My Uterus the Science Oven
11/6/18 - 11/8/18
I was supremely disappointed in the movie American Hustle. But even at that, Jon and I still quote one of Jennifer Lawrence’s lines at each other or years later. “It’s a science of an! It cooks shit!”
She, of course, was talking about a microwave. Well, my uterus is about to become a science oven.
Yes, I spoke to my doctor recently, and we came up with our “follow up plan.” It’s something we were all thought about in middle school health class that sounded kind of crazy. It always seem to me like so far away, something that only desperate people would ever need.
I guess I officially qualify as desperate.
So options when you're going through the kind of infertility nonsense that we are are IUI (artifical insemination) or IVF (in vetro fertilization). IUI has a lower success rate, but a lot of health insurance companies require you to have a few rounds of this done first as it's less costly and invasive. When I first started looking into fertility treatment a few months ago, I had a talk with a financial advisor who said that my insurance doesn't require any IUI; I could go straight to IVF. At the time it sounded great. IVF has a 65% success rate. Yay.
But being on the phone actually with my doctor who was actually saying that this was the course of action that she was recommending made me curl up into the fetal position on a public restroom floor and cry.
Why is it so easy for some people? Isn't making babies supposed to be fun, not sciencey?
Don't get my wrong, the IVF process is amazing. The fact that your baby can be made in a petri dish, grown there for a few days, tested for genetic defects and gender, and then put into your uterus is really cool. In theory.
When faced with the reality of it, it's painful. I just want to be normal. I don't want to have to have a science baby. (Not that there's anything wrong with it; I myself am a product of IUI.) But I want to be normal. Is that so hard to understand?
Coming to terms with not being normal is defeating. Okay, my body gives up for some unknown reason. It won't do one of the things it's biologically designed to do. Something is wrong with me.
And we don't know what. Still. There's some speculation that it might have something to do with my husband rather than me, but nothing definite. No answers. Other than science. Yay.
And while the science is miraculous and I should be grateful that it exists and that my insurance covers it, there's also the hassle it's going to be. IUI and IVF, from my very basic and nearly non-existant understanding, both involve a lot of taking hormones, both as pills and as injections and getting various levels measured and the butt crack of dawn every other day.
11/11/18
It's NaNoWriMo, and I'm trying to keep up with that, so I haven't had a chance to finish this entry, but so much has happened since I started it. So phase two.
Tuesday the 6 was when we came up with the IVF plan. After the crying on the floor and the crying to some coworkers, my friend told me to enjoy my weekend (we had a long one), drink a lot (I don't really drink at all), and to not think about this. I was so excited to go away and do just all of that.
Wednesday night, we drove down to DC. It was miraculous that we were able to do that, as Jon (hubby) was scheduled to have jury duty Thursday. Luckily, his group was told Wednesday they weren't needed. So off we went.
Thursday morning, we were walking to breakfast when I got a phone call from my financial advisor, someone the fertility clinic has set me up with. I had spoken to her once before; she was nice and worked hard to get all the info I needed about insurance. During the first conversation, she had told me that my insurance covered IVF as a first option without having to do IUI first, which is unusual. On Thursday, though, she acted like she wasn't sure about this. And she brought up the term "medical necessity." Like, they'll cover it for you if it's a "medical necessity." She would put together a financial package for me, send it over, and we'd have a phone conference the next day to discuss the worst case scenario.
You know what no one seems to take into account as a medical necessity? Mental health. This entire thing is making me crazy, which I hate (if you hadn't guessed that already). Every day, I am more aware of how much babies are prevalent in society. Just for a day, look around. See how many ads involve babies or pregnant women. Then see how many pregnant women or women with strollers you witness in real life every day. Then listen to the conversations of random people. The vast majority of conversations of adults are based around what their children are doing, no matter how old they are. In other words, the world is full of triggers to someone dealing with fertility issues. Every day I feel pushed closer to the brink of a break down. Actually, being at work is where I deal with this the least, despite the vast number of women with infants I work with. I mostly have to deal with the hormonal issues of 13 year olds, which keeps my mind off the baby thing.
