New Plan - Plan F

Well the plan has completely changed.  I am calling this Plan F since its our 6th try/change.  We will now be going to a doc in NY and probably doing IVF.  I talked to them Tuesday and scheduled a phone consult for Nov 7th.  They were soooo nice and my appt is with the main doctor.  He is the one who open/created the 3 fertility centers he has.  They emailed me paperwork and sign on information to fill out patient information to prepare for our appt. (which I still need to do)  Oh and guess what..... the consult is FREE!!  I was totally shocked.  We have gotten nothing for free during this struggle.  I think this says a lot for their center.  I just feel so good about this now.  Monday was such a bad day after hearing how much money our IVM would be so I decided to make that Negative a Positive.  This just feels right.

Everything I have heard/read about this center is great.  I love that they have a fb page and people have left positive feedback.  Also they put all their pricing on their website so I believe there won't be any curve balls thrown at us regarding money anyways.  I think there will always be other curve balls when dealing with fertility because nothing ever goes as plan with it.  This place is much cheaper.  IVF at Dr R's he said was 18,000 and since he under quotes as I have learned its probably closer to 25,000.  Well at this new center it's 5,000 plus meds which they say is about 3,000 and monitoring which they charge 750 for.  Plus we can save 10 percent by prepaying!  Also we can buy multiple IVFs for cheaper.  Which we might do. I just want to find out more details about that first.  Oh and included with that 5,000 is a FET as well. 

Now the only downfall is I have to call and cancel my appts at Dr. Rs.  I just really don't want to call and do that, but it has to be done soon. 

If you can't tell I am so happy and excited with this choice which is not like me. Usually I am nervous and freaking out with changes.  So this just seems right in so many ways.  I hope my gut is right and we will be pregnant soon!!

Bad News

So I said last Friday I was going to call my doc and make all my appts..... well they were closed so I had to do it today.  A blessing in disguise I guess because it would have ruined my weekend.  I never imagined they would tell me what they did.  I got all my appts set up no problem, but then I asked about cost so that I could have the money ready.  Well the doc told us at our appt everything would cost 8000.  I told him my insurance wouldn't cover anything and I wanted to know how much it all would be total and that is what he said.  Well I didnt believe him and budgeted for 10,000 thinking that surely would be enough.  Well I was very wrong.  All my appts before I even start the cycle will cost $970.  Then what I have to pay at my first ultrasound for the IVM will be $9,900.  Then we have to have 2 vials of ICI sperm 900 dollars total.  I still have NO idea why they need two????  You need less sperm for IVM especially using ICSI which I asked if that was included in the 9,900 and was told yes so why do I need two vials of sperm???  The lady couldn't give me an answer! 

So we are looking at almost 12,000 without the cost of medications.  Right now we don't have that and I am worried about doing it with this clinic.  Now I just don't feel right about it.  I feel lied to and like they are trying to get extra money especially when they are making me buy 2 vials. 

I have till Nov 12th to make up my mind.  I am going to look into another clinic and see if I can get a consult with them.  There I believe IVF is cheaper, but I don't think they do IVM which I don't like.  I guess I just have to figure out is what's best for us.  Right now I have no idea!!

Awful "Diet"

So I am still not doing well with this new "diet" to gain weight.  It is hard and now I know what all the "dieters" feel like.  I want sooo much to go back to how I always ate.  Forcing myself to eat things I don't really like and to eat when I am not even hungry is not fun.  So I can understand how people trying to lose weight must feel.  I am guilty for thinking "how hard can it be to diet?"  Well now I am eating those words.  Its Fing hard!!  I just wish I could switch with one of my friends trying to lose weight.  If she ate what I like to eat and I eat what she likes to eat it would work out perfect.  But of course this can't happen =( I miss veggies and fruits soooooo much and I am hating milk and meat more then I did to begin with!

Last weekend G and I went to Philly to visit my sister.  We went to the Zoo, Penns Landing, and South Street.  It was nice to spend time with my sister and get away from home.  Here is a pic of us last weekend!

