Meds Have Arrived!

Yesterday when I got home and walked inside I noticed a rather large cardboard box sitting on my kithcen counter and immediately knew "my IVF meds had arrived!"  Brad had gotten home early yesterday and put the appropriate packages in the fridge for me before he had to leave again.  What a good husband. :)

As I went through everything, my head began to swim.  How could I possibly use all of this?  Then I reminded myself that Brad and I have training on all my meds next Tuesday.   Ahhh, that made me feel much better.

Last month, I decided to take a pic of all my meds to commemorate our last IUI.  So, it was only fitting that I take a pic of my IVF meds.  As you can see, there is a laughable difference between the two.

IUI Meds:

IVF Meds:

I chuckle to myself when I think about how I thought I had a lot of meds for IUI....silly girl.

While it was a little overwhelming at first when I was going through everything, as I was organizing and putting things away, I became more and more excited. 

I can't believe it!  We're actually going to do IVF and I cannot wait!

4 years already??

Today is Brad and my 4 year anniversary.  I cannot believe it has already been that long!  The time seems to be flying by.  I'm so happy to have him, that's for sure.

We both got a nice present to each other today...our new appliances got delivered!  I am so excited to get home and organize the refrigerator and polish all the stainless steel.  I hope to have some pictures to post tonight too.  Funny how just a few years back, I would not be nearly this excited for new appliances....oh how things change!

I think we will spend a while tonight installing water lines, electrical for the dishwasher and reconnecting the gas on the stove, so no anniversary dinner for us tonight.  That's okay, we went out to celebrate earlier in the week since we knew that tonight would be busy.

On a seperate topic, it looks like I got the meds coverage all figured out.  After several more hours on the phone yesterday I was able to get a final cost of $203.00 on all of them.  I am ecstatic!  I'm so glad I kept at it instead of just accepting that I would have to pay $3k for the meds. 

Life is defintley feeling really good on a day like today!  Let's hope this positivity continues! :)

BCP, Fertility Meds And Insurance, Oh My!

Well, I'm officialy on BCP again...I started Saturday.  It's pretty odd to be taking these at this stage and I'm pretty sure they are giving me headaches (yay).

I made my 3 consults for this month and the RE called in all my precriptions.  When the pharmacy called me yesterday to go over everything with me and get the date I need my meds I asked the woman on the phone how many precriptions there were in total.  Until that point I had foolishly not bothered to ask (although I knew it would be a lot).  She started counting and didn't stop until 11.  11 prescriptions....holy crap!!!  Picturing what it's going to be like to sort through all those has me a little overwhelmed.  Thankfully, I have med/injection training in a couple of weeks.

So back to my conversation with the pharmacy.  I have said from the beginning that I have what I would consider to be pretty good insurance.  After all, they cover IVF and all other treatments.  So, you can imagine my surprise when she told me my total for my meds was $3,368.67.  Ummm, WTF?????  She then informed me that follistim (a very common injectable even for IUI-a procedure which I have already done) was the majority of that cost coming out at $2,772.85. She told me that it was not covered under my plan.

Well, as you can imagine, this set me off on a trail to find some answers because there was NO WAY that I could possibly owe that!  I have now been on the phone with so many different departments of my insurance company since yesterday that I feel like I have made some progress on getting this resolved.  At this point, my meds could cost me anywhere between $1,300-$300....quite the gap isn't it?  Well, that's because I have been getting such conflicting stories...shocking from an insurance company right??  Can you feel the sarcasm jumping off the screen.

After all this talk about med costs yesterday, I decided to actually write down on paper what other costs would be involved with IVF.   I got financial paperwork in the mail over the weekend that outlined costs that are not covered by insurance.  Add that to my max OOP for the year and co-pays and that comes to over $2k. 

So basically, if I do end up paying full cost for my meds and my calculated cost for all other areas, we are looking at just under $6k for one cycle.  I cannot believe it....all this time I thought I had phenomonal insurance.  I guess I just have sticker shock over the whole thing.   

I'm just going to be keeping my fingers crossed that I can get med costs under control, otherwise it's going to seriously alter how many times we can do IVF in a short period of time.

IVF, here we come

I didn't get to see 2 lines....Although I am waiting for the official word from the doctor this afternoon whem my b/w is complete....I know I'm not pregnant though, so it's just a formality.

This f-ing sucks.

This wait is the worst yet...

Well, I'm 11 dpo today and so far I've held off on testing just like I planned so that I don't get my hopes up again after getting a line that resulted because of the trigger.  However, tomorrow is my test day and I'm getting this huge lump in the back of my throat in anticipation. 

Honestly, I would probably hold off testing until Sunday (or possibly Monday when I have my beta), but I have a bachelorette party tomorrow.  I want to go out and have a couple of drinks with a clear conscious...that is if it's negative. 

I still don't really think that this cycle is it for us.  I have absolutely no signs so far.  Now, I know that doesn't neccassarily mean much, but its just another nail in the coffin so to speak.  Getting a bfn this cycle just carries so much more weight than ever before.  While I'm ready to do IVF, it's just going to be so exhausting and I wanted so badly for one of these IUI's to work.

IVF will be a whole new ball game.  The thoughts of a bfn while doing IVF scare the crap out of me.  It's kind of the last resort for us (haven't really talked about adoption, surrogacy, etc).  I know that I will do IVF for as many times as the doctor suggests/allows, but I am so terribly worried that it won't work either. 

I absolutely cannot envision my life without a child (my own child). 

Happy Friday to me!..I'm off tomorrow!

So happy to be off tomorrow!  Brad and I took tomorrow and next Tuesday (after Labor day) off together.  I think we are going to try to golf a couple of times during our extended weekend.  We will be busy all day Saturday and Sunday, but that still leaves plenty of time to try and fit in a couple of rounds of golf.

I just got new golf clubs that were deliverd yesterday and I'm super pumped! I will have to take a picture tonight and post it later.  I can't wait to be rid of my 10 year old clubs. :)  If you know me, you know how much I love golf and have wanted new clubs for such a long time.  I can't wait to see how they hit!

In other fun news, I got a dress for Brad's cousin's wedding in 3 weeks.  I was originally going to wear a black dress that was already in my closet, but on a whim I went shopping over the weekend and found this:

So, of course I had to get it.  I am in love!  It fits in all the right places and makes me look nice and tan! 

And to go with the dress, I have these shoes (I bought them for another wedding earlier this year):