Catch-up

I finally got caught up on blog things that I wanted to take care of.

I updated the Money page, it now reflects our current spending, including the payment we made on Monday, and the new prices at the RE.

I caught up on all of my RSS feeds in Google Reader - I was seriously behind again.  So if I'm a follower of yours, I've read your posts, even if I didn't comment. Somehow I seem to get to where I have about 200 posts to read, and then finding the time to read all of them gets a bit difficult, especially with me being sick, and trying something new for ICLW.

Speaking of - I'm actually did well with ICLW this month - I tried something new...I'm reading every blog in order, from the beginning, and commenting on them.  I'm not going to make it to the end, in fact, I will probably obnly make it to 70 or 80 different blogs this month, but it's way better than I have in the past.  In addition, I'm commenting on all of them.  Exercising my comment muscle.  Of course - I did neglect my homework.

I'm trying to write more posts, and I know that it'll work well for a while, especially because I'm feeling obsessive at the moment, and I need a place to let it all out.  That, and I apparently have a lot to say while I'm hopped up on pain meds.

IVF 1: Beginnings

I paid the clinic and started BCP tonight.  We're on our way.

urgent care

On Sunday morning Jakobe woke up with this terrible rash on his arm.  It didn't hurt, but it was swollen, and I hadn't really ever seen anything like it...  It looked kind of like rug-burn, or something, but we couldn't tell what had caused it.  Anyway, since we didn't like the look of it, we decided that our best course of action was to make our way down to the urgent care center to have it looked at.  

There are some things about urgent care on Sunday morning you should be aware of:

• it's really busy
• for some reason, Jakobe's insurance thinks that they need a $75 co-pay
• almost everyone waiting to be seen is a small child, under the age of 4
• you have to wait forever to be seen
• there are babies everywhere, or cute toddlers with gorgeous ringlets
• so, not really the place for an infertile couple...

But anyway, we get there about 9 am, and then we wait for a long time to be seen, and because I'm just getting over the plague (fever, coughing, sore throat, utter yuckiness) and I'm still coughing, and slightly contagious, I get to wear the oh, so sexy, yellow face mask. (did I mention that I have this little claustrophobia problem, that I absolutely hate having anything over my nose and mouth, and that I have to move the blankets on our bed or when we cuddling so that there is absolutely nothing covering my nose and mouth?  Well, I do.)  In any case, when we finally get back to see a doctor I have come up with a laundry list of things that Jakobe should have checked out, or at least discuss, since we're already there.  Like his arm, his cough, his sore throat, his stuffy ears, and oh yeah - his frequent vomiting.

So - His arm turns out to be petechiae (broken blood vessels in the skin) and he somehow scraped himself or did something else like that to his arm while he was sleeping.  Unless it shows up somewhere else on his body, the verdict is that he somehow did it to himself in his sleep, and that it's nothing to worry about.

His cough - well his lungs sounded fine, so they didn't worry about it at all. His sore throat - got a strep culture - negative.  His stuffy ears - he's got fluid behind his eardrums, and one of them looks a little pink.  Normally, they wouldn't do much of anything for something that mild, but at one point, Jakobe had the both of his inner ears completely rebuilt surgically, and since there aren't bones in there anymore (just shaped pieces of cartilage) he has to be really careful to not get a bad ear infection, or he could maybe go deaf again.  So he gets to go on kick-ass antibiotics.

The vomiting - I finally got some backup on the fact that he really really needs to go to the doctor on this one. It wasn't until I had bugged him about going several times that he explained that he was vomiting up black stuff when he get's these attacks, stuff that maybe looks like coffee grounds.  The Urgent Care doc didn't do anything about it today, but really stressed that Jakobe needs to have it checked out and make sure that something serious isn't going on - because he could be vomiting blood.  Now maybe he'll actually make an appointment.

The pool is closed for Maintenance

That's Jakobe and my code for AF, usually shortened to "maintenance". I'm not sure how to express what I'm feeling today.  It is with great fanfare that I wish to announce - today is CD1  - and I'm not sad, upset, disappointed, or any of the normal emotional baggage that goes along with this day in my usual routine...

I suppose that there is a small part of me that refuses to accept the obvious, some part of me that continues to hope, month after month, that we were wrong.  That continues to hope that this month - we'll get our surprise pregnancy.  But this month - my little hopeful voice has been completely drowned out by my BIG HOPEFUL VOICE.  

My Uterus on BCPs

The big voice is telling me that my period is a good thing, that it means that I'm one step closer to our IVF cycle.  It tells me that I get to start taking the birth control pill (I think that might be defined as ironic, taking the pill so that I can get pregnant).  The big voice is so loud, that all the little voice got in edgewise was a little comment about how I wasn't pregnant again this month - and it got stomped down with the whole "of course not, we know that doesn't work - but it doesn't matter, we get to try something that might work - so shut the f*ck up!"

It's a joy to get my period without the sadness that has accompanied it for the last two years, to get it with only a feeling of anticipation (and endo pain, but hell - it could be worse, I've still got Vicodin rolling around here, and so it's bearable - except for the dry mouth... that sucks!).

I called and left a message for Debbie - our nurse coordinator.  She's not my favorite so far (it doesn't feel like we've been that high on her priority list, so I don't feel like phone calls have been returned that promptly) but hey, so far we've just been a couple that had some plans to participate at a later date...  now we've actually got something going on.  I hope to hear back from her tomorrow, and I'm wondering if we can get my insurance to pay for the BCPs...  that might be nice.  In any case, this should get the ball rolling.  I know that we need to attend one of the IVF classes (gods I hope that they're not during the day - how much time do I really have to take off of work??  Really?) get our calendar, find out what kind of protocol we'll be on, find out if they want a frozen sample from Jakobe as a backup, find out which drugs we need to order, and so on and so forth.  

BTW:  thank you all for your comments and advice about our medications, it's been very helpful, and I am very grateful.  You all rock, each and every one of you!

Comparison Shopping

When it came to which RE I was going to see, I wasn’t able to do much in the way of comparison shopping.  There is exactly one in the city where I live, and traveling 300 miles to see, or even try to see a different one wasn’t really in the cards for us.  That’s a lot of time off of work that we couldn’t afford in addition to the costs of IVF itself. 

Now though, I’m wondering if I should do some comparison shopping when it comes to a pharmacy.  How do you pick which pharmacy to order your IVF drugs from?  Does the RE just tell you which one to use, or do you decide yourself?  Most of them don’t seem to have a price list that allows you to see how they stack up against the rest, and they all claim to have the best prices.  Obviously that can’t be 100% true.

What have you done?  How did you choose a pharmacy?  Any recommendations, or words of warning.  I'm a fertility drug newbie since we didn't end up doing any IUIs or stimulated cycles of any kind, just jumped right into the big guns.