Today I have to call the doctors office and make the appt for mock transfer and biopsy.  I have been putting it off because they scare me but it needs to be done.  Also I need to make an appt for our education class.  We had this for our IUIs but I guess we need a new one for IVM. 

I have been soooo nervous about spending close to 10,000 on IVM.  I am terrified it won't work and all we will be left with is a huge bill.  I know I can tax deduct it but I am not sure how much that will help us in the end.  We are redoing our front porch and the timing is awful.  Its been something we've wanted to do for awhile and had a contractor look into it more then a year ago.  He is starting work now of course.  I guess when it rains it pours so its more money I will have to borrow. 

Borrowing money freaks me out.  I wasn't brought up that way.  My dad makes good money now but my parents came from poor families and really struggled for a long time when I was little so I saw them try to save money anyway they could.  So I am "cheap" as my dad tells me.  My mom then tells him its because of them that I am. lol They hardly ever borrowed money and never used credit cards the "normal" way.  Mom always used the credit card so she wouldn't have to carry cash but paid it off every month.  I now do the same.  I call it using the credit card companies lol I don't like to have any debit besides my house and car payments...anything else makes me VERY nervous.  My mom jokes and says they didn't pay me off till I was 3 years old! lol They didn't have health insurance so they just made payments.  I keep trying to remind myself of this.  It is really the same idea...they were willing to have me even though they didn't have the money.  It is a little different but the same idea.  G and I will make it work.  I just hope we have a baby at the end of this struggle because that will make all the money spent worth it!

IVM

Ok so I went and saw the Dietitian.  I am underweight...I knew that!!  I am 5'7" and weigh about 112.  I don't get enough calories in a day.  I like fruits and veggies not as much meat and cheese.  So a diet change is in order.  I know I am not going to like this.  I need to drink whole milk a lot more, drink carnation instant breakfast every morning, if I eat a salad I have to put eggs or meat on it plus eat bread, and I just have to eat a lot more cheese, meat, peanut butter, bread, and pasta.  I am trying my best, but not doing well yet.  Its hard to make a change and especially when I am trying to force it and anyone I told about it is forcing bites of food down my throat!  Ugh we will see how this goes!

I mentioned in my last blog I was hoping to do the shared egg program for IVF my doc offers well there isn't anyone wanting eggs so that's probably a no go.  He said he will keep us in mind if someone comes in needing eggs but I am not going to hold my breath.  I did find out if we were able to do that it would still cost us about 4000-6000 dollars depending on the other person's insurance coverage. 

So now what do we do??  Well I asked him what he suggested now and he mentioned injectable IUIs and I told him we wanted to be more aggressive.  So he thinks we should do IVM.  Most people probably don't know what it is and haven't even heard of it.  It's not done much and Dr. R is one of the few docs in the US who do it I think.  If you go to www.IVFandIVM.com you can find more information about it.  I am hoping someone out there will do a search and find this blog who has done IVM and give me some info because I don't know anyone who has done it and would like to.  It is going to cost us around 8000-9000 but IVF at my doc is 18000-20000.  So its cheap in comparison I guess.  There are many positives with IVM for me one is that its less meds so less shots whoo hoo!! lol Also Dr R gets better results with IVM then IVF so it ups our odds too.  So I started birth control and I go off that Nov 18th I think.  I had already been taking the Metformin, prenatals, vit D and fish oil but now I have to take Co Q 10 also.  None of it is cheap but the Co Q 10 was over 20 dollars for a month supply I was kinda shocked. 

So next month I have to get a biopsy of my uterus which is suppose to help with implanting.  My lining has always been thin so we are going to try anything to help with implanting! If anyone has any other suggestions to help with lining please let me know!! I also have to do a mock transfer.  I am thinking about doing these both at same time to save on travel and pain.  When I had my SIS (Saline Infusion Sonohysterography) done he couldn't get into my uterus so he had to put a painful clamp thing on my cervix.  He said he would do them both at same time, but that its making a short painful process a lot longer.  So I need to think about it. 

