Hi everyone!! I’M BACK!
I had to read my last post to catch up on what I left off with. Sorry for not being consistent in my posting…I took an entire IVF mental break.
So we are excited to start up again, but it is time to get creative with finances. The first place we started was the fertility clinic. We simply let them know our circumstances, how badly we wanted to try again, but how restricted our budget was and asked what was the best they could do for us. We got an additional 10% knocked off the IVF fee. It never hurts to ask, y’all (that goes for everything…meds, medical bills, etc.)!
I got this great idea while I was dreaming one night…what if I volunteered my services to the clinic in exchange for the cycle. He could have “free” labor and I could get a “free” or discounted cycle. I set up a separate appointment to talk this over with the doctor. While he was open to the idea of bartering, it really wasn’t going to work out as easily as I had imagined it, so it was back to the drawing board!
When the doctor let me know how much of an increase in follistim I was going to require, my jaw hit the floor. For our first IVF cycle, I signed up for the Compassionate Care Program and got our Gonal-F completely free. Unfortunately, that program is a one time deal. Now, not only do I have to pay for it, but it is going to run us almost $6,000 for that one medication for me!!! WHAT?! That alone was enough to stop us in our tracks. Is it really a good idea for us to pursue a second round of IVF? As a side note: while we were meeting with Dr. Trolice he told us very honestly, you have to figure out what is best for you and your family. If money is not an object, by all means, keep trying until you succeed. If money isn’t growing on trees for you, I want you to consider your family and the sacrifices it will take for a chance at another pregnancy. To me, this showed he is not money hungry enough to push someone into making a decision that may not be right for their family. So, getting back on track, our nurse called us up one day and told me she had something for us when we showed up for our appointment. She met us in the lobby with a bag full of EVERY BIT of the follistim we needed!!!! She knew how badly we wanted to continue and she wanted to see it happen just as much as we did. Can we say thank you Lord for favor?! WOW!
After much deliberation, my husband and I, along with Jon and Kari, finally decided on a timeline. The thing we had to keep in mind was fitting the cycle in before all of our testing expired. You have one year to keep all of the work-ups for Kari and me and then you have to redo them all. That year is up for us in October 2010. On the other hand, we had to have enough time to build our bank account back up so this process is not a financial strain. The compromise is, drum roll please…… JUNE!
Kari and her family are going on a much needed vacation with their family from the end of May until late June. We planned on having her first appointment scheduled when she started her June cycle around the 25th or so. Well, Mother Nature is funny sometimes. She never visited Kari in the month of May and after talking with Cindy, the nurse, we have decided that we may be able to go with this coming cycle, which could be any day now!!!
That means back on the birth control and start psyching ourselves up for the many shots to come.
As far as fundraisers for this go ‘round, we have already had a yard sale (with at least one more to come), we have a possible spirit-night at Chick-Fil-A, and some other events on the horizon. God is good and there is no question as to whether God will provide!
Let’s do this thing!
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Time heals...let's get going!
I talked to Dr. Trolice this past Monday (March 15th)! I finally got a minute to call the office just after 5pm, so I really wasn’t expecting them to answer since I thought they closed at 5pm. Someone must have forgotten to turn the phones over to the answering machine, because after several rings Dr. Trolice was the one who actually picked up. I’m sure he must have been busy with something that afternoon (especially since they close at 4:30pm), but he took about an hour away from what he was doing just to talk with me. Isn’t that awesome?! He could have very easily told me to call him back the next day or set up another consultation with him to discuss everything, but he didn’t.
He started off by expressing his sentiments for our failed cycle. I thanked him and began to ask what his thoughts were on why things didn’t work out and what we could have done differently? The first comment out of his mouth was, “I remember Kari had textbook uterine lining. She responded exactly like we would expect her to, so I think you have an absolutely perfect carrier. We had a very easy transfer with no sort of complications either.” All of this was good to hear! He went on to say that, “If everything looks right with the carrier, we then know we have an issue with the egg or the sperm.” Since Paul’s analysis came back as a near perfect sample, as far as the sperm count and the motility…that leaves me. The doctor looked back at my chart and recalled that they had used an unusually high dose of medication to stimulate my ovaries, compared to other 24 year old “donors”. He explained that while they hadn’t really expected me to need that much stimulation, that it was not necessarily a bad thing considering the partial hysterectomy I had 2 years earlier. Apparently, there are five main reasons why women would have “ovarian aging,” and major pelvic surgeries is one of them, due to the lack of blood supply to the ovaries. He didn’t seem like we would be up against a hopeless cause, he just needed to make a few minor adjustments to get the result we want…a tiny baby. He simply said, “We will definitely do an anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) test to see what your ovarian reserve looks like.” In a sense, they will test to see how “old” my ovaries are so, for example, they know if they need to treat me with medication doses for a typical 35 year old versus a 25 year old.
