Starting to Cycle

Boy, another week, another going by too fast. And now it's Friday.

Mother's Day is drawing near. I was pregnant last Mother's Day. I was so happy for the first time in AGES. This year, I'm not pregnant, nor do I have a bouncing baby at home. This year is going to suck.

I've already proclaimed it "stay in bed" day. We usually go to the Farmer's Market on Sunday but L has told me he will go. He will put in the Blu-Ray player we just got for Christmas this past week (long story there) in the bedroom and I am going to watch episodes of Downton Abbey all day (just started watching that show - love it!)

The truth of the matter is, I probably won't be able to stay in bed. In college I probably would have, but over the last few years as more and more has been out of control I'm very much a control freak in the rest of my life - there's no resting. there's only getting stuff done. Appointments, projects, cleaning, staying on top of doctors. If I have nothing to do I feel lost. It used to not be this way :(

On Monday we were given the info to start cycling! Gabby's first lupron injection was Weds. I'll start my lupron next Saturday. the schedule says I will start stimming 5/28 and retrieval is schedule for 6/8 6/9 but I have never been "on time" before, so i doubt that will happen. More likely 6/11 or 6/12. Either way, we'll fit it in JUST before we leave on vacation so I hope I don't have OHSS over vacation. Transfer will most likely take place when we're on vacation which is good and bad. At least hopefully I won't obsess as much about it?

We got bills for all the bloodwork we had done when all 4 of us were in Boston. Obviously our insurance covers me and L, but we didn't realize we were going to have to pay for the b/w for Gabby and her husband - we thought it was part of the cycle fee we paid. Nope, so that's another $1500. I'm starting to get really worried about $. I know my inlaws have paid so much already but we've paid a lot of OOP expenses now (more than $10K) and I'm just really worried. If I knew I would have a baby out of this deal of course I would be more than willing but it just puts such pressure out there. If this doesn't work, ugh. It just makes me want to cry.

Then there was the ordering of meds for her to get by Weds. The pharmacy did a really good job of working with me to get it there on time, as we didn't get a call about meds until about 6pm Monday night and she needed to take them between 5-7AM on Weds.! The hospital uses Village Pharmacy, who I never heard of but they were super nice. Of course we have to pay out of pocket for her since she's not on our insurance, but luckily her meds only came to about $350. They called my meds into Village as well but my insurance doesn't cover them so they transferred the prescriptions to Freedom Pharmacy.

I'm starting meds much later so I didn't really need to worry about getting them right away but today Freedom called me to tell me what I owed. Having done this before I figured it would just be a couple of copays. Big mistake. The insurance I have through work goes to (in my opinion) a terrible pharmacy - Medco. I've used them before and they take 1-2 weeks to ship anything out. Ugh. So, I'm also on L's insurance (we added me this year because my insurance doesn't cover the Boston hospital we're at but his does so we knew we'd save a lot of money). I know L's insurance uses Freedom so I was happy to use them as they are pretty quick. But today when they called they told me that I've already nearly used up my lifetime maximum of fertility drugs under his insurance. I didn't even know I had a lifetime maximum! I know it's probably in some insurance booklet or something somewhere but I really wished these places would give you this information when you place an order. Like, "Today your total will be $53, and just so you know you have $5000 remaining in your lifetime maximum," something like that. So apparently this order would put me over the maximum and we were going to owe $4000. This stuff is ridiculously expensive. And I have used Freedom only a little before so that shows you how much these drugs are for me to have reached the maximum so quickly.

I was really upset because i kept thinking how are we going to now pay for these meds??? I asked them to transfer the order to Medco and was flipping out because I need these meds quickly and Medco is anything but quick. But then she said that they are contracted with medco and they had my insurance on file (in addition to L's insurance) so she ran it through and it worked. I had no idea I had done this previously (I think it was for 1 drug - like lupron, not a whole order like today) and I had no idea I didn't have to go directly to Medco. I was SO excited. So i'm getting my meds in one day like I was supposed to and except for co-pays the drugs are fully covered under my plan (which has great infertility benefits - it pays for IVF up to a $50K maximum for out of network providers and no maximum for in network. After 4 IVF cycles - 3 out of network and 1 in network, I still have $35K left of this benefit, that is awesome.) My copays came to about $93 which I was much happier about paying.

I also found out that they hadn't order the Medrol (steroid) and doxycycline (antibiotic) for Gabby's transfer, but I have so much of that left over from home I asked if I could just mail her my stash and she was fine with that. It only saved about $40 (not a huge amount in the scheme of things, I know) but hell, I'll take any savings at this point.

To finish off this post, yesterday just before work ended, my co-worker close friend gave me a small package with a card in it. This is the coworker who recently had a baby. She gave it to me at the end of the day, she said, because she knew it would make me cry, and she didn't give it to me today because she wanted to talk to me about it. I waited till after she left before I opened it.

It was a beautiful silver necklace with 3 small charms. One is circular and says "in my heart" on it, the second is an open heart, and the third is a closed heart with baby footprints on it. Of course I started crying.

And then I read the card.


Envelope and front of card:

Inside the card:

Etsy shop it came from:

It was a reminder that there is someone who thought about me this mother's day. And it made all the difference in the world. My own parents won't think of me, and certainly not my inlaws. I've sent my BFF a Mother's day card (her first) but I don't think I will be hearing from her. But I heard from this friend. It made me feel so good.