Post-Appointment Update Extravaganza

I promised I'd come back to update about our consult with the head RE, and look at me - I'm following through!  It may have taken longer than I planned, but it's the thought that counts, right?

I thought our consult went pretty well overall.  It's a good thing B was there to join me in the meeting, because a lot of it revolved around updating our health histories and getting to know what testing and treatments we had done so far.  The nurse who we met with first was an interesting character.  She was very energetic and quirky ... she kind of reminded me of a Kristen Wiig-esque character from Saturday Night Live - obviously I thought she was great.  After going over my extensive list of treatments, the focus turned to B's testing, and we actually heard something new.  B saw a specialist last summer because my clinic had issues with his SA results, but the specialist said the results he saw didn't concern him, and that was it.  But at this latest appointment, both the nurse and the RE mentioned a notation about a varicocele.  We had no idea what they were talking about because it had been a year since he saw the specialist, but he didn't remember the doctor saying anything about varicocele.  I'm not sure when we'll get further clarification, so mostly the new information just confused us (mosty me) a little more.

Aside from that little surprise, we didn't really get a lot of information from the RE, but considering all she had to go off of was our past treatment information, that was expected.  We won't know our plan of action moving forward until we have some re-tests done, but the RE did mention some possibilities.  She was surprised that we didn't exhuast our options with the Letrozole (I only tried the lowest dose before I was moved to the Clomid/Follistim combo deal), so that's something that we'll probably revisit in hopes of getting better results.  She would rather have us exhaust all of our other options before moving on to the more aggressive treatments (which we - and our bank account and my tummy - really appreciate, because injectables are hella expensive, guys.  And stabbing a needle into your own tummy fat is no picnic).  Also, she was surprised that we even did a Clomid/Follistim combination - the "mother clinic" (that's what the nurse and RE call it - like the mothership of aliens) doesn't combine other medications with the injectables, they just start the injectables earlier in the cycle to hopefully boost egg growth.  It was pretty interesting to hear about what the main RE would do differently, and I'm looking forward to working with her.  One of my favorite things that they told us was that they like to change things up if they notice that they aren't working, rather than spinning our wheels and trying the same thing over and over, wasting time.  I'm hoping that this will keep us from feeling so stuck.

At the end of the appointment, I was given a shiny new Clinic Fertility Services folder packed full of information about their pricing for different procedures and testing (yep, that's right, this clinic actually wants us to know what the approximate costs of everything will be.  Amazing right??), general information about IF, a list of grants available for IVF (which appears to be outdated.  I checked out all of the websites, and a few of them have been inactive for a couple years) and copies of our insurance coverage and tests ordered.  I'm planning on starting a new folder o' stuff to keep everything together, and I'll close out my folder from my last clinic (that I didn't do a very good job of keeping updated).

The biggest drawback to this switch is that all of the appointments will take place at the mother clinic, which is located within the hospital, and of course the hospital is located about an hour away.  Getting to our frequent appointments was difficult enough, and now with the clinic being farther away and crazy work schedules coming our way (I'm back to the split shift soon, and B has a few work trips coming up) things are really going to get difficult.  It's looking like we'll continue our break through September, then hopefully get back to treatments and appointments by October.  More bumps in the road, but hopefully this new RE and clinic will get us closer to the light at the end of the  tunnel.