I usually lurk in the shadows but when I saw this post I felt obligated to share my story with those interested. Like many on this and other boards I started cycling back in the late 80's. I competed in many local comps here in Hawaii and basically lived in the gym through most of my late teens through my mid 20's. Understand that in the late 80's early 90's, knowledge on the what, where, when, why and how of AAS use was more word of mouth. I was of the mindset (as were most of the guys at the time), if a little is good, alot is better. My cycles looked comparable to big A's and Ry Roids when I was at my heaviest. I did these cycles with little time off and when I was off, I was cruising with around 400mg of (insert any version of test you can think of).
I did these types of cycles with little to no time off for years and if your curious...no, I wasn't seeing a doc for regular blood work (more on this later). I ended up developing a serious case of gyno, which I promptly had surgically removed. I began cycling again, developed another case of gyno and again had surgery. When I was really hitting the androgens hard my BP was through the roof. The Doc told me on one rare visit that I had severe hypertension and suggested I stop what I was doing or my kidneys would be shot by the time I was in my 30's. Shortly after that visit I developed chest pain, went to the ER, ECG showed findings consistent with LVH which is the exact same problem a good buddy of mine died of shortly after making quite an impression in the amateur ranks in California. Probably one of the best bodybuilders to ever come out of Hawaii.
His death hit me hard and I started looking at myself for the first time and not just at the mirror. I decided to get myself checked out and it's a good thing I did. Needless-to-say, I'm alive today because of his death and much healthier.
One of the many side effects that I always thought of as a benefit of AAS use was their effect on sperm count. Now, that's all well and good when you’re young and have no intention of starting a family, which brings me to the point of answering this thread...
About 7 years ago I met a woman that completely changed my world. To avoid boring our younger board members let me say simply that I fell in love and was determined not to let her get away. I was 29 at the time and not getting any younger. Our relationship continued and strengthened until finally in 2000 I asked her to marry me...she said yes!
So in August of 2001 we got married and almost immediately began trying to have a family. I had decided to cycle off until we got pregnant. One year past with no luck. We tried everything (basal body temp, spinbarquett...sp?, ovulation sticks, etc...) nothing proved successful. You can imagine what not being able to knock up you girl does to your manhood when your contemporaries are well ahead of you in the family department.
Six more months passed by and my wife gave me an ultimatum...either I get myself checked out or else. I found an urologist, explained my situation and past use. He suggested I provide him with a semen sample to find out what my baseline was. My sample showed approximately 3,000 sperm per ml. Do you know what the numbers of a normal sample should be? Amazingly it's around 20,000,000 per ml. On top of my dismal numbers was the fact that there was very little motility. The few that were in there moved like seniors in a nursing home. The urologist just scratched his head as to why my #'s were so low especially since I had been off for close to 18 months.
I decided to take things into my own hands by jumping on a cycle of HCG, Clomid, and Tamoxifen. I provided another semen sample about two months later which showed increased #'s (30,000 ml), motility and morphology (shape). Still my urologist felt it would be very difficult to get my wife pregnant the natural way and suggested I make an appointment with a fertility clinic as they had the means and technology to give individuals like myself the opportunity to become a parent.
My wife and I weren't interested in invetro fertilization and put it off. Six months passed and both of us were ready to just say fuck it! We made an appointment with the invetro clinic, we both went through a full work up which required multiple semen samples, and endless probing on my wife’s part.
When all was said and done, they told me and my wife that we had a pretty good chance at getting pregnant but only if they used a new procedure called ICSI or intracytoplasmic sperm injection. The whole process took about 2 months where I gave my wife "daily" sub-q and IM injections (Pergonal, Gonal-F, HCG, Progesterone). The drugs my wife received were to overstimulate her ovaries to release more than 1 egg. In my wife’s case, they ended up harvesting 16 eggs.
On the harvest day I had to go down to the lab and cum in a cup. Then it's up to the lab to inject each egg with a single "healthy looking" sperm through ICSI. The fertilized eggs now called embryos go into an incubator. The faster they divide, the better quality rating they get (A, B, or C). A's are the best. We ended up with 2 A's, 2 B's and 2 C's and decided to put in the 2 A's. So there we are, 2 months have gone down the pipe, the lab tech draws up the 2 A's and hands them over to the doc. They do an initial washing of the cervix and then, very carefully push the embryos through a thin catheter with a 10 cc syringe into the uterus. Everything went well or so we thought. Doc comes back into the procedure room to tell us that there was an unfortunate problem and that they would need to do the procedure again. According to the doc, it's standard procedure to view the catheter tip through high power magnification to make sure there not still in there. Turns out our 2 A's had been obliterated by the pressure of the syringe and that they were no longer usable. You can imagine how my wife and I felt. Needless to say we just bit our lip and questioned what we should do next. The Doc suggested to put the remainder of the embryos in and hope for the best. We took his suggestion and were extremely disappointed 2 weeks later to find out that my wife wasn't pregnant. There are no guarantees with invetro fertilization!
This particular invetro clinic explained that this had never happened to them in the 18 years they had been in business and decided to give us another shot at it...free of charge.
My wife was sick of the shots, doctors’ appointments, blood tests and just the whole shitty thing. I just kept my mouth shut and didn't say a thing. It had put a huge strain on our relationship and yet going through the adversity of the whole thing just made us stronger. About a year went by and we decided to go through the whole process all over again. The plus this time was that I had remained totally clean so that when it came time for me to provide my sample, there were decent #'s (still very low compared to where they should be) to do ICSI with but the motility was much better.. We got excellent quality embryos this time around: 4 A's and 2 B's. We decided to put all four of the A's in and freeze the B's for possible later use. To make a very long story short...my wife and I are pregnant with a single fetus at 10 weeks and I couldn't be happier. I realize were not out of the woods yet but everything is looking excellent.
If I were to make a point out of my story it's this...if you stay on too long expect problems. Just because you don’t visually see side effects doesn't mean you wont have problems later in life. So...can you still get your girl/wife pregnant if on AAS? Yes, but in my case I've permanently fried my sperm producing machinery. Given enough time and perseverance...your numbers might come back to baseline. In my case, without the use of technology, I would never be a father because of the mistakes of my past.
In case some of you are questioning if I had this problem even before I started using AAS... knocked up my high school girlfriend in 10th grade that ended up getting a DNC (Abortion)...blows that theory out of the water.
You got one body, one life. Sacrifice one for the sake of the other and you'll probably never get the chance to throw a football to your grandson or marvel at the beauty of your granddaughter. I intend on doing both.
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Good luck with future endeavors. 
