Well, we had our relaxing vacation in Maine! It was great. We did have a bit of a heat wave up there, but thankfully, it would still get cool at night. We got to see some family and spend a lot of time with M's parents. I do have to keep in mind though that vacations with the in-laws are never as relaxing as I think that they are going to be - despite how great they are.
We came back to a whirlwind of happenings at work and home. Our oven has been broken for a while and we finally got around to telling our landlord! He told us to go pick out a new one and gave us a $500 budget. Total score! The new one is being delivered tomorrow and I can't wait.
Finally on to the IVF. I still have the bcp's. Although my face has FINALLY cleared up! Along with my back and chest (that's right, I get boob-zits.... ugh.). We had our 'start' visit with the RE on Thursday that included a trial transfer. The trial transfer went well. I wasn't sure what to expect pain-wise especially since I had such a horrid HSG. Fortunately my RE was able to do in about 10 seconds what it took the HSG dr to do in 45 minutes (that's right OMG.). The saline barely made me cramp at all!! It was both good and bad. I was kinda hoping to not have to go to work after because I would be vegging the pain away on the couch. Oh well. My ovaries are clear but a fibroid was found - my first. They run in the family, but holy cow, what timing. It was 16mm x 17mm and thankfully did not interfere with the internal part of the uterus. It was just hanging out in the wall. I blame the bcp's. I mean, why not? It wasn't there 3 months ago and it is the only thing different that I have been on since then.
Then, Thursday after work came the scare. Let me preface this by saying that M and I got extremely lucky in May and we are extremely grateful for this. The health insurance from my work (and FSA) goes from Jan to Dec. At M's work, it goes from July - June. We had already exhausted my FSA for the year (in February...) so at almost the last minute in May, I remembered that M should have open enrollment any time now. Turns out it was the next week. So we set about deciding how much money we should put into the FSA. During this, I had another thought - we hadn't looked into M's insurance yet. You see, he has an HMO with dr's that he loves. I DO NOT like the HMO that he is on. I have heard horrible things about them from other people, but M has had such a great experience with them. In California, it is a state law that insurance companies have to offer infertility treatment to employers when they are developing plans to offer employees. However, he employers do not have to make it a part of their plan (mine work doesn't). Then we found out, M's work does. What a windfall! We have a decent chunk of change saved up which could probably serve as a down payment on a house in most markets of the country, but not Los An.geles. This had become our baby-making / adoption fund. In order to save some for emergencies, we had decided that we could only do one IVF cycle so that we would have enough money for adoption if that fell through. The insurance would have a $1200 deductable and then cover 90% of infertility services (in-plan) up to a $25,000 lifetime max - including prescription meds. We were completely thrilled and soo soo surprised and extremely thankful. We figured that we could get 3 IVFs for a little over the cost of one.
Ok, back to Thursday. M picks me up at work and we head to the scratch and dent to pick out an oven. Along the way he tells me that the pharmacy called him about our IVF meds and that the main ones (read: expensive) are not covered. He said to charge it and about $3,000 of meds were charged to his credit card. I freaked out. Here is why: We set aside $5,000 for this cycle - paltry I know in terms of IVF costs, but our RE's billing staff said that we probably wouldn't even need this much with the insurance. So the fact that most of the drugs were not covered was a huge shock that we were not prepared for. I am a planner by nature and it made me question the future of our IVF. We could definitely go through with this cycle, but would this be it? The insurance could not even give me a list of exactly what infertility meds they DID cover WTF!! What would happen when we got to the procedures? Would they be denied too? Maybe they only cover clomid and ultrasounds and call that infertility treatment - who knows. There were no managers to speak to at the insurance company as it was after hours. Needless to say I was NOT happy.
On Friday I called everyone, the RE, the pharmacy, the insurance. To make LONG story just a bit shorter, my RE's billing person was shocked. When we called our insurance we got a very nice lady on the phone, C. She was able to very quickly clarify that the pharmacy portion of our plan did NOT cover the infertility meds, HOWEVER the MEDICAL portion did. We just needed to pay up front and submit a claim to the company. WHY oh WHY could the lady the day before have said that???? This is NOT a time that I need stress. Mind you we still need to send in the paperwork and see if it actually gets reimbursed, but it made so much more sense that way. The paperwork is ready to be mailed on Monday.
So then stress subsided (Wheeewwww!). Now, back to focusing on the IVF itself. I am trying to take this one day at a time. I am focusing on making follicles! I am not quite to the stim part yet, but since I am not sure what is going on right now, that is the first step I am focusing on. I am usually quite particular about knowing exactly what is going on when, but this is part of my stress reduction plan - go with the flow.
Ok, I was going to end with an inspirational quote, but I couldn't find any that satisfied my at the moment.
