Our Infertility Journey: Let the Fun Begin!

First off I would like to express my appreciation to EVERYONE for your incredible support! I am so overwhelmed by the positive reaction I received from my first post, THANK YOU!!! And my anxiety is finally deciding to take a walk... haha! I'm sure that will get better overtime too.

So this week was pretty crazy with getting everything ready to start the IVF treatment. I had an appointment on Tuesday to do a water ultrasound, which is an ultrasound where they inject water into your uterus during the ultrasound. This makes it more clear for the doctor to see whats going on, and it helps to see if there is any problems that need to be taken care of before we start the process. I also had to have a biopsy done on my uterus during this appointment too. HOLY COW did that hurt!!! They tell you to take 800 Mg of ibuprofen before your appointment, which just doesn't cut it for what they are about to do to you. During the procedure they literally just cut a piece of your uterus out like its fruit or something. It's okay though, I know it will be worth it. They will test the sample to make sure that my uterus lining is healthy and let us know the results this week.

Wednesday I had a phone appointment with my IVF coordinator Morgan, and she went over my plan of care and calendar with me. Good thing she did, because just looking at the calendar is pretty overwhelming! I posted a picture, you can check out what I mean. The calendar tells you what medications you need to take daily, appointments, ultrasounds, blood work, and a couple other things. This makes things much easier than if I were to just write it all down and try to remember what it all means. Thursday I had another phone appointment with my financial coordinator Sara. She has been dealing with my insurance and getting preauthorization for the treatment and making sure everything is good to go on that side. I can't even explain to you how grateful I am for Sara!! With other clinics I have gone to, I've had to do all of the insurance stuff myself. I can't even count the number of hours I have spent on the phone with the insurance company and getting absolutely no where. So to have someone else do it for you and just call you with what you need to know is AMAZING!!

All of my medications came on Saturday, which was a relief! With IVF, most of your medications come from a specialty pharmacy usually out of state. The pharmacy mine are coming from is in Massachusetts, so it was all shipped by mail. When I talked with Morgan on Tuesday, she told me that she had called in all of my prescriptions and that it was a priority shipment because I needed them by Sunday. The pharmacy had called me shortly after talking with Morgan and we got everything worked out and ready to go. They had to put a credit card of file in case I had a copay for the medications. I was fine with that and they said they would call me if there was a problem. So on Friday, I had a feeling to check my email. Well I had an email from the pharmacy saying the they had been trying to contact me and I needed to call them "at my earliest convenience." I called right away. The lady I talked to proceeded to tell me that due to my full deductible not being met with my insurance that my copay would be more than normal and she wanted to verify that the amount I needed to pay was going to be okay. So I'm sitting here thinking, alright $500-$700 bucks will be okay. Ummm NO. The price was $1632 dollars!!!! I think after she told me I just sat there for a couple seconds not saying anything... I was in SHOCK! $1600 dollars is the copay, are you kidding me? I can't even imagine full price. After I was able to wrap my brain around what she had just told me, I told her I needed to call my husband. The lady told me that was fine, and that they could send out the order Saturday and that it would be here by Monday. Wait, that doesn't work, I said "No I need it Sunday..." She then said "oh okay, we can get it out on our 8 o'clock truck but in order to guarantee that, you will need to call back within the next 20 minutes at most." I told her that was fine and immediately called my insurance to see what in the world was going on. They explained to me that since my deductible wasn't fully met that I would have to pay the amount required and that they would reimburse for the overage. I was okay with that and then called Tyk to make sure it was okay with him too. He pretty much just said we didn't have another choice so to just go ahead and pay it. Oh how I love him! I called back in time to get the order on the 8 o'clock truck and it was on its way!

I started my first shot this morning, and it wasn't too bad. I will continue with this shot once a day for about a month. From what I've read, this injection is a pretty smooth one. Its the next two injections that are the more painful ones. I don't start those ones for a couple of weeks, so for now I will enjoy the not so bad pinch. Tomorrow Tyker and I both start a ZPack, which is just short of an antibiotic. We both will take this for about a week just to be sure that neither of us have any bugs floating around our systems.

Well that's the update for now!

Thanks for reading!!

Shandee