Meltdown

I haven't had one for awhile. I guess I was overdue.

I freaking HATE this Boston hospital. The person I'm in contact with there, the financial coordinator, is horrible to work with. I basically collapsed into a pile of mess on the phone with her this morning.

Getting a hold of her is like pulling teeth. The last time I called her was Tues. morning, and I left a message. No call back. This has happened before. I called again this morning, thinking 48 hours was enough time and she said she had never gotten my phone call. Again, not the first time she's said that and I do not believe for one second a hospital's (or big business') voicemail is so bad that you are missing messages left and right. Fail.

I had apparently misunderstood the insurance discussion we had on Monday (the last time I had been able to FINALLY reach her and pay for Gabby's screening charges). I was under the impression that I either had to use my insurance for the entire cycle at Boston but then pay out of pocket to get my monitoring done locally, or go and stay in Boston while I do my monitoring - which would be much more costly. L & I decided I should just pay OOP to stay locally.

When I called to tell the financial coordinator our decision, she informs me that I can't do it locally, even paying it out of pocket. I can either pay for the entire cycle out of pocket at Boston ($12K) and then pay out of pocket some more to do my monitoring locally OR I can do my entire cycle in Boston and stay there the entire time.

Ok, I just lost it. Burst into tears on the phone. And damn, it did nothing to move her. Not that I cried in order to move her (that would be a talent I just don't have, crying on cue) but she was just as flat and unhelpful in the midst of my blubbering as she was before. "The insurance won't pay for the monitoring if you're not having it done here!"

THAT WAS MY POINT FROM THE BEGINNING! The insurance is not treating it as one big thing - it is treating the monitoring separate from the retrieval and the other stuff! I don't need the insurance to pay for the monitoring since I don't want it done there - if they didn't, I could then do it at a local place and be covered.

But paying OOP for local monitoring seems to be the least of my worries now.

It doesn't make any financial sense to not go stay in Boston if this is the way it has to be. At most, taking the time off and staying in a hotel for 2 weeks would cost $3K, much less than the $12K out of pocket it would cost. But it's still very aggravating.

I called the surrogate agency because I was so upset. They told me it was ridiculous what I was told and that there is no reason I can't use my insurance at all and just pay OOP locally. There were some other things too I had been told that they told me were wrong so they are getting on the horn finally because this has been such a mess. I don't want to deal with this coordinator any more.

The coordinator also told me I had to pay for embryo freezing which didn't make sense to me because I've had embryos frozen before and didn't pay anything. she said it was because I was in MA, but I just called my insurance and they said at most if the hospital were out of network (which they're not) they would still pay 80% of the $800 fee to freeze. So she's wrong on that too. What the hell is she doing?

The surrogate agency just emailed me back and told me they checked with someone else at the hospital and I should be able to use my insurance. They said the hospital makes an "exception" in egg donor cases where the egg donor lives far away so they don't see why it can't be done in my case. In essence, I'm the egg donor in this case, except I will be taking home the baby myself at the end of any pregnancy. Now, why didn't the coordinator offer this to me? It doesn't seem like she has any interest in helping me out at all.