But the point is, the medical necessity is my sanity. Can that be an actual thing? If not, can some of us get together and fight for it?
I worried for the rest of Thursday about that. I tried not to, to know that if I had to do IUI for a few rounds first, I'd be right there with all the other women who have to go through that, who can't afford IVF. But still. I had spent 24 hours getting used to the idea of one type of science baby, and now, that might not even be the immediate possiblity.
Meanwhile, the clinic e-mailed me something about getting a prescription filled and a calendar on which to mark my IVF cycle. It seemed insensitive since now I wasn't even sure IVF was going to happen. I get it, not their fault. But I started to feel more like an insurance paycheck than a human.
Friday morning, I wasn't even above ground to get the phone call from the advisor, thanks to the Metro of DC being messy. I called her back from a French coffee shop, where we were trying to order breakfast, and where I instead ended up crying again. Yes, my insurance will cover IVF, but there are a few parts of it that aren't covered. One of these is the freezing of embryos, which is an essential part of it, and that costs $1,000. The other part is nonessential; it's the testing of the embryos. While this isn't necessary for IVF, it increases your chances of success by 25%. It identifies the most valid embryos, the ones that are most likely to take, and it even allows you to choose the gender of your child. My doctor spoke to me about that on Tuesday and strongly recommended it to me. Picking the gender of our child was one of the upshots of this whole thing (weird as that sounds and feels). We were getting used to it. That testing: $3,700.
That's right. Most people get to have fun and don't have to pay anything to make a baby. (I know it costs to give birth; I'm talking about the process of procreating.) I'm now looking at paying $5,000 for a 65% chance to make a child.
Do you all see why I continued to cry and worry into my coffee and baguette?
So I walked around all day yesterday with that concern in my head. The wonder of whether or not we want to spend that money to up the chances. (BTW, there's also the cost of storing the embryos afterwards in case we want a second child and can't conceive and don't want to go through the entire IVF process before.)
I got a phone call from a pharmacy in Massachusetts (I live in NJ) about my prescription. They left a voicemail; I should call them back asap. Again, still on vacation here, so I'd call them soon.
Today. Maybe I'd get one day of not thinking about this IVF garbage. I'd try to call the pharmacy, but if it had to wait until Monday, fine. Right?
Wrong. TMI warning (?) about fun lady stuff.
According to the super accurate (hear the sarcasm in my voice) period tracker app I use (women's bodies; always accurate), I would get my period on Wednesday. To be fair, it's usually either exactly right or off by one or two days.
There's also the fact that I've had some minor nausea every day for the last week or so. I hoped it meant I'd just be pregnant naturally, but I didn't hope hard. I hoped hard once before, and it led to major disappointment.
Good thing I wasn't too excited, because at 5:00 today, in the middle of the Museum of the American Indian, I got my period. The amount of complication this causes is unbelievable.
I'm supposed to go into the clinic on the third day of my period between 6-7:30am to have some testing done. My nurse has very much accentuated that Day 1 of your cycle means full flow, not spotting. Well, full flow is on, but it didn't start until very late in the day. So is this Day 1 or not?
My nurse isn't in on weekends. I'll have to call someone else tomorrow, someone who doesn't know me, to tell them about this. And to ask what day I need to go in for my levels. Meanwhile, I haven't had time to talk to my boss about this yet, and I may need to go in Monday morning. And since Monday will be the first day that I'm doing this, I don't know how long I'll need to talk to someone about my medication regimen and how to give myself the shots that I need to give myself. (Yes, another fun part of this is taking pills and shots; something to do with increasing egg production and other fun hormones. A friend of mine assured me it's not that bad, though she does get headaches from the shots. Other people online have said they get violently ill from all this. I'll fall somewhere on that spectrum, I'm sure.) So will I be late to work? How can I know how much time I'll need?
