"Reproductive immunology"-- anyone have experience with this?

[saimeiyu]

DH and I have been trying for about 2.5 years to get pregnant w/our second child.  I have all kinds of issues, some of which are fairly straightforward and some of which are not.

I have PCOS (which for the time being seems to be well-controlled and I don't have high testosterone, and I have normal blood glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, and regular 32 day cycles)

I have hypothyroidism which is well-controlled, and my TSH is under 1 and free T4 and T3 are in "lovely" ranges according to my endo.

Both the PCOS and the thyroid have been well-controlled for at least 18 months.

I also have some kind of an autoimmune disease which I just recently found out about.  It's either atypical Rheumatoid Arthritis, or it's lupus.  I don't know, we're still doing testing to pin it down.  I found out about this because I get this pain in my legs (muscle pain, not joint pain) which, as far as I can remember must have started about 2 years ago.  I originally thought it was a thyroid symptom, and my endo worked really hard with me to help me get everything thyroid and PCOS under control, and finally told me the pain was definitely not related to endocrine issues, and I should ask my PCP for a work-up for a connective tissue disease.  I've been bugging different doctors about it for about a year and a half, now.  Last month I was finally able to see a Rheumatologist, (who, honestly, I'm not fantastically happy with, but he's one of the only guys in the area, unfortunately)  who ordered a bunch of bloodwork, and said, "it's definitely a connective tissue disease, possibly rheumatoid arthritis, or a few other things.  It's autoimmune.  Take these two drugs, and do these blood tests, and come back in three weeks."

So, what I am wondering, is have you ever dealt with an autoimmune disease while trying to get pregnant, and/or, have you ever dealt with "reproductive immunology" and all the tests and stuff? 

I'm not real sure which direction to go in, and the rheumatologist seems to know next to nothing about fertility.  Which, I guess isn't all that surprising since, looking at his waiting room, he deals in 95% older adults who probably don't even have cycles anymore. 

Any advice is appreciated.

[Rainy229]

I wish I could give you a straight-forward answer, but I only have a thought... are you taking metformin for PCOS?  If so, I remember hearing that one side-effect can be muscle pain (shame on me for posting this late at night and not having perfectly clear thoughts!).  

Best of luck!

--Rainy

[LessTraveledBy]

There is an active yahoo group called immunologysupport which I would highly recommend.