Comments on: 295th Friday Blog Roundup

By: Grace

Grace — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 09:05:49 +0000

I think maybe I would. I don’t know that I would have had the foresight to test when I was younger, even though I seem to have always known that this was my lot. Now, though, that we are on the very verge of the end, I think I would like to know. If we quit now are we giving up too soon? Or are we justified in letting our emotions and our pocketbook begin to recover now?

By: Claire

Claire — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:03:14 +0000

Great questions — great link from Loribeth.

I think tests are important and sometimes helpful, but it is only half of the equation. No test is 100% accurate. The other thing I would have needed was doctors willing to interpret the results with me — even if I looked really young at the time. I was pretty baby faced in my 20′s, and I was also very premenopausal. No amount of FSH testing and no amount of telling my doctors my history (including 90% of my ovaries remove) led to any doctors saying anything but an emphatic ‘you can wait.’ I need to forgive them and myself for the advice and taking this advice…. but if there is a bias not to talk about fertility with young women, tests won’t do much. Information can bring more guilt and worry unless you have a way to make sense of it and decide how to proceed.

So yes.. more information is good, but it needs a culture around it to help people sort out what to do with it. For me that means everything from doctors that are comfortable discussing fertility with women of all ages, academic / professional flexibilities that are not so either or about parents and study, and work career paths that allow for women more options that don’t pit biological realities against the theoretically more flexible realities of professional and personal development. Yes there is no way I could have done my studies and internships the way I did them AND have kids… but there is no reason I couldn’t have done some of the internships and study and work while raising kids. But that wasn’t an option for me because of how grad school was set up and because I couldn’t get health insurance without full time work/school.

The one group that understood the reality of my situation was the insurance companies that took one look at my history and wrote DENIED DENIED DENIED on all my applications.

So in short I would have taken the tests… but given how doctors responded to my elevated FSH levels, I suspect that nothing would have changed with a test that suggested the same outcome, just earlier.

By: Bea

Bea — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:19:08 +0000

Oh, just read the above link by loribeth. Well put, Doc.

Bea

By: Bea

Bea — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:17:15 +0000

First of all, I remain skeptical about the four-month-window prediction. I’m seeing future headlines: Menopause test: not as accurate as we thought.

At any rate, let’s say it’s only accurate to within a two year window – that’s still locking it down quite a lot. I think I would want to hear “normal” or “premature” but perhaps not the date itself.

Bea

By: loribeth

loribeth — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 01:22:34 +0000

Someone left this link on my blog — I thought about your post as I read it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/03/ivf-fertility-infertility-gedis-grudzinskas

By: Dana

Dana — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 23:24:54 +0000

I’d definitely would have started earlier having children if I knew I’d enter menopause earlier, to leave more options open.

This being said… I’m adopted, and my bio-mother found me last year, and I got a health history for the first time ever… and she informed me that early onset menopause runs in the family!!! ACK! If I knew that, I definitely wouldn’t have waited until 27 to start my family, I’d have started more around 24-25.

I didn’t even know such a test existed, I want one now! I wonder if any insurance covers it or how expensive it is.

By: Baby Smiling In Back Seat

Baby Smiling In Back Seat — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 23:19:26 +0000

It seems like many women don’t realize they’re in menopause even after it’s started. Given my unpredictable cycles, I may very well be one of those people. So the test would be helpful not just to tell the future but to tell the present.

However, I’d hope that the test wouldn’t give people a false sense of security. Just because menopause won’t start for X number of years doesn’t mean that you’ll be fertile that whole time — or at all, in my case, having started TTC at 26.

By: Valery Val

Valery Val — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:14:28 +0000

Looking from the side of POF it now seems it would have been helpful. Even though I only met my DH at 32 it might have made the difference, we might have been on time instead of finding out we were too late at 36. He is a numbers person, he would have liked exact information. We might have considered embryo freezing if he really felt he was not ready.
I’m thinking though that it would make more sense taking the test when you’re starting to consider TTC versus waiting rather than at age 20.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:39:34 +0000

I agree with Loribeth that just because you’re not menopausal doesn’t mean you’re fertile. It’s too simplistic or dichotomous a piece of information for me. (our IF was unexplained)

By: Heather

Heather — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 22:17:21 +0000

I lost my ute when I was 23. I went from non-menopausal to menopausal in 15 minutes of surgery.

I knew…always, I knew.

It’s not good to know. Because, you KNOW. You know the end is near. Life is going to change. You are never going to be “like everyone else.”