Yes, it can be done.
My hubby has CF and found out around age 18 that his semen did not contain sperm after doing a simple semen analysis (to make sure he was not part of that 2%). It is called CBAVD (congenital bilateral absence of the vas deferens) and usually means that you have sperm sitting in your testicles, but is prevented from being ejaculated because the 'transport system' has been interrupted.
We married when he was 22 (I was 20) and about 4 years into the marriage I was tested to see whether or not I was a CF carrier (if I was a carrier we would NOT have ever pursued the idea of a biological child... I would NEVER take the risk of knowingly placing an innocent child through what my husband has endured his entire life). The test showed I am not a carrier and therefore we tucked away the thought of becoming parents one day in the back of our minds. We decide to pursue the idea of becoming biological parents last year in Feb. 2007 and met with an in vitro fertilization clinic. I will condense our experience into 4 major steps:
1) Chris underwent a testicular biopsy (sounds like the description of MESA; they sliced open his scrotum... he was wide awake and watched the whole thing... and they removed as much sperm as possible with a syringe and then sewed back the scrotum)
2) I underwent many shots to cause egg production and then they harvested my eggs (while under mild sedation)
3) ICSI is the process where they injected a single sperm into each of my harvested eggs and then observed which ones began to divide to actually become an embryo
4) With your in vitro clinic, you decide how many of those developing embryos to transfer back into the uterus and the woman continues to take daily shots for 12 weeks to aid in the process. Obviously, there is no guarantee that any of the embryos will implant in the uterus. (we transferred 2 the first time and 3 the second time)
We went through one round of IVF, became pregnant, and then I miscarried around 8 weeks. We tried again in Oct 07 and again I became pregnant, and this time I have carried to full term. In fact, my due date is only 16 days away!!!!
Our insurance fortunately covered quite a bit of the process so we ended up paying around $5000 out of pocket, for both our tries of IVF (that figure also includes all of the drugs/shots I had to take for months). If we had not had any insurance coverage, it could have easily taken $6000-8000 per attempt. Keep in mind, fertility clinic rates vary GREATLY so yours may be much higher or much lower. (FYI, the testicular biopsy for Chris' sperm to be extracted only cost us $210, and then it's $450 per year at our clinic for the sperm storage... so the majority of the cost is the rest of the process).
Hope this info helps you - please keep in mind this is a decision we wrestled with for the last 9 years and did <u>not </u>take lightly. We are THRILLED beyond belief to become parents, but are also very realistic about the inevitability of raising this child by myself when he passes away. I hate CF.
Best of luck to you.
