This prompted me to reflect on the past year's progress and assess what the hell we're doing with our time and money. Is it worth it? Should we have put the money towards something like IVF instead?
For those of you who are new here, my husband is being treated for low sperm morphology, and I for endometriosis, hormonal imbalance and a cold condition. Our TCM doc believes that once these problems are resolved, we should be able to conceive naturally. So my husband and I have electroacupuncture twice a week, and we drink a tailor-made herbal concoction everyday. I have upped my treatments with daily moxibustion and electroacupuncture everyday between the end of my period and ovulation during my last 2 cycles.
But has all this been worth it?
I wasn't sure but DH put my mind at ease for these reasons:
IVF does not guarantee us a baby nor try to resolve any of our underlying health/fertility problems. But with TCM,
- my endo is being treated and my symptoms are diminishing, hence my quality of life has improved
- my periods are being normalized and are more manageable now
- my husband's energy levels have increased significantly
- we managed to conceive once, which proved to us that we can conceive naturally and my husband's sperm is working!
- we do not have any bad side-effects from the treatment
Weighing the two, TCM has definitely been more beneficial to us. And so, TCM it is for us. So bring on the putrid potions and gnarly needles Year 2! We're ready for ya!
4 comments:
Happy TCM Anniversary! I love reading your blog and to see highlights of how TCM is working for you and your husband is amazing.
Thanks also for not only following my blog - but checking out my stuff at Conceive! I'd be really interested to hear what your ND has to say about my husband's azoo. Keep me posted!
Here's to herbal potions and needles! It's all very amazing when you think about it. :)
Good for you for going for it naturally! My acu recently told me about a meeting where this acu from California, Micha Cohen, talked about treating endo with TCM. Western medicine has no way to treat endo. She said that you have to have the surgery to remove the adhesions and endometria from the endo, but that TCM would prevent the endo from coming back. She also said that the TCM takes a long time to treat endo.
I personally think that sometimes, we have to merge the Western with the Eastern medicine. In my case, I had fibroids. I tried to get rid of them naturally, but it was going to take too long and I didn't have that kind of time at my age. I did have them surgically removed, a half a pound of them! It was the best decision I made, abeit a difficult one. My fibroids had calcified, so I wouldn't have gotten rid of them naturally if I had tried. The TCM and everything else I was doing helped me keep the fibroids from coming back.
Good luck on your quest!
Thank you Fertility Chick and Phoebe for sharing your thoughts here. TCM is so different in its approach to medicine, and it's amazing that it's thousands year old medicine is still applicable today, and is only now receiving some recognition in the western world. For all of us, it means options, options, options!
Phoebe-we are very lucky these days that we have the best of both worlds to treat our medical problems. Like you said, the problem with TCM is that it requires time and a lot of patience because it indirectly treats the specific problems. I have come to realize that Western medicine (WM) is much more effective in removing physical obstruction, and treating things like bone problems. But very often WM doesn't treat the root cause by helping to resolve why our bodies are out of whack in the first place.
I also would like to add that not all acupuncturists and TCM docs are the same. There are many different schools out there within TCM-some more effective than others. TCM unlike WM is not as regulated. Different physicians back in the day did their own research and some of their formulas are highly guarded and only kept within their families or line of "disciples". One TCM doc I went to doesn't even read my pulse- he supposedly "scans" you with his qi and then writes out a prescription-no acup involved. He did absolutely nothing for my endo, while my relatives swear he's the best doctor in the world! So it's very important to find a good TCM physician for your specific problems.
As for needing surgery to remove adhesions and endometria from the endo, my TCM doc assured me that his herb.acup regime helps in doing that. He stressed that his medicine is very different from conventional TCM, and that he works on cell-regeneration. Old scar tissue will be regenerated. I really don't know about that! It's taking a lot of time -I guess it's expected since you can't get rid of something overnight with herbs/acup that has taken 20+years to grow! Since my symptoms are slowly diminishing, I have to trust that his medicine is effective for me. I initially had a lot of problems trusting TCM because you can't see what's going on inside, unlike x-rays, MRIs, bloodwork data etc! it's a bit of a leap of faith for me!
I am really glad that surgery was able to remove your fibroids successfully. You're right-TCM probably would have taken ages! Hopefully now you have TCM to keep them at bay ( I read that fibroids and endo stem from the same physiological problems). And more importantly, let's hope it can help our bodies get into optimum condition to have our babies successfully!
Zengirl,
I read your response on my blog, thanks. I agree with what you are saying here that acus specialize just like western docs do.
With the chlorella, please do not try to chelate mercury while you still have mercury amalgams in your mouth!! You do not want to move that mercury around in your body. Better to have them removed, then do the chelation. Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions. I had 4 mercury amalgams and I had them removed in two office visits with a dentist who specializes in mercury amalgam removal.
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