Stick a freaking fork in my eye already
>> Friday, March 9, 2012
Well folks, cheers to another Plan B.
I ended the day yesterday cussing and crying my eyes out in a way I haven't in a long time. And eating crap.
Turns out our appointment with our local infertility clinic was a mixed bag and not the easy cheesy consult we expected.
I am a damn fool for expecting anything to happen easily for us. If we don't have to move earth and sky to build our family, it's not real. You'd think I'd know this by now, after the 6+ years we've spent scaling walls and barbed wire fences in pursuit of babies.
Apparently I'm dense. And ever hopeful. And an idiot.
Anywhooo, onward to the bad first.
Our highly esteemed clinic not only does not have anything to do with embryo adoption, they will not even help us with our FETs regarding our already created embryos.
Turns out the embryologist refuses to work with embryos he doesn't personally create.
Why someone didn't tell me that upfront when I made my appointment is beyond me. Why they don't say that on their website is beyond me. Why they are listed in a directory of clinics that perform embryo adoption is beyond me.
Basically we were told that we will have to return to our original clinics to have our transfers. The only trouble with that is that our embryos are in NEW JERSEY and NORTH CAROLINA and we live in frickin' SOUTH FLORIDA!!! It also means we are no longer in network for any of the costs of the FETs, should we have to do all the meds and monitoring up north. Awesome sauce.
In one 15 minute consult, which we waited 2 hours for, during which I was yet again violated with Mr. Wandy (internal ultrasound probe), not to mention the last month+ we've been waiting for this appointment since it was scheduled, our Plan A was obliterated.
Thank you, thank you very much.
So much for me raving about how easily things were going. Until and unless I'm pregnant, I'm shutting up about God opening up doors & how smooth the process is going for us. Because obviously those doors never were open and we are once again shimmy-ing through a frackin' window, after running straight into a brick wall we didn't see coming.
Like I said, I'm a damn fool for thinking we had escaped an epic uphill battle and had caught a break.
So now that Plan A (which is really plan number infinity + 1) is lying in a heap of ruins, let us formulate and move on once more to Plan B (plan number infinity + 2).
Because that is what we do around here. We make a plan, get excited, get knocked down and stomped on, cry for an evening, pick ourselves up, and figure out yet another way to make this all work.
You know, so we can go through it all again. In five minutes. Fun times.
The only silver lining to come out of yesterday is that our local clinic is willing to monitor me down here for as long as they can before I have to go back to the original clinic for the actual transfer, and if the original clinic is willing, my local clinic can do the pregnancy testing, etc. That means my insurance will cover some of the costs of an FET - as much of the process as I can have done locally. IF my clinics up north will let me have any of the monitoring down here. IF.
We have yet to find out what our two northern clinics think of any of this, and we are working today to figure that half of it out.
Best case scenario:
We move our 3 day embryo up to New Jersey, start the process here, prepare for a 3 day transfer, if the 3 day embryo doesn't survive the thaw, switch to the 5 day blast, rest for a few days following the transfer, and then drive back down to Florida at a more leisurely pace so as not to endanger a potential pregnancy.
We will find out soon if any of that can even be done.
I suppose if I'm being fair, my date with Mr. Wandy was beneficial in that I did learn that the birth control I'm on has put my ovaries in hibernation, which means the endo is not spreading. Old Faithful, the endometrioma cyst in my left ovary, is only 1 cm x 1 cm - not inches large like it was previously. They could barely find my right ovary and had to hunt long and hard to find the shriveled up dormant little guy. (Yes, my ovaries are boys and I refer to them as such.)
That leaves us with the embryo adoption conundrum.
There is a silver lining there, too. Much to my surprise, there is an organization called EDI (Embryo Donation International) only about two hours south of us, and they exist to accept donor embryos and match them with adoptive parents. They do the FETs in-house, but allow outside monitoring, which will drop the overall cost down significantly. The only other two similar organizations are in California and Tennessee. The California based agency is out because of cost (Snowflakes - last time I checked, which was a while ago, they cost about $18K - more than a fresh IVF cycle) and distance. Tennessee (NEDC - Nat'l Embryo Donation Center) is not out, but if we could stay closer to home, that would be great. Also the program in TN only allows 3 attempts to get pregnant. If EDI doesn't work out, we could always switch to NEDC after we move.
