I'll get straight to the point - it hasn't been a picnic. But that's an understatement. Obviously, going into IVF, I knew it wasn't going to be easy. I also stupidly didn't think it would be such a shit-show. As it stands right now, about a quarter of the way through (halfway through the BCP/down-regulating cycle), more things have gone wrong than right. Fuck. Me.
It started going south from the very beginning. One of my results from the day 3 lab was flagged as abnormal. My prolactin was very slightly elevated at 25.9 (they don't want it to be higher than 25). I had to have a fasting retest a couple of days later, and that result came back well within normal parameters. It was a relief that I didn't need further testing, but the added stress wasn't appreciated at all.
And then came the appointment scheduling difficulties. It was brought to my attention at the lab appointment that I needed to have a sonohysterogram (saline sonogram) and trial embyro transfer done. Even though both procedures are pretty close to the same thing, they couldn't be done at the same appointment, which is a bit of a pain in the ass for someone who doesn't drive. Things were made more complicated when the best time to schedule the appointments was during a week when B needed to travel for work. Eventually, I got everything figured out and booked for a Tuesday and Wednesday. My sisters had plans to spend the week at our house while B was gone, and they were sweet enough to drive my pedestrian ass to the appointment (note: not plural. Keep reading). The SHG showed a few possible polyps, so the trial transfer the following day was canceled, and a hysteroscopic polypectomy was scheduled for the first week in September. The surgery is necessary - not removing the polyps decreases our chances of a successful IVF by two thirds, but it wasn't on our radar at all, a complete curveball. Not only did the surgery produce two extra appointments to schedule (3, if you count rescheduling the trial transfer), it brings an unexpected expense along with it. I spent a bit of time today trying to find out just how much this surgery is going to cost us, and the answer is: more than we'd like. We'll already be meeting our deductible, thanks to the IVF medications, and with this surgery, we'll also be meeting our out of pocket maximum payment. Overall, it'll only (ha!) cost us maybe $2,000, but it's extra money we hadn't anticipated on spending (and that we don't really have), and it's freaking us out.
I ran into a little more difficulty with appointment scheduling this morning, when I called to set up our injection training session and consent signing. I was hoping to sneak both appointments in around the time that we have our pre-op appointment, but I was only able to schedule the injection training for the same day. I'm hoping that our RE will be kind enough to let us do the consent signing at the pre-op appointment and save B from missing more work, but I have a feeling that won't work out.
And finally, to top it all off, there were some issues with the IVF med prescriptions. They were originally called into the specialty pharmacy I had used for our IUI cycles. I had good experiences with them and thought this would be an easy process. Then I found out that the only way to have the specialty meds applied toward our health deductible and co-insurance is to have them filled by an insurance approved pharmacy. All of the prescriptions (15 pages of them) had to be transferred to a new pharmacy. When the first pharmacy tried to transfer them via fax, only the first page came through, so that created another problem, but that was eventually sorted by the pharmacy representatives helping with my order. By going through the hassle of having the prescriptions transferred, we were able to save quite a bit of money, so the extra stress from transferring ended up being worth it.
Hopefully all of the issues we've faced so far aren't foreshadowing a completely shitty cycle. I just can't let that happen - all of this nonsense needs to pay off. If it doesn't, I'll probably lose my mind (what's left of it, anyway).
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