Well, we had our first check point today at the doctor office and it was passed without any concern! All of my follicles appeared to be similar in size and all very small which is exactly what we wanted.
So now I will be taking 2 shots a day, and they are both shots that I will be able to administer to myself which I am used to - or at least I was and I'm sure it will all come back to me :) Neither of them look too scary, it is just a process. My evening shot requires mixing powder with liquid and switching needles on the syringe, I will feel like a nurse for the next 10 days LOL Maybe I'll take a picture, but I have a feeling no one really wants to see me poking myself with a needle.
The biggest challenge for me will be that I have to take the shots at specific times everyday - I am very forgetful about that kind of stuff and now that I don't have a job that requires it, I don't always have my phone on me so setting an alarm on there won't work. Although, I am getting a new phone tomorrow...Jer got me an iPhone for an early Christmas gift, and I will probably being playing with that a lot getting used to it. I have also set several alarm clocks in our house and I have Jer to help me out with remembering.
Another big milestone reached today - I am (finally) officially approved by our insurance for infertility coverage. There was quite a long process I have been going through for several months to prove to Aetna that I indeed need assistance conceiving. I guess they finally have enough evidence and I also got confirmation that the coverage does "re-set" on January 1st, so if the procedure does not work, we will not have to wait very long to try again. And I guess it is 'good' that due to the ectopic in February and the resulting surgery our deductible is already met for this year so our out of pocket is really the lowest it could be (which is not saying much!!).
So next step is another check in with the doctor in a week. This time we will be looking to see if the follicles are all growing together and at the rate that the doctor wants. Thanks again for all the thoughts and prayers, you have no idea how much it helps.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Box full of needles...
...that is what just arrived at my front door! All (OK most) of my medications for the remainder of the procedure have come. They are almost all injectable. This should be loads of fun.
Here they all are:
Here they all are:
And that doesn't even include the progesterone which has a short shelf life and I will order in a few weeks, or the shots I'll have to take twice a day throughout the entire pregnancy (and for 6 weeks after)
But, this does also mean we are about to hit the next check point in the process. We have an appointment tomorrow with the Dr to have an ultrasound that will see if the Lupron did it's job and all of my follicles are at the same starting point. If not, I will need to have an additional Lupron injection and we will try again, not sure if this will put the procedure into 2012 or not, but I am not worried about that yet. Let's just hope that we are moving along as scheduled!
Thursday, November 17, 2011
First shot down
Things are officially in motion! I had my Lupron injection on Monday afternoon, I did end up running down to the Dr office just to make sure everything was done correctly. The shot itself was not really painful at all and so far no major side effects, just some headaches which are easily taken care of.
Next step is an ultrasound on November 30th to see if the Lupron was effective and we can continue moving forward.
2 things I am thinking about right now: a) I have recently realized a major flaw in this blog....I am actually very superstitious when it comes to pregnancy. Just because of all of my medical history and the PCOS in particular I am at an increased risk of miscarriage and I was very strict about not sharing the news with anyone until after the 12 week mark so not sure how I will approach that on this page. More to come I guess.
and b) Just thought I would share the lovely needle that was just stuck into my butt so you all can have a reference point :) Here it is
Next step is an ultrasound on November 30th to see if the Lupron was effective and we can continue moving forward.
2 things I am thinking about right now: a) I have recently realized a major flaw in this blog....I am actually very superstitious when it comes to pregnancy. Just because of all of my medical history and the PCOS in particular I am at an increased risk of miscarriage and I was very strict about not sharing the news with anyone until after the 12 week mark so not sure how I will approach that on this page. More to come I guess.
and b) Just thought I would share the lovely needle that was just stuck into my butt so you all can have a reference point :) Here it is
Sunday, November 13, 2011
5...4...3...2...
Well the big day is here, rather the first of several upcoming big days. Tomorrow I finally take my first shot. The medicine I will have injected tomorrow is called Lupron Depot. It is actually a medication developed for Endometriosis that doctors found will help with IVF as well.
