February 10th, 2021

So I actually ended up getting the results for some of the blood work back later yesterday evening...but I had a lot going on after work and didn’t have time to type everything up until now. 🙈 The nurse called to let me know that most of the hormone levels had come back, as well as the STD tests. (And the STD tests were totally fine, obviously. 😜)

All of my hormones came back very normal aside from a few levels:

Just as Dr. Martin had noticed, my Prolactin level was high. They mentioned that I will most likely have to get an MRI in the near future so that they know how to treat it. High prolactin levels are typically caused by Hyperprolactinemia—which is a common cause of irregular or missing periods. Hyperprolactinemia is usually caused by hypothyroidism (sound familiar??) or a pituitary tumor. And before any of you freak out about the words “tumor” and “MRI” (like Mike totally did lol), a pituitary tumor—or pituitary adenoma—is noncancerous and does not spread beyond the skull. 85% of pituitary adenomas are not large enough to need to be removed surgically, and can instead either be left alone or treated with medicine. But because I’m trying to have a baby, and it’s likely that the high prolactin levels are messing with my cycles, I do need to treat it so I can make the process go more smoothly! The MRI is needed to check if my levels are high due to an adenoma pushing on the pituitary gland—because whether or not I have one determines which type of medicine they need to give me to treat it.

In addition, my TSH (thyroid hormone) was high. I was pretty surprised at this, because both Dr. Naga and Dr. Martin had reported that my levels were normal after I was put on my new medication. The nurse explained that while my primary doctor definitely would consider that level normal, as far as fertility goes my 3.0 level was still too high for their liking. They prefer any women trying to conceive to instead have between a 1.0 and a 2.5. So, not a big deal! All they are going to do for that is raise my dosage from 0.025mg to 0.050mg—not a huge change and still very low of a dosage. They think that’ll be all that is needed to get the level where they want it!

The last level that was a little low was my Vitamin D. I take Vitamin D pills along with my daily vitamins already, so they just said I should increase the dosage to fix that. Again, nothing major or concerning. (Actually, most of the population right now has lower reported levels of Vitamin D!)

So, based on everything so far, it doesn’t look or sound like I have either PCO or PCOS (as mentioned in yesterday’s post). It seems like I just have Hypothyrodism & Hyperproclactinemia—and possibly PCO-appearing ovaries. And, again, both of the first two can be easily corrected with medication! So all great news so far!! I’m definitely eager to finalize the rest of our testing!