IVF Vol 2 begins!

December 30, 2015April 3, 201611 Comments

Yesterday my period arrived, just one day later than anticipated, but that’s all good. I called my nurse and started with the Birth Control Pills (Reclipsen).

Birth Control Pills (BCPs) – YEY!!!!

I will be on Birth Control Pills for 14 days (1 day longer than last time), then 3 days later we go into the Clinic for my Cycle Day 3 baseline ultrasound and blood tests – this time we won’t need to have all the lessons on injections – but we will need to sign some paperwork and sort out the finances. Then the next day I get my instructions for injections…and we are off on IVF/ICSI cycle 2! Here is a calendar of our cycle…

Planned Dates for IVF Cycle 2.

It is all happening a week later than I expected, which puts me in a conundrum about work travels. This would mean travelling for work almost the day after I take my first beta blood test. If it is positive, then I will be flying transatlantic to the UK just 4 weeks pregnant, and have to figure out how I’m going to do these progesterone injections. Or if it is negative and I am not pregnant, then I will be away from Chris at a sad time. Either way, it kind of sucks. If I don’t go on this work trip then I will be a real let down to my team. I’m hoping Chris might be able to come with me on this trip, but it is really hard for him to get the time off work.

Anyway, I am genuinely excited to be starting this cycle, but I had a little cry yesterday. I think it was all the period hormones running around. I cried because of the whole situation of fitting everything in life around this IVF cycle. I’m trying to make it easier for myself by taking some leave off work, but it is a busy month for my team, there is lots of work to be done, I have already had to pull out of one work event (in Switzerland :-|) and so I feel guilty. Despite feeling like this….I still have hope for 2016 🙂

2016 is the year I will be stronger, braver, kinder and unstoppable. This year I will be fierce!!!

For those of you who are new to the whole IVF process or want a reminder of how IVF works you can find a summary on my “What does it all mean?” page here. Currently I am in Step 1 of the process!

The cost of a suspected ectopic pregnancy

November 21, 2015November 21, 201511 Comments

You can’t put a price or a value on having both your fallopian tubes intact. In fact I imagine that anyone who has lost one or two of their fallopian tubes wouldn’t be able to put a price on how much they are willing to pay to have them whole and functioning again. Without a doubt. And so when the doctor told me that there is a risk that I had an ectopic pregnancy and a fallopian tube could rupture at any point, you simply don’t think about the $$$ money.;

After I found out that my pregnancy was non-viable, the whole process of determining whether or not I had an ectopic pregnancy was absolutely soul destroying and mentally exhausting. I tried to research what the likelihood was of having an ectopic pregnancy was with IVF. I tracked my hCG levels to try and determine what my odds were. I even joined several online groups to talk to other women who had experienced what I was going through. (I have probably mentioned this before, I dislike online forums because you get exposed to some real stupid, dumb, insensitive and simply irritating people. And you just can’t get rid of them.) All of this led me to some tiny hope that I was going to be one of those women who was going to beat the odds and carry a pregnancy despite the slow doubling hCG levels.

The doctors cared a lot about my wellbeing and were concerned of an ectopic. I mostly followed their recommendations: We both dropped everything to come in to the clinic for blood tests, consults and ultrasounds. What they didn’t tell us was how much it is all going to cost. Like I said, when there is a risk of losing a body part or even worse, your life, the money doesn’t matter. And now I can finally say how much it all cost.

I am not complaining about the cost because we are lucky, we have amazing insurance and we can afford to pay the bills. What I would like to know is what about those people whose insurance wouldn’t cover the costs? It’s just another slap in the face if you have saved up or taken on debt to pay for IVF. Of course, most insurance companies cover the cost for maternity healthcare, but the treatment of an ectopic or any other type of pregnancy loss doesn’t come for free. Remember I told you about the woman who couldn’t afford to have an ‘abortion’ to end her life threatening pregnancy at her hospital because of a CRAPPY law? (You can read about it here).

When you save up and take on debt for IVF, no one tells you to save a little bit extra in case things go slightly wrong. I have discovered, however, that most hospitals and healthcare providers will negotiate the costs if you can’t afford this type of care. There are also some charities out there that can help. I also believe that friends and family will be there too to help out. We have helped out some friends in the past when they got caught out with unexpected medical bills. It’s not only a difficult emotionally, it can quite quickly become difficult financially.

So how much did it cost? Luckily for us, not much. The total cost was $3,107 of which our insurance covered most of it, and so cost us $140. I have updated my ‘Cost Lowdown’ page with the breakdown of where the biggest costs lie here. But this has made me think about putting aside more savings specifically for unexpected healthcare costs.

My appreciation for the UK National Health Service has simply sky rocketed.

The $$$ lowdown

May 10, 20152 Comments

I have created a new page on my site that sums up all the costs of our infertility journey so far. I will keep this up to date as much as possible…I have copied the text from it and pasted it below (or here is the link to the page)

We are very lucky that our medical insurance includes coverage for the treatment of infertility, including IUI and IVF.

We are being open and honest about these costs because it is important for people to understand the difference having insurance coverage can make. Only 15 states in the US make it mandatory for insurance providers to cover infertility treatment, and even some of those are extremely limited. There is much debate on whether infertility should be covered as an essential health benefit. There are many campaigns ongoing to change state law in this regard (www.resolve.org)

There is definitely a lot to be said about the psychology and stress to infertile couples over spending this vast amount of money if they do not have insurance coverage for infertility. Chris and I find this process stressful enough as it is without the added burden of the actual cost. I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like without coverage. At each stage of our journey we have had to get approval from our insurance company and with having an ‘unexplained’ diagnosis we have always been nervous that they will not cover us. However, we have been fortunate so far. Fingers crossed they will cover our IVF too.

Item	Full cost	Insurance covered?	Final cost to us
Ovulation Kit (pack of 20) x3	$70.00	No	$70.00
Pregnancy Tests (various types) x4	$85.00	No	$85.00
Basal Thermometer x1	$13.00	No	$13.00
Pre-seed Lubricant x1	$24.00	No	$24.00
Chris blood tests	$572.00	Yes	$10.25
Dani blood tests	$560.00	Yes	$14.43
Reproductive Endocrinologist Consulting Fees (Doctor visits) x3	$340.00	Yes	$5.85
Ultrasounds x4	$900.00	Yes	$71.72
Anti-biotics for HSG	$15.97	Yes	$1.60
Sperm Analysis	$110.00	Yes	$1.53
HSG	$835.00	Yes	$29.18
Letrozole x3	$8.53	Yes	$0.86
Ovidrel x3	$371.16	Yes	$37.11
IUI x3	$765.00	Yes	$36.81
Sperm Wash x3	$320.00	Yes	$16.80
Progesterone suppositories x3	$147.00	No	$147.00
Running Total*	$5,136.66		$565.14

A note about our healthcare insurance. We pay a 10% co-pay for each bill of the ‘in-network’ cost, not necessarily 10% of the whole cost. Our current infertility clinic (or ‘provider’ as it is also called) is ‘in-network’ so we get extremely preferable rates; for example our new doctor visit it was $190.00, our insurance paid $0, so we paid $0. This is because our insurance company has negotiated these types of ‘bulk’ discounts in advance with our provider.

Choosing an ‘out of network’ provider can increase overall costs. There is one other fertility clinic in our area we could have chosen, but is out of network. It was something we considered, but we went on recommendation and did not think too much about this at the beginning.

Currently my insurance premium is ~$500 a month, plus my employer contributes ~$1100 a month, this covers both Chris and I for all medical expenses including dental and optical.

*As of 10th May 2015