(We won't even get into how tired I'm going to be on Monday, and my mother in law is coming to visit for a month, and I want to work off the food I've eaten this weekend, but I don't know if I'll have time to work out if I'm exhausted...)
In the middle of the museum, I called the pharmacy since now it looks like I'm going to need these medications asap. They needed my insurance information, but I didn't happen to have my card with me. That set me off dry sobbing. The poor woman on the phone told me nicely to calm down and asked me please not to cry or else she would start crying also. (I think they're going to put a tear jerking warning next to my name for anyone who has to deal with me.) Jon had his copy of my insurance card, so I could give them some of the info. But I didn't have my prescription card on me, and I won't until I get home tomorrow, which will probably be after their offices close for the day. I don't even know if that card has all the information I need or if I need to call my insurance company to get it. And is anyone there on a Sunday? I don't know.
If I can get the pharmacy all this information in a timely fashion, the soonest I can have the medications is Friday. And I'm going to need it to start this cycle between Monday-Wednesday depending on a few things. Someone told me if I call insurance they may be able to expedite the medication. Okay, but even at that, will I have it in time? And will that cost money? And I don't know how much the medication is going to cost with my co-pay as it is. So add that cost to the $4,700 I have to pay for this.
Someone also told me that I need to pay in full before my treatment starts. Well, no one talked to me about when I do make that payment. Do I need to do that when I go in, or is it already too late by then?
The timing of all of this has sucked. I went through a long period where nothing happened when we made our first appointment for September. Then a lot went down in two weeks, as my period started immediately after that appointment, and I had to go in for copious amounts of testing. Then there was 3-4 weeks of down time before I was able to get a follow up appointment. I wish someone had looked at when I was supposed to get my period again, though, so that we could have started this plan two weeks ago rather than mere days before my period started again. Because now I have all of these questions that I can't get answered and may not get answered before it's too late.
Another month wasted. That's what it feels like.
I was supremely disappointed in the movie American Hustle. But even at that, Jon and I still quote one of Jennifer Lawrence’s lines at each other or years later. “It’s a science of an! It cooks shit!”
She, of course, was talking about a microwave. Well, my uterus is about to become a science oven.
Yes, I spoke to my doctor recently, and we came up with our “follow up plan.” It’s something we were all thought about in middle school health class that sounded kind of crazy. It always seem to me like so far away, something that only desperate people would ever need.
I guess I officially qualify as desperate.
So options when you're going through the kind of infertility nonsense that we are are IUI (artifical insemination) or IVF (in vetro fertilization). IUI has a lower success rate, but a lot of health insurance companies require you to have a few rounds of this done first as it's less costly and invasive. When I first started looking into fertility treatment a few months ago, I had a talk with a financial advisor who said that my insurance doesn't require any IUI; I could go straight to IVF. At the time it sounded great. IVF has a 65% success rate. Yay.
But being on the phone actually with my doctor who was actually saying that this was the course of action that she was recommending made me curl up into the fetal position on a public restroom floor and cry.
Why is it so easy for some people? Isn't making babies supposed to be fun, not sciencey?
Don't get my wrong, the IVF process is amazing. The fact that your baby can be made in a petri dish, grown there for a few days, tested for genetic defects and gender, and then put into your uterus is really cool. In theory.
When faced with the reality of it, it's painful. I just want to be normal. I don't want to have to have a science baby. (Not that there's anything wrong with it; I myself am a product of IUI.) But I want to be normal. Is that so hard to understand?
Coming to terms with not being normal is defeating. Okay, my body gives up for some unknown reason. It won't do one of the things it's biologically designed to do. Something is wrong with me.
And we don't know what. Still. There's some speculation that it might have something to do with my husband rather than me, but nothing definite. No answers. Other than science. Yay.