I am VERY nervous about spending that kind of money.  I might have been freaking out for a few days and G has had to calm me down.  lol If it works then its all worth it, but if it doesn't it will be very hard.  IVM should be in Dec so my friends and family won't be getting much for Christmas this year! lol

In the Present

So this finally brings us to the PRESENT!! Yay I did it!! lol I was able to get all the background done before the end of the weekend. We have an appt with Dr. Rose tomorrow to discuss our options. No more IUIs. We would like to do the Shared Egg Program he offers where I share my eggs with another couple/woman and it pays for most of my IVF. When I called about a month ago I wasn't able to get much information about it they just scheduled me for an appt with the doc to discuss it.  She did tell me they didn't have anyone waiting for eggs so that's not good news.  Hopefully something has changed since then.  I would really like to help someone else while saving us some money, but if we have to pay we will find a way.  We have a little savings, but not enough to pay for IVF and all the meds that go with it.  My insurance will not pay for injectables or IVF. 

G and I are having a 31 and Tupperware party tonight so I really need to get cleaning this house!!  I work a half day tomorrow then off to see a dietitian before seeing Dr. Rose.  I am under weight.... I always have been, but really want to weigh more.  I believe it might help with fertility as well so I talked to my doc about it and got an appt at 2 and we see Dr. Rose at 5.  Hopefully both appts go well!  I will let you know!

New Doctor New Start

So Dr. R's main office is about 2.5 hours away but he comes closer about an hour away once a month.  So we make the appt for 9/13/11.  I fought with Geisinger (where my previous doc was) to get all my records faxed to me to take with me.  Took awhile but was able to get them.  Wish I knew where I put them then I would of had more details about the follicles lol I hadn't thought of that till right now oops lol oh well...anyways I highlighted parts I wanted to point out and ask questions about to Dr. R.  It was probably close to 100 pages long.  One part even said I was in early menopause which no one had told me...luckily when I saw Dr. R he confirmed this wasn't true thank god!  But he discovered I do have PCOS and starts me on 1500mg of Metformin and birth control.  He also saw I have polyps and might have endometriosis.  No wonder I wasn't getting pregnant...this made me more mad we had wasted our 3 tries paid thru insurance. Too late now.  So I was scheduled for surgery December 2nd.  He also discusses our options IUI of course, IVM, and IVF.  We weren't ready to spend a lot of money at that time.  I believed once we have the surgery IUI will work. 

Surgery went well and I go off the birth control and was given femera this time.  I call the docs office to discuss how I have the sperm delivered.  He is able to store the sperm there and actually has a stock of donors there, but we want to send the one we had used last time.  On the phone, I find out it will cost an extra 300 dollars plus 50 dollars a month for storage just to have it there so we look into the donors he has and find one we like.  Our first ultrasound with him is done on Jan 21st.  We had to be in his local office at 7, but there was a bad snow storm and it took us forever to get there we luckily got there a few mins before the ultrasound tech had to leave and they were able to do it.  I had many good follicles again but my lining wasn't good.  That's a problem I had with all my IUIs so he gave me a script for Estrogen I believe.  It made me very sick and I wasn't able to keep any food down till I was able to stop taking it after the IUI.  Our 4th IUI was on Jan 23rd in his main office.  My friend drove me because G had just started a new job and wasn't able to take off.  It went well but 2 weeks later I got my period AGAIN!  This IUI cost us 1500 dollars plus meds so we were outta money and our relationship wasn't doing well after all these ups and downs.  I had some mood swings with all the meds and idk how to describe it but felt like a baby making machine I guess so this caused some problems in our relationship.  We took time off from trying to save some money and work on us.  It was a huge struggle and I wasn't sure we would make it, but we did and are ready to start trying again.

3rd Try must be a Charm!....Wrong!

Ok so this brings us to IUI #3.  We took another month off to save up money.  Insurance paid some but not all and we didn't want to take out loans.  Plus emotionally I needed time to recover.  We started looking for a new donor to see if that would help.  We found a donor 6'1" brown eyes with auburn curly hair #4001 which we liked even more then the first.  I was sure this was going to be our time!  We did 100mg of clomid again and this time our timing was better only needed one U/S.  It was on June 28th, 2011.  Again I wish I could remember how many follicles but I know I had at least 4 that were good sized so the IUI was scheduled for June 30th.  I overnighted the sperm to the clinic. Again Ha to Mean Nurse I was able to get it there in plenty of time!! 