The Lupron will basically shut my reproductive cycle down. Right now, because of the PCOS, I have follicles of all different sizes on my ovaries. The Lupron will shut down the hormone that develops the follicles making them all go back to the start in a way so that they can all be grown at the same time and in a controlled manner by the doctor. This way, there is a great chance of having more eggs develop to the size needed to make a embryo and hopefully when I have my egg retrieval process (in about a month!! yikes!!) there will be at least 10 - 15 decent quality eggs for the Doctor to remove and fertilize.
The needle (this is that $800 shot, luckily only ended up being $50 after insurance) is about 3 inches long and has to be injected into my muscle. I am still on the fence about having Jeremy do this or going to have the nurse do it. Not that I don't trust Jeremy, when I started Lovenox after the first ectopic he did all of my injections for quite awhile until I had to learn to do them myself because I traveled for work. But I can't give myself an Intra Muscular shot because it is best to do it in your back side and hard to reach on your own.
Anyway, I do trust Jer, but A) that needle sure is looong, B) The medication is a powder that needs to be mixed and they explained it to us, but that was more than a month ago when we thought the shot would take place at the beginning of October and C) did I mention it is an $800 shot? I don't want to screw it up...and if this doesn't happen right on this day then we will be all off track again and we really won't be able to fit a procedure in before the end of 2011. (update from my last post: we are able to get a try in before the end of the year!! I was so happy about that! Should happen the week of December 11 so well before holiday vacations) There will be plenty of additional shots in my near future that Jeremy will have the joy of administering. I just don't really feel like driving all the way to Ypsilanti (about 30 minutes) for a shot but since it is a one time medication I probably will.
So as of tomorrow, the wheels are in motion, the process has officially begun! I appreciate all the thoughts and prayers, keep them coming :)
The Lupron will basically shut my reproductive cycle down. Right now, because of the PCOS, I have follicles of all different sizes on my ovaries. The Lupron will shut down the hormone that develops the follicles making them all go back to the start in a way so that they can all be grown at the same time and in a controlled manner by the doctor. This way, there is a great chance of having more eggs develop to the size needed to make a embryo and hopefully when I have my egg retrieval process (in about a month!! yikes!!) there will be at least 10 - 15 decent quality eggs for the Doctor to remove and fertilize.
The needle (this is that $800 shot, luckily only ended up being $50 after insurance) is about 3 inches long and has to be injected into my muscle. I am still on the fence about having Jeremy do this or going to have the nurse do it. Not that I don't trust Jeremy, when I started Lovenox after the first ectopic he did all of my injections for quite awhile until I had to learn to do them myself because I traveled for work. But I can't give myself an Intra Muscular shot because it is best to do it in your back side and hard to reach on your own.
Anyway, I do trust Jer, but A) that needle sure is looong, B) The medication is a powder that needs to be mixed and they explained it to us, but that was more than a month ago when we thought the shot would take place at the beginning of October and C) did I mention it is an $800 shot? I don't want to screw it up...and if this doesn't happen right on this day then we will be all off track again and we really won't be able to fit a procedure in before the end of 2011. (update from my last post: we are able to get a try in before the end of the year!! I was so happy about that! Should happen the week of December 11 so well before holiday vacations) There will be plenty of additional shots in my near future that Jeremy will have the joy of administering. I just don't really feel like driving all the way to Ypsilanti (about 30 minutes) for a shot but since it is a one time medication I probably will.
So as of tomorrow, the wheels are in motion, the process has officially begun! I appreciate all the thoughts and prayers, keep them coming :)
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Too much too fast?
We had a second meeting with our IVF doctor to go over some blood work that I had done and we needed to have our educational session with the nurses as well to go over the entire process in detail. This took place in the first week of October on a Wednesday.
The doctor said that everything was as expected with my bloodwork and the only major red flag was that I am very insulin resistant, but I knew that already - that is a very common trait of patients with PCOS. He put me on Metformin, a diabetes drug, to help counteract that and that will help increase my uterine lining.