And while the science is miraculous and I should be grateful that it exists and that my insurance covers it, there's also the hassle it's going to be. IUI and IVF, from my very basic and nearly non-existant understanding, both involve a lot of taking hormones, both as pills and as injections and getting various levels measured and the butt crack of dawn every other day.
11/11/18
It's NaNoWriMo, and I'm trying to keep up with that, so I haven't had a chance to finish this entry, but so much has happened since I started it. So phase two.
Tuesday the 6 was when we came up with the IVF plan. After the crying on the floor and the crying to some coworkers, my friend told me to enjoy my weekend (we had a long one), drink a lot (I don't really drink at all), and to not think about this. I was so excited to go away and do just all of that.
Wednesday night, we drove down to DC. It was miraculous that we were able to do that, as Jon (hubby) was scheduled to have jury duty Thursday. Luckily, his group was told Wednesday they weren't needed. So off we went.
Thursday morning, we were walking to breakfast when I got a phone call from my financial advisor, someone the fertility clinic has set me up with. I had spoken to her once before; she was nice and worked hard to get all the info I needed about insurance. During the first conversation, she had told me that my insurance covered IVF as a first option without having to do IUI first, which is unusual. On Thursday, though, she acted like she wasn't sure about this. And she brought up the term "medical necessity." Like, they'll cover it for you if it's a "medical necessity." She would put together a financial package for me, send it over, and we'd have a phone conference the next day to discuss the worst case scenario.
You know what no one seems to take into account as a medical necessity? Mental health. This entire thing is making me crazy, which I hate (if you hadn't guessed that already). Every day, I am more aware of how much babies are prevalent in society. Just for a day, look around. See how many ads involve babies or pregnant women. Then see how many pregnant women or women with strollers you witness in real life every day. Then listen to the conversations of random people. The vast majority of conversations of adults are based around what their children are doing, no matter how old they are. In other words, the world is full of triggers to someone dealing with fertility issues. Every day I feel pushed closer to the brink of a break down. Actually, being at work is where I deal with this the least, despite the vast number of women with infants I work with. I mostly have to deal with the hormonal issues of 13 year olds, which keeps my mind off the baby thing.
But the point is, the medical necessity is my sanity. Can that be an actual thing? If not, can some of us get together and fight for it?
I worried for the rest of Thursday about that. I tried not to, to know that if I had to do IUI for a few rounds first, I'd be right there with all the other women who have to go through that, who can't afford IVF. But still. I had spent 24 hours getting used to the idea of one type of science baby, and now, that might not even be the immediate possiblity.
Meanwhile, the clinic e-mailed me something about getting a prescription filled and a calendar on which to mark my IVF cycle. It seemed insensitive since now I wasn't even sure IVF was going to happen. I get it, not their fault. But I started to feel more like an insurance paycheck than a human.
Friday morning, I wasn't even above ground to get the phone call from the advisor, thanks to the Metro of DC being messy. I called her back from a French coffee shop, where we were trying to order breakfast, and where I instead ended up crying again. Yes, my insurance will cover IVF, but there are a few parts of it that aren't covered. One of these is the freezing of embryos, which is an essential part of it, and that costs $1,000. The other part is nonessential; it's the testing of the embryos. While this isn't necessary for IVF, it increases your chances of success by 25%. It identifies the most valid embryos, the ones that are most likely to take, and it even allows you to choose the gender of your child. My doctor spoke to me about that on Tuesday and strongly recommended it to me. Picking the gender of our child was one of the upshots of this whole thing (weird as that sounds and feels). We were getting used to it. That testing: $3,700.
That's right. Most people get to have fun and don't have to pay anything to make a baby. (I know it costs to give birth; I'm talking about the process of procreating.) I'm now looking at paying $5,000 for a 65% chance to make a child.
Do you all see why I continued to cry and worry into my coffee and baguette?
So I walked around all day yesterday with that concern in my head. The wonder of whether or not we want to spend that money to up the chances. (BTW, there's also the cost of storing the embryos afterwards in case we want a second child and can't conceive and don't want to go through the entire IVF process before.)