The Florida and Tennessee programs each cost about the same, roughly $5K for each transfer.
So now we have to decide how we are going to do this.
I am leaning towards continuing on with our traditional adoption - still waiting on doctor's letters - it's a long story that made yesterday even worse - and moving forward with embryo adoption, while putting our own embabies on hold until we move further north.
Here's why. If we move to DC next year as planned, we will only be about 3-4 hours away from our NJ clinic. Currently we're more like 17 hours away. Plus, money is starting to become a consideration, at least until we get our tax return back. We are going to have to make some decisions about which programs we're moving forward with because we can't afford everything at the same time. Here's the other consideration. Currently we only live about two hours away from a donation center. Once we move to DC, Tennessee will be the closest option, and that will still be farther away than the one now near us. Our embabies aren't going anywhere, except hopefully into the same tank in NJ.
It seems that the only way to get a local clinic to help with embryo donation is to be an established IVF patient. And I refuse to go through IVF only to get to embryo donation at the end. And apparently finding a clinic to accept outside donated embryos is like pulling teeth, if not outright caboshed at the start. I think a not for profit center is really the only way to go and definitely the easiest. It's what they were created for, not as a side job at a fertility clinic only interested in making money off of IVFs.
So there you have it. We should find out more details today. While I'm incredibly frustrated, at least we still can see a way forward, until we find out otherwise. I am tentatively hopeful, cautiously optimistic. Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst. That sort of thing.
I ate a natural all beef hotdog (well as natural as any hotdog can be) on a gluten free bun with chili and cheese on it yesterday. I ate my feelings. And I felt better. That's how low I was. I still lost half a pound as of today, so I'm not beating myself up too much for my falling off of the healthy eating wagon. But that's how much infertility still hurts. I wonder if it will ever stop and quit making us jump through every hoop that exists, even the ones we can't imagine or be prepared for. Lord knows I'm starting to burn out.
I ended the day yesterday cussing and crying my eyes out in a way I haven't in a long time. And eating crap.
Turns out our appointment with our local infertility clinic was a mixed bag and not the easy cheesy consult we expected.
I am a damn fool for expecting anything to happen easily for us. If we don't have to move earth and sky to build our family, it's not real. You'd think I'd know this by now, after the 6+ years we've spent scaling walls and barbed wire fences in pursuit of babies.
Apparently I'm dense. And ever hopeful. And an idiot.
Anywhooo, onward to the bad first.
Our highly esteemed clinic not only does not have anything to do with embryo adoption, they will not even help us with our FETs regarding our already created embryos.
Turns out the embryologist refuses to work with embryos he doesn't personally create.
Why someone didn't tell me that upfront when I made my appointment is beyond me. Why they don't say that on their website is beyond me. Why they are listed in a directory of clinics that perform embryo adoption is beyond me.
Basically we were told that we will have to return to our original clinics to have our transfers. The only trouble with that is that our embryos are in NEW JERSEY and NORTH CAROLINA and we live in frickin' SOUTH FLORIDA!!! It also means we are no longer in network for any of the costs of the FETs, should we have to do all the meds and monitoring up north. Awesome sauce.
In one 15 minute consult, which we waited 2 hours for, during which I was yet again violated with Mr. Wandy (internal ultrasound probe), not to mention the last month+ we've been waiting for this appointment since it was scheduled, our Plan A was obliterated.
Thank you, thank you very much.
So much for me raving about how easily things were going. Until and unless I'm pregnant, I'm shutting up about God opening up doors & how smooth the process is going for us. Because obviously those doors never were open and we are once again shimmy-ing through a frackin' window, after running straight into a brick wall we didn't see coming.
Like I said, I'm a damn fool for thinking we had escaped an epic uphill battle and had caught a break.
So now that Plan A (which is really plan number infinity + 1) is lying in a heap of ruins, let us formulate and move on once more to Plan B (plan number infinity + 2).