Another thing that he picked up on was the amount of suppression of my ovaries before we stimulated them. I was on straight birth control pills (I never took the placebos, so it basically shuts down the ovaries) for just about 2 months. In a normal situation, this wouldn’t necessarily matter, but since I have lazy ovaries (haha), it is harder for them to wake up and do their job after being “asleep” for so long. He said I won’t take birth control any longer than 3 weeks this time to help combat that. Also, he will reduce my lupron to micro doses (also called a “flare”), so as not to suppress my ovaries that way either. All in all, he seemed very optimistic about a successful second try.
So, speaking of a second try….how long will it take for us to get to that point again? Well, Dr. Trolice says as soon as Kari hits day 2 of her period we can come in and start right back up! Technically, we could be back on our birth control in about 2 weeks and have a transfer 6 weeks from then (mid-May)! We don’t have to do the whole “mock cycle,” the measuring of her uterus or any of that. That was awesome news to us! The only down side is that we have to come up with the money first. I did get a chance to talk with the new financial counselor at the clinic on the same day that I talked to Dr. Trolice, and she said that they could offer us an additional 10% off of the IVF fee. However, we are still looking at paying around $13-$15,000 for the IVF and the medication. Ugh!
When we first started this process, we had to speak with a psychologist whose job was to inform us of as many scenarios that could play out along our IVF journey. One of them was if we had a failed cycle, we may not feel like we could move forward either emotionally or financially. Sitting there we all thought, “we don’t care what we have to do to get the money…we will try again” and we also thought, “why would anyone not try again because of emotional strain? Not us!”-After going through it, I can totally identify with the feeling of not being able to go through this again…in my case, the saying “time heals” fits perfectly.
Here we go again! :)
He started off by expressing his sentiments for our failed cycle. I thanked him and began to ask what his thoughts were on why things didn’t work out and what we could have done differently? The first comment out of his mouth was, “I remember Kari had textbook uterine lining. She responded exactly like we would expect her to, so I think you have an absolutely perfect carrier. We had a very easy transfer with no sort of complications either.” All of this was good to hear! He went on to say that, “If everything looks right with the carrier, we then know we have an issue with the egg or the sperm.” Since Paul’s analysis came back as a near perfect sample, as far as the sperm count and the motility…that leaves me. The doctor looked back at my chart and recalled that they had used an unusually high dose of medication to stimulate my ovaries, compared to other 24 year old “donors”. He explained that while they hadn’t really expected me to need that much stimulation, that it was not necessarily a bad thing considering the partial hysterectomy I had 2 years earlier. Apparently, there are five main reasons why women would have “ovarian aging,” and major pelvic surgeries is one of them, due to the lack of blood supply to the ovaries. He didn’t seem like we would be up against a hopeless cause, he just needed to make a few minor adjustments to get the result we want…a tiny baby. He simply said, “We will definitely do an anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) test to see what your ovarian reserve looks like.” In a sense, they will test to see how “old” my ovaries are so, for example, they know if they need to treat me with medication doses for a typical 35 year old versus a 25 year old.
Another thing that he picked up on was the amount of suppression of my ovaries before we stimulated them. I was on straight birth control pills (I never took the placebos, so it basically shuts down the ovaries) for just about 2 months. In a normal situation, this wouldn’t necessarily matter, but since I have lazy ovaries (haha), it is harder for them to wake up and do their job after being “asleep” for so long. He said I won’t take birth control any longer than 3 weeks this time to help combat that. Also, he will reduce my lupron to micro doses (also called a “flare”), so as not to suppress my ovaries that way either. All in all, he seemed very optimistic about a successful second try.
So, speaking of a second try….how long will it take for us to get to that point again? Well, Dr. Trolice says as soon as Kari hits day 2 of her period we can come in and start right back up! Technically, we could be back on our birth control in about 2 weeks and have a transfer 6 weeks from then (mid-May)! We don’t have to do the whole “mock cycle,” the measuring of her uterus or any of that. That was awesome news to us! The only down side is that we have to come up with the money first. I did get a chance to talk with the new financial counselor at the clinic on the same day that I talked to Dr. Trolice, and she said that they could offer us an additional 10% off of the IVF fee. However, we are still looking at paying around $13-$15,000 for the IVF and the medication. Ugh!
When we first started this process, we had to speak with a psychologist whose job was to inform us of as many scenarios that could play out along our IVF journey. One of them was if we had a failed cycle, we may not feel like we could move forward either emotionally or financially. Sitting there we all thought, “we don’t care what we have to do to get the money…we will try again” and we also thought, “why would anyone not try again because of emotional strain? Not us!”-After going through it, I can totally identify with the feeling of not being able to go through this again…in my case, the saying “time heals” fits perfectly.
Here we go again! :)
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