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Somehow I managed to survive my "no sex" weekend and made it to the SA on Monday.

That alone was a feat in itself! Pat on the back for me.

Was able to do the deed in the lab. Again. It's still awkward and somewhat embarrassing but dare I say it feels somewhat routine since I've had to do so many of these now?

Dr. Balls (my urologist) emailed me with the results the next day. He's good that way since it's a good hour drive for me to get to his office.

Unfortunately, my SA shows no real change from the last post-surgery test. I still only have rare non-motile sperm showing up.

My FSH and testosterone levels are better but Dr. Balls feels that at this stage, this is as good as it's going to get for me.

He recommends me going into the lab once or twice a month over the next little while so that they can freeze any possible sperm that show up in the samples. He also recommends that I arrange for a small testicular tissue sample to be taken as a back up in case there are not enough sperm in the ejaculate. There is a possibility that this could be used with IVF via ICSI should we end up going that route.

Testicular tissue sample? Umm...OUCH!

Even with all of that, it is recommended that we continue with donor sperm as back up. Even if we do move on to IVF.

So that's where we're at. I know it's not exactly great news, but we're actually doing okay with this.

As I've said from day one, my particular case made it pretty rare for any of this to make a big difference for me.

But we've got the answers we need now to move forward and there is still the slight hope that I might be able to take part in biologically creating our child.

No matter what though, I am confident that some day we will have our baby. And sperm or no sperm, I like to think that I'll have a good hand in creating it. Maybe not the biological way. Or even the "traditional" way. But love has got to count for something in all of this.

And that's enough for me.