I’ve made a decision. I am giving up Dr. Google.  I’m gonna be like an ostrich and put my head in the sand*.

While I’m grateful for the volumes of information I have learned over this past year from Dr. Google and various books and papers, it has become tiresome to always be questioning things. I know enough now to know when something is a SNAFU on the clinic’s part and I know enough to speak my mind to my RE, but I’ve pretty much had it with looking stuff up and comparing my experiences to others. I’m older, my body is doing shitty things but I don’t have to keep re-hashing that…All. Of. The. Time.

I actually started with the research and the Dr. Googling because I couldn’t get answers anywhere else.  My RE, Dr. He of Few Words was not about to give me information on the different protocols that are used on older women with high FSH much less actually explain to me how the whole process works.  And Nurse is so overworked that she barely has time to think much less give me answers to any questions that are not scheduling related.  She’s probably not allowed to give us any medical information anyway.

Be like an ostrich - bury your head in the sand.

So, in the beginning, 2007, I started out by charting my temperature online and joining TTC forums, Googling countless questions about BBT chart antics and pregnancy symptoms for x#dpo (x number of days past ovulation).  By October 2008 when I realized that I had pretty hectic, age-related issues looming I began reading books, joining the Fertile Thoughts community, and as my first IVF started, began Googling infertility related questions in addition to my normal obsessive Googling.  I’m a research freak, what can I say.

It’s hard to stop though because in a way, my Dr. Googling defines my role in the online infertility community. The TTC and IF communities out there on the forums and Twitter are wonderful communities. And I have spent a year plus now participating in them, even making some virtual friends whom I hope to someday meet in real life. I have met women who are now pregnant through fertility treatments who I can actually talk with. My main participation beyond the generic support we all give to each other has been to find answers for myself and for others.  To try to find actual information on a particular set of circumstances. I did this willingly for both myself and others and I will continue to look things up if other people post questions to the forums and Twitter but I will not (or at least try not to) look things up obsessively for myself.

(Disclamier: I did look up some yesterday about the bloody deluge that was my CD2 but I stopped, the internetz ain’t gonna tell me anything useful at this point.)

You see, what happens is you start out with a question about something medical. Now we’re not doctors (well, most of us aren’t) and most of the people who post on the internet are not doctors. I would Google things like…:

• blood on progestrone applicator
• bloody ewcm after trigger shot
• brown tinged ewcm
• can you be pregnant and have a cyst
• can implantation just feel dull
• clomid before stims
• clomid compared to menopur
• clmid lower estroen
• clomid slower stim
• clomid with injectables ivf
• do estrogen patches elevate E2 blood levels
• do estrogen patches make your period come earlier
• do progesterone supplements cause cloudy ewcm
• do you stim slower with dlomid
• does clomid lower estrogen
• does clomid make your temperature go up
• does clomid work lik follistim
• draining ovarian cyst
• e2 low and lh high
• ectopic 5dpo
• estradiol levels mcg menstruating female
• follicle size cd7 clomid
• graph of prgesterone blood serum on supplement
• graph of progesteon e prometrium
• how does clomid work
• how long does egg survive after ovulation
• how long is lh surgeiui 3 hours after ovidrel shot
• ivf after annovulatory cycle
• lead follicles tcm
• lh at ovulation
• lh flood level 47
• lh range for surge
• lh surge and ovulation temp rise at same time
• lh surge no cervical mucus
• lh surge no tem prise
• lh surge on day of ovulation

(A-L fertilitiy searches in the past 4 months)

…to name a few and the result was often hit after hit of forum posts by someone who had something similar to you or someone who is giving support to someone who had something similar to you and sometimes actual medical information in such a watered down format that all it does is tell you you have a problem.  Yeah, I knew that.

After the endless forum hits, the next stop is PubMed and scholar.google.com to try to peruse medical studies for insight.  This is where it gets really frustrating because 1) You can only see abstracts and 2) You don’t know what the hell they are really talking about anyway.   Sure, you can read the conclusions but do you really know what a double-blind study is and if oestrogen is the same as E2 is the same as estrogen is the same as estradiol?  If they are, are they all they all measured the same way?  You don’t see the data. You don’t see actual documentation that say, sometime LH surge and BBT temp rise is on the same day.  And even if you did, the study isn’t going to tell you WHY it happens, it’s just going to tell you it did happen.

That’s where our doctors are supposed to step up to the plate and where many of them are failing.  Maybe it’s because they are afraid to or don’t want to give any absolutes or facts because the facts can change.  I get that but would still like to know the current conjectures.  Hell, after going through all of this, I have realized that infertility treatments are basically like someone using a blowtorch to light a cigarette.  They really have no idea what makes us tick.

*The whole ostrich head/sand thing (minus the foolishly part):

“The English language is very rich and descriptive. Someone “hiding their head in the sand, like an ostrich” is said to be foolishly ignoring their problem, while hoping it will magically vanish….

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/11/02/1777947.htm