I got a phone call from a pharmacy in Massachusetts (I live in NJ) about my prescription. They left a voicemail; I should call them back asap. Again, still on vacation here, so I'd call them soon.
Today. Maybe I'd get one day of not thinking about this IVF garbage. I'd try to call the pharmacy, but if it had to wait until Monday, fine. Right?
Wrong. TMI warning (?) about fun lady stuff.
According to the super accurate (hear the sarcasm in my voice) period tracker app I use (women's bodies; always accurate), I would get my period on Wednesday. To be fair, it's usually either exactly right or off by one or two days.
There's also the fact that I've had some minor nausea every day for the last week or so. I hoped it meant I'd just be pregnant naturally, but I didn't hope hard. I hoped hard once before, and it led to major disappointment.
Good thing I wasn't too excited, because at 5:00 today, in the middle of the Museum of the American Indian, I got my period. The amount of complication this causes is unbelievable.
I'm supposed to go into the clinic on the third day of my period between 6-7:30am to have some testing done. My nurse has very much accentuated that Day 1 of your cycle means full flow, not spotting. Well, full flow is on, but it didn't start until very late in the day. So is this Day 1 or not?
My nurse isn't in on weekends. I'll have to call someone else tomorrow, someone who doesn't know me, to tell them about this. And to ask what day I need to go in for my levels. Meanwhile, I haven't had time to talk to my boss about this yet, and I may need to go in Monday morning. And since Monday will be the first day that I'm doing this, I don't know how long I'll need to talk to someone about my medication regimen and how to give myself the shots that I need to give myself. (Yes, another fun part of this is taking pills and shots; something to do with increasing egg production and other fun hormones. A friend of mine assured me it's not that bad, though she does get headaches from the shots. Other people online have said they get violently ill from all this. I'll fall somewhere on that spectrum, I'm sure.) So will I be late to work? How can I know how much time I'll need?
(We won't even get into how tired I'm going to be on Monday, and my mother in law is coming to visit for a month, and I want to work off the food I've eaten this weekend, but I don't know if I'll have time to work out if I'm exhausted...)
In the middle of the museum, I called the pharmacy since now it looks like I'm going to need these medications asap. They needed my insurance information, but I didn't happen to have my card with me. That set me off dry sobbing. The poor woman on the phone told me nicely to calm down and asked me please not to cry or else she would start crying also. (I think they're going to put a tear jerking warning next to my name for anyone who has to deal with me.) Jon had his copy of my insurance card, so I could give them some of the info. But I didn't have my prescription card on me, and I won't until I get home tomorrow, which will probably be after their offices close for the day. I don't even know if that card has all the information I need or if I need to call my insurance company to get it. And is anyone there on a Sunday? I don't know.
If I can get the pharmacy all this information in a timely fashion, the soonest I can have the medications is Friday. And I'm going to need it to start this cycle between Monday-Wednesday depending on a few things. Someone told me if I call insurance they may be able to expedite the medication. Okay, but even at that, will I have it in time? And will that cost money? And I don't know how much the medication is going to cost with my co-pay as it is. So add that cost to the $4,700 I have to pay for this.
Someone also told me that I need to pay in full before my treatment starts. Well, no one talked to me about when I do make that payment. Do I need to do that when I go in, or is it already too late by then?
The timing of all of this has sucked. I went through a long period where nothing happened when we made our first appointment for September. Then a lot went down in two weeks, as my period started immediately after that appointment, and I had to go in for copious amounts of testing. Then there was 3-4 weeks of down time before I was able to get a follow up appointment. I wish someone had looked at when I was supposed to get my period again, though, so that we could have started this plan two weeks ago rather than mere days before my period started again. Because now I have all of these questions that I can't get answered and may not get answered before it's too late.
Another month wasted. That's what it feels like.
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