Who am I?
I’m Joe: husband, father, military pilot, the reason for IVF in my family. I’m British but I grew up on the south coast of Spain. From about the age of 11 I started telling people I wanted to be a pilot “when I grew up” (I can hear my wife saying: still waiting for that to happen!).
So, I joined up and was fortunate enough to fly the C-130J Hercules for a number of years before becoming an instructor. My career is coming to an end as I write this and I have some incredibly fond memories of it all, from bouncing around the world with the controls at my fingertips, to scuba diving in a remote area in the Atlantic Ocean, to skiing and paragliding in the magical Bavarian Alps and meeting some of the most fun people around.
Throughout all of that fun and believing my own fortune, it’s easy to understand how shocked I was to find out my own infertility. On our way to the clinic I remember boasting to my wife that the Doc will likely have never seen such spritely sperm. Spritely perhaps but only for a fleeting moment.
“Look here” the Doc told me, “this is a list of the average numbers for men, yours fall way below what we would expect in all categories.” He went on,
“I’m afraid it would be virtually impossible for you to conceive naturally”.
Damn. So it IS me… an unwelcome surprise. There was no fanfare, no time to answer my many questions,
“When did this happen?! Why?! Have I always been this way?! Can it be fixed?!”
The Doc just flowed straight into IVF and ICSI and PICSI, explaining what now must be done in order to have a child. And that involved a lot of effort, time, money. I kept thinking there must be a way of sorting out the problem instead of bypassing it entirely to reach the desired outcome. Of course, a child is what we wanted and a child is what IVF assists with providing but it is not an easy path to take; lots of check ups and invasive procedures, needles, pills, changes to lifestyle and emptying of pockets.
I did follow up on my assertions but I didn’t get very far. I went for scans and consultations, one doctor gave me a testicular ultrasound which showed a particularly nasty varicocele. I asked,
“could that be the reason behind my infertility?”, he cooly replied, “yes, quite possibly”.
And that was that. He wasn’t willing to refer me for surgery as IVF was a far more proven concept. Wow. I think this was the wake up moment I had. I knew I had to look into this more.
Ask a dad about the birth, I dare you. When I say “barbaric”, it’s always met with nodding agreement. That’s another story, anyway, and another issue to delve into for another time.
If you’re wondering why I’ve set up this website, you can read about it here.