Because that is what we do around here. We make a plan, get excited, get knocked down and stomped on, cry for an evening, pick ourselves up, and figure out yet another way to make this all work.
You know, so we can go through it all again. In five minutes. Fun times.
The only silver lining to come out of yesterday is that our local clinic is willing to monitor me down here for as long as they can before I have to go back to the original clinic for the actual transfer, and if the original clinic is willing, my local clinic can do the pregnancy testing, etc. That means my insurance will cover some of the costs of an FET - as much of the process as I can have done locally. IF my clinics up north will let me have any of the monitoring down here. IF.
We have yet to find out what our two northern clinics think of any of this, and we are working today to figure that half of it out.
Best case scenario:
We move our 3 day embryo up to New Jersey, start the process here, prepare for a 3 day transfer, if the 3 day embryo doesn't survive the thaw, switch to the 5 day blast, rest for a few days following the transfer, and then drive back down to Florida at a more leisurely pace so as not to endanger a potential pregnancy.
We will find out soon if any of that can even be done.
I suppose if I'm being fair, my date with Mr. Wandy was beneficial in that I did learn that the birth control I'm on has put my ovaries in hibernation, which means the endo is not spreading. Old Faithful, the endometrioma cyst in my left ovary, is only 1 cm x 1 cm - not inches large like it was previously. They could barely find my right ovary and had to hunt long and hard to find the shriveled up dormant little guy. (Yes, my ovaries are boys and I refer to them as such.)
That leaves us with the embryo adoption conundrum.
There is a silver lining there, too. Much to my surprise, there is an organization called EDI (Embryo Donation International) only about two hours south of us, and they exist to accept donor embryos and match them with adoptive parents. They do the FETs in-house, but allow outside monitoring, which will drop the overall cost down significantly. The only other two similar organizations are in California and Tennessee. The California based agency is out because of cost (Snowflakes - last time I checked, which was a while ago, they cost about $18K - more than a fresh IVF cycle) and distance. Tennessee (NEDC - Nat'l Embryo Donation Center) is not out, but if we could stay closer to home, that would be great. Also the program in TN only allows 3 attempts to get pregnant. If EDI doesn't work out, we could always switch to NEDC after we move.
The Florida and Tennessee programs each cost about the same, roughly $5K for each transfer.
So now we have to decide how we are going to do this.
I am leaning towards continuing on with our traditional adoption - still waiting on doctor's letters - it's a long story that made yesterday even worse - and moving forward with embryo adoption, while putting our own embabies on hold until we move further north.
Here's why. If we move to DC next year as planned, we will only be about 3-4 hours away from our NJ clinic. Currently we're more like 17 hours away. Plus, money is starting to become a consideration, at least until we get our tax return back. We are going to have to make some decisions about which programs we're moving forward with because we can't afford everything at the same time. Here's the other consideration. Currently we only live about two hours away from a donation center. Once we move to DC, Tennessee will be the closest option, and that will still be farther away than the one now near us. Our embabies aren't going anywhere, except hopefully into the same tank in NJ.
It seems that the only way to get a local clinic to help with embryo donation is to be an established IVF patient. And I refuse to go through IVF only to get to embryo donation at the end. And apparently finding a clinic to accept outside donated embryos is like pulling teeth, if not outright caboshed at the start. I think a not for profit center is really the only way to go and definitely the easiest. It's what they were created for, not as a side job at a fertility clinic only interested in making money off of IVFs.
So there you have it. We should find out more details today. While I'm incredibly frustrated, at least we still can see a way forward, until we find out otherwise. I am tentatively hopeful, cautiously optimistic. Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst. That sort of thing.
I ate a natural all beef hotdog (well as natural as any hotdog can be) on a gluten free bun with chili and cheese on it yesterday. I ate my feelings. And I felt better. That's how low I was. I still lost half a pound as of today, so I'm not beating myself up too much for my falling off of the healthy eating wagon. But that's how much infertility still hurts. I wonder if it will ever stop and quit making us jump through every hoop that exists, even the ones we can't imagine or be prepared for. Lord knows I'm starting to burn out.
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