Every time we were sure we were pregnant but again after the tww and many BFN home pregnancy tests my period came again.  It was hard on us both.  We weren't sure what to do now and I was upset we hadn't changed methods or doctors sooner while I still had insurance coverage.  My friend went to a different doc Dr. R for her IUIs so I decided to call and make an appt with him.  I knew he cost a lot more and my family doc had referred us to Dr G so that is why we hadn't gone to him in the first place.  So now I was kicking myself for not going to him but it was too late we didn't have a time machine unfortunately!! 

Try # 2

I guess I should start out by saying I am sorry it has taken me sooo long to write again.  I was trying to do it everyday and well that only worked for 3 days lol Now I have to hurry and try to give all the rest of the background ASAP so I can get to the present!!  I hope to do this by the end of the weekend....that is my challenge for myself!

So April 13th 2011 we have an appt with Dr. G to discuss our options from here.  I never thought we would be there discussing try #2 since of course we were gonna get pregnant on the first try....WRONG!  Seemed like everything went wrong on the first try which I had predicted and tried to prevent and I made sure Dr. G knew this!  Dr. G told me it would be fine to get the sperm delivered after we have our ultrasound to see how many follicles (ha take that Mean Nurse lol) but that if I was about to ovulate and it was a weekend I might not be able to get the sperm delivered in time and I might have to overnight it.  I was ok with both those things and had tried to tell Mean Nurse that as well!!  Overnighting it and paying for the two week tank (which I had to do the first time since we had no idea how soon we would be using the sperm) were about the same cost anyways.  So I was happy about this and actually Dr. G made sure to tell this to Mean Nurse right in front of me!! Again making me feel good! lol Also she said she was going to up my Clomid to 100mg or we could consider injectables and gave me the info about that.  I don't do well with needles as mentioned earlier so I wanted to wait on that.  I did look up the cost and it was going to be about 1500 dollars for just the meds.  So anyways we left that appt feeling much better and now feeling like the 2nd try was going to be the one!

This time we had an ultra sound on day 3 to make sure the cyst was gone and it was so I was able to start the clomid.  Mean Nurse does all the ultra sounds and scheduling them so after we were finished she went to schedule our day 11 U/S and made sure to remind us that we HAD to have to sperm delivered that day.  I reminded her what the doc had said she acted like she didn't remember but I just ignored her.  I remember clomid having a lot of side effects and being very moody.  I know this wasn't easy for G.  April 28th we go in for our 2nd ultra sound for this cycle.  I wish I had written down our follicle numbers and sizes because of course now I forget!! Booo!  Anyways I believe we had about 4 on each side that were ok in size but not big enough yet.  That was a Thursday so they had me come back on Monday for another ultra sound and my follicles then were REALLY big.  In the late 20s if I remember right and a few 16s.  I was concerned they were too big but the doc didn't seem concerned.   I ordered the sperm and was able to get it delivered Monday didn't even have to pay extra for shipping so it worked out (ha take that again Mean Nurse)  So we triggered that Monday when we got home.  I had my friend who was going to nursing school run over to our house to give me the shot because G refuses to do it again!  The next morning we had our 2nd IUI (May 3rd).  We used the same donor and I even got Fairfax to give us free shipping because I had missed a sale they were having by one day and I called and asked if I could still have it and they said yes!!  I always say "it can't hurt to call and ask...the worst they can say is no!"  I use that philosophy if I ever get a late fee too...sometimes I forget to pay a bill oops lol ...and I am pretty sure I have been successful every time at getting them to take the charges off.  I am CHEAP lol you can ask G... if I can save a buck I will take the time to do it.  She is the opposite and that drives me crazy sometimes lol

So I wish there was a happy ending to this blog but there isn't sadly.  My period came after the 2ww.  I didn't even bother going for the blood work.  FAIL # 2! 

To end on a better note I will post a pic of G and I.  This is from our last Vacation in Arizona!