 million little swimmers in the 6 months we waited for a suitable sperm donor match.  

Happily for us, we were good to go with ICSI and our sperm donor was not required, although I'll always be grateful to the men who  'do their bit'.  

If it's a toss up between fertility treatment OR wedding - treatment every time - you can have your little one as a bridesmaid or paige boy or have a combined wedding/christening later on. xxx

The wait to get nhs treatment is L-O-N-GGGGG - so it's still something you can get your head around, while you wait to get to the top of the waiting list - not sure how far down the fertility treatment path you are right now, so sorry if I'm teaching Granny how to suck eggs.

To get fertility treatment on the nhs a gp will only usually refer you when you have actively been trying to conceive for 2 years - then you have to wait until there is enough money in your primary care trust and with the government cuts, I can only see that the waiting lists will grow! 

If you have already been referred to a particular clinic and they don;t have any donors on their books, could you go back to your gp for a referral to another clinic who does offer sperm donors.

I hope this helps a wee bit - depending on where you are with things, I can point you in a few directions for threads where you'll get the best tailored support possible.

Best wishes
Sheila


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## XXDDxx (Oct 6, 2009)

Shelia

Thank you so much you have no idea how much i needed to hear that from somone in my position. I feel like i am going crazy and really need to get myself together.

That is fantastic that you managed to get dps sperm count to that    allways so great to hear.

Unfortunatly our tese came back with nothing, frpm what i have read we have been very lucky to even get a tese.
Our clinic is ERI and there is no sperm donors at the moment its under review what ever that means. The two clinics we get refered to is dundee or edinbrugh, we get reffered to which ever has the shortest waiting list which was edinbrugh at the time. I had a look on the **** web page and i see dundee has a waiting list of a year, when i spoke to my gp about changing clinics ahe said she didnt think she was able to. 

The position we are now is... we have an open day at darlington next saturday. We are considering egg share there as we will get our ivf paid for exp the doonor sperm and **** fee, which is around 1,000. We are also considering iui which costs around 2,000 with donor sperm at darlington. IuI would obv be alot easier but its still 2,000 and not as successfull as ivf. 

We are a 2 hour ish drive from darlington, we really dont want to tell anybody about our treatment not even my boss, the problem there is i only have 3 days holiday left this year and im not sure how often we will need to go to darlington for either of theses treatments. im pretty clueless about the whole thing if im honest   

Thanks again for yor relpy i really needed that    Donna.


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## Sheilaweb (Mar 21, 2006)

OOhh Donna, Darlington is in my patch - I had my treatment at Centre for Life in Newcastle.  Darlington (Londown Womens Clinic) has a good success rate, but I have heard very mixed reports about their egg share programme - but at least you'll get a much clearer idea when you go to the open day.

4 hours round trip is a lot of travelleing for a scan, injection lesson etc.... plus as you get around egg collection time, you can expect to be scanned every other day so that the clinic collects your eggs at the optimum time.

I would hedge your bets hun, I would contact the other clinic and ask if it would be possible to transfer your funding and treatment to them so that you can make use of their registered sperm donors....yeah it's a hassle getting papers and medical notes switched over - but it may be worrth asking as it'll save you loads of time just travelling - and if you're not stressed about missing work/ using up all your holiday entitlements - thats even better.

But yep, you've done very well getting a PESA/TESE - to be honest, I felt let down when hubby didn;t have to do it, as I was going to get all the 'fun' for myself ....
... let me know how you get on - but if there's anything you need - just shout hun.
Sheila


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