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Success Story of David M.
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Thirty-one year old David M. grows cherries and walnuts on a 100-acre farm in California’s fertile Central Valley. Talking to David, it is evident how proud he is of the farm he took over from his father. “Some of the land has been in our family for more than a hundred years,” explains David. Yet, despite how proud he is of his farming legacy, there is something he’s far more proud of: his new daughter, Brooklyn. Having a daughter is an accomplishment that almost never happened.
That’s because David was born with a condition known as cryptorchidism, or testicles that did not properly descend into the scrotum. It is the most common genital abnormality in boys, affecting 30% of boys delivered prematurely and about 4% born full term.
To correct the problem, David underwent three separate surgeries as a young boy. Despite the surgeries, only one of his testicles descended. Yet after the last surgery, the situation never concerned David.
“Everything worked fine, so I never really thought about it,” declares David. That is, until he met and decided to marry Lisa.
“We were in our late 20’s and having a family was very important to Lisa. She is the one who suggested I get a sperm count test taken,” says David. “I went to a local urologist and had the test done three times. Each time my sperm count was zero. It was devastating to hear this news just a month before our wedding.”
His urologist had no real advice except to suggest the couple plan on adopting children. “Adoption was out of the question for us. It took me a long time to decide I wanted to have children, but once I decided to, I knew I wanted my own,” says David.
Fortunately, Lisa was persistent. She went to Dr. Peter Hickox, an OB/GYN and fertility specialist in Lodi, California. That’s when Dr. Hickox referred her to Dr. Paul Turek of The Turek Clinic in San Francisco.
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Dr. Turek, former professor and endowed chair at the University of California San Francisco and founder of The Turek Clinic, pioneered the technique, called FNA Sperm Mapping, that is able to discover pockets of viable sperm in the testes. The sperm can then be extracted with minimally invasive procedures and used for in vitro fertilization and single sperm injection.
“We were able to find multiple pockets of viable sperm in David’s testes,” said Dr. Turek. “I had no doubt we would be able to retrieve them so David and Lisa could go through with IVF.”
In fact, Dr. Turek was able to retrieve several vials of sperm from David, most of which is still frozen for future use.
“The egg retrieval was difficult for Lisa, but now we have a beautiful, completely healthy little daughter and several embryos frozen so we can have a second child when we are ready,” says David.
“In farming you work your butt off, but it’s worth it,” David says. The process for David and Lisa to have a child of their own wasn’t easy either, but both definitely agree it was worth the effort.
(information from - http://www.theturekclinic.com/male-fertility-success-stories.html)
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