And the winner is...

Hysteroscopy and laparoscopy. Surgery.

Well, we finally made our decision. I'm going to have the surgery in about two weeks.

Our appointment with Dr. M was great. First, he went over the results of Seth's second semen analysis. They were great! This is obviously good news from one point of view. I'm glad that Seth is healthy. However, it's not really good news for me. Dr. M said that because Seth is fine, it is looking much more likely that I do have endometriosis (or some other problem that we haven't discovered yet).

It also means that medicated IUI no longer looks like a decent option for us, right now. Without treatment, my chances of getting pregnant are only 2-10% each month. On a medicated IUI cycle, those odds don't really increase by too much (for someone with endo) and you're still below the 20-25% chance that a typical healthy couple has each cycle. It just seems like a huge gamble to spend ~$1500 per cycle on something that probably won't work for us. I don't think I could handle the disappointment and feeling like we totally wasted our money if it didn't work.

Dr. M said that our best choices were surgery and IVF. There's no reason for us to believe that we need IVF, he just mentioned that some people want to avoid surgery at all costs and IVF will pretty much get around any problems that you might have. Unfortunately, we can't afford to be those people.

Surgery sounds like a good choice for me. Or it sounds better than nothing, at least. I don't think, and Dr. M agreed, that it would be a good idea to put the surgery off either in hopes that we beat the odds or until we can afford IVF. If there's an 80% chance (what Dr. M said) that I have endometriosis, I don't want to ignore it and let it keep growing and spreading. The good news is that Dr. M was able to rearrange his schedule so he will be able to perform the surgery! I'm really glad about that part. He seems really great and I feel comfortable with him.

I feel relieved and sad at the same time. I'm relieved that Seth is fine and I'm relieved that we finally made a decision. I'm just sad that surgery is the best decision for us. I wish it didn't get to this point.