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Wednesday 2 July 2008

Follicles

I am quick at picking up information relevant to me (well, I am very inquisitive). And slowly slowly I am learning, gaining more and more knowledge. And today was one of those days in which I got to wear a smile on my face due to a new understanding.
Well, as my title suggests, my new revelation was to do with follicles. I never understood what on earth do the technicians see in the ultrasound. The lining I think I understand, but how can they see any follicles, and count their sizes?? Although each time I'm there I try, I still don't get it. I see her measuring something, and the numbers running up on the screen, but... You see, I was sure, in fact I "knew" that follicles are long tubes hanging down from the wall of the Fallopian tube. I don't know if it's the Hebrew name for the follicles that made me have that vision or what, but that is how I imagined they looked liked, and, well.. of course I never got to see such a thing.
Well today on the way home, frustrated that again I had no idea what I was seeing, it suddenly occurred to me that we do live in a marvelous era where information is a keyboard away. So of course I googled ultrasound images and gained a smile. Hope that when I return on Friday, I'll manage to put what I learnt into practice, and to finally see my follicle!


So this is how they look like:

The first image I saw that made me say Ahhhh. So the follicles are not a long tube, but rather some kind of a round shape.
(image from:http://www.advancedfertility.com/anovulat.htm )


Seeing this (actually there were two pictures adjoined - the other was the same but without the white outline, but this one made more sense to me..) the Ahhhh turned into a "Wow, I get it!"
(image from: http://storm.unimb.si/ultrasound/index.html )


Here my "Wow, I get it" turned into a smile.
Now I can see it :-)
(image from: http://www.ivf-infertility.com/infertility/investigations/female/ovulation.php )

2 comments:

Michal said...

Mine look like a cluster (ESHKOL) of grapes :-)... that's PCO...

You'll definitely be able to identify them now.

Billy said...

Indeed I saw it today!

And the funny thing - today I was scanned by a technician I never met before, and she was very nice. Anyway when she came to measure the follicle, she said: "and now lets measure the follicle", which only confirmed it. [They usually just measure and say the figure out aloud for the other woman (I don't know her job title..) to write.]

P.S
I think the second picture is of a PCO (I don't know why the link doesn't work now).