This is a story I tell a lot because, admittedly, it’s extraordinary. It’s not something I see every day – or every year for that matter. But it proves a valuable point.
Diana, a 43-year-old finance executive, had just married about 6 months before I met her. She was working with a local fertility doctor doing IUI (Intrauterine Insemination) to try and conceive.
It was not an ideal situation, to say the least. First off, she was very obese and a Type II diabetic. Secondly, her FSH had been around 87 when it was checked about a week before we met. Third, she’d had irregular cycles for most of the past two or three years.
I admired her determination. She really believed she could do it.
Her doctor was pessimistic to say the least. Her FSH was way over 20 when they first met, and with her irregular cycles and diabetes, he was telling her there was all but zero chance she’d get pregnant without donor-egg IVF.
However, she insisted on moving forward to try with her own eggs. To his credit (in my opinion) he agreed to do his part, and the plan was for her to do injections with IUI.
They’d tried two times with no success, after which she got her 80+ FSH reading. She researched online and found the website for my clinic where I had a couple of testimonials from “high FSH” patients (these were FSH in the high teens at most) who’d gotten pregnant.
She came to me and explained the situation. I put her on the same diet that’s in this book and gave her the same three core practices (what I now call “The Three Foundations”) I describe in a later chapter.
Her next period came about two weeks later, and her FSH was down to 8. There was only one problem – she already had a 14mm follicle and it was only cycle day 3.
She took the injections, and within three or four days the follicle was 20mm and the doctor told her to take a trigger shot.
And… you guessed it… two weeks after the IUI – which was performed on the 8th day of her cycle – she found out she was pregnant.
I later met her beautiful baby girl.
So, where did Diana’s fertility go? Was it gone, as the doctor suggested?
Apparently not.