Then we had our appointment with the nurses and went over lots of information and forms and at the end of it, they gave me my calendar, on it was laid out the timing for all of the medications I will need to take and when, if everything goes according to plan, my procedure will happen.
The first shot that I was to take to kick off the process was scheduled for that Monday - 5 days away. Now this seemed kind of fast to me, but what was there to wait for? Well, I had planned to go up north that weekend, but I would be back Monday night, in time for Jeremy to give me the shot. The nurse said that the pharmacy would contact me to set up delivery.
I didn't hear anything Thursday and didn't even think about it, and we headed up north Friday morning. By the time we got to the cottage I realized I still had not heard from the pharmacy and that Monday was actually a holiday so I was starting to get concerned about even having a shot to take. I called my doctors office who then called the pharmacy (again) who then finally called me.
The mail order pharmacy that my doctor office had recommended we use went over the order for the entire process-long medications. They said I needed to be pre approved by insurance and that hadn't happened yet, as of that moment the approximate cost for the drugs was just under $5000. yikes. I knew it would be expensive, but yikes.
So I said, right now I really only need this one shot, nothing else needs to be taken for a few weeks, I will have time to figure things out with insurance, how much is just the one shot? Answer, $800. wow. So I said I would call them back, and I called my doctor to see if they knew of some way to get it covered by insurance. They then tried to call my local Meijer pharmacy, the Meijer pharmacist called to let me know that drug is not covered by insurance at retail pharmacies. ugh.
At this point, it was Sunday so nothing could be done. Monday we were heading home and I was pre-occupied with that and not really able to make calls, all my paperwork was at home. So Tuesday came and I had missed the calendar date. Now I figured the entire calendar would just adjust based on when I took that first shot - an assumption I quickly learned to never make again in this process. I talked with Jeremy that night and told him it looked like the first shot would be $800. I had talked again with the mail order pharmacy, they said my pre-approval had come through for the drugs and all the rest of the medication was down to under $300 co-pay, but that initial shot of Depot Lupron was not covered and would be full price.
Obviously there really isn't too much to discuss, it is what it is and Jeremy said go ahead and order it. I wanted to just double check before I did so Wednesday morning I called the insurance company, who turned me to the pharmacy insurance and it turns out, our pharmacy insurance is a mail order pharmacy itself (insurance is so confusing to me) and I quickly found out, if I order through them, the shot is covered and could be as low as a $60 co-pay. Big difference from $800! So I had the doctor call in the shot there and just as I was hanging up with the nurse I said "so how does this affect my calendar?" Well, I'm glad I brought it up because the answer is pretty dramatically!
It turns out every step of this process is very carefully timed and the Lupron shot needs to be taken on the 18th day of my cycle and Monday was already the 19th day so the fact that it was Wednesday and it would still be a day or two or more before I got the shot meant it was far too late and we would have to wait until my cycle started over.
This was pretty disappointing to me, but in a strange way it made me feel a little better. I plan to address this in another post shortly, but I had been feeling pretty uncomfortable with the whole IVF process and I felt like we were totally taking God out of the conception process - I took these delays as kind of a sign from God that he really is always in control, something that would be reinforced in the near future as well. There were just too many things that didn't go the right way, this was never meant to work out for this month.
My big concern now was timing, would we still be able to fit in a try at the procedure before the end of the year? I assume that the doctor is not preforming procedures during the holidays and who knows how much time he actually takes off in the month of December, that could really affect things and we are getting into December now. But, it will work out as it is meant to be, while we really want to have the procedure before the end of the year in case it doesn't work the first time - our insurance benefits will re-set in 2012 and we will have a new pool of money to help off set procedure costs. If that doesn't end up happening, well, we will just deal with it. I'm not sure we could really afford to try it twice in 2012 without any insurance coverage on the second try. Hopefully we won't even need a second try and what's done is done, now we just wait for the cycle to start again.
The doctor said that everything was as expected with my bloodwork and the only major red flag was that I am very insulin resistant, but I knew that already - that is a very common trait of patients with PCOS. He put me on Metformin, a diabetes drug, to help counteract that and that will help increase my uterine lining.
Then we had our appointment with the nurses and went over lots of information and forms and at the end of it, they gave me my calendar, on it was laid out the timing for all of the medications I will need to take and when, if everything goes according to plan, my procedure will happen.
The first shot that I was to take to kick off the process was scheduled for that Monday - 5 days away. Now this seemed kind of fast to me, but what was there to wait for? Well, I had planned to go up north that weekend, but I would be back Monday night, in time for Jeremy to give me the shot. The nurse said that the pharmacy would contact me to set up delivery.
I didn't hear anything Thursday and didn't even think about it, and we headed up north Friday morning. By the time we got to the cottage I realized I still had not heard from the pharmacy and that Monday was actually a holiday so I was starting to get concerned about even having a shot to take. I called my doctors office who then called the pharmacy (again) who then finally called me.
The mail order pharmacy that my doctor office had recommended we use went over the order for the entire process-long medications. They said I needed to be pre approved by insurance and that hadn't happened yet, as of that moment the approximate cost for the drugs was just under $5000. yikes. I knew it would be expensive, but yikes.
So I said, right now I really only need this one shot, nothing else needs to be taken for a few weeks, I will have time to figure things out with insurance, how much is just the one shot? Answer, $800. wow. So I said I would call them back, and I called my doctor to see if they knew of some way to get it covered by insurance. They then tried to call my local Meijer pharmacy, the Meijer pharmacist called to let me know that drug is not covered by insurance at retail pharmacies. ugh.
At this point, it was Sunday so nothing could be done. Monday we were heading home and I was pre-occupied with that and not really able to make calls, all my paperwork was at home. So Tuesday came and I had missed the calendar date. Now I figured the entire calendar would just adjust based on when I took that first shot - an assumption I quickly learned to never make again in this process. I talked with Jeremy that night and told him it looked like the first shot would be $800. I had talked again with the mail order pharmacy, they said my pre-approval had come through for the drugs and all the rest of the medication was down to under $300 co-pay, but that initial shot of Depot Lupron was not covered and would be full price.
Obviously there really isn't too much to discuss, it is what it is and Jeremy said go ahead and order it. I wanted to just double check before I did so Wednesday morning I called the insurance company, who turned me to the pharmacy insurance and it turns out, our pharmacy insurance is a mail order pharmacy itself (insurance is so confusing to me) and I quickly found out, if I order through them, the shot is covered and could be as low as a $60 co-pay. Big difference from $800! So I had the doctor call in the shot there and just as I was hanging up with the nurse I said "so how does this affect my calendar?" Well, I'm glad I brought it up because the answer is pretty dramatically!
It turns out every step of this process is very carefully timed and the Lupron shot needs to be taken on the 18th day of my cycle and Monday was already the 19th day so the fact that it was Wednesday and it would still be a day or two or more before I got the shot meant it was far too late and we would have to wait until my cycle started over.
This was pretty disappointing to me, but in a strange way it made me feel a little better. I plan to address this in another post shortly, but I had been feeling pretty uncomfortable with the whole IVF process and I felt like we were totally taking God out of the conception process - I took these delays as kind of a sign from God that he really is always in control, something that would be reinforced in the near future as well. There were just too many things that didn't go the right way, this was never meant to work out for this month.
My big concern now was timing, would we still be able to fit in a try at the procedure before the end of the year? I assume that the doctor is not preforming procedures during the holidays and who knows how much time he actually takes off in the month of December, that could really affect things and we are getting into December now. But, it will work out as it is meant to be, while we really want to have the procedure before the end of the year in case it doesn't work the first time - our insurance benefits will re-set in 2012 and we will have a new pool of money to help off set procedure costs. If that doesn't end up happening, well, we will just deal with it. I'm not sure we could really afford to try it twice in 2012 without any insurance coverage on the second try. Hopefully we won't even need a second try and what's done is done, now we just wait for the cycle to start again.
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