Why travelling for IVF is a blessing in disguise

This round has seemed to be fraught with difficulties that have stressed me out to the max…

I screwed up my meds:

I’m completely detached and when we were out of town for a fishing trip, Thursday-Monday I forgot that Monday wasn’t Sunday and didn’t reduce my Lupron dosage like my calendar said to do on Monday… Crisis averted, they said I should be fine.

I was over charged $1156 for my V.i.a.g.r.a suppositories:

The clinic accidentally forgot to write how many V-supps the pharmacy was supposed to send me so they just didn’t send any.  Luckily I had ordered my meds early enough that this wasn’t a big problem, so I just had them resend the prescription.  The pharmacy, MDR, called back to tell me that they were ready to send them and it would be $1150… I was stunned.  I told them that was a little too much money to not shop around so I had the clinic try Freedom Pharmacy.  They called to tell me they were ready to ship and it would be $204, I sputtered and then asked them to repeat that number, then asked them to spell the name of the prescription… I was flabbergasted!  So I gave them my credit card number and two days later a box of V-supps shows up on my doorstep, only problem, the receipt inside says I was charged $1360 not $204.  Now I’m just mad.  A week of battling them and calling back and forth between them and my credit card company finally results in them admitting that they re-listened to my conversation with them and indeed I was illegally charged.  I think they problem was that they quoted me the generic price but they only had the real deal V.i.a.gr.a in house so I got charged for that instead.  In the end we finally compromised on them refunding me 50% of the overage, so, in the end the meds cost $782 and a week of blood, sweat, and tears.

I have a big ass cyst:

I went in for my suppression check ultrasound and had a 15mm cyst on the left (this is after 3 months of birth control).  The ultrasound tech said the cyst looked like an endometrioma but she couldn’t say that for sure and normally a follicular cyst would kill your cycle because of messing with the hormones that they are carefully trying to control.  I called my clinic but both of my nurses were out and I finally got the call nurse who promised to figure it out.  She eventually called me back to say that they didn’t have the report yet but she thought it wouldn’t be a big problem and that I would only get a call back in the event that it IS a problem.  Lucky for me they never called back but I also spent 2 days stressing because I had booked a non-refundable hotel in Vegas (dumb I know).  On top of that I’ve been in a TON of pain, I’m not sure if it’s from the cyst or the meds but I’ve been on period strength C.e.le.bre.x for the last week.

Intralipid infusion drama:

My order never got turned in for my first intralipid infusion, mostly this is my fault, I waited until the last minute to have my doctor here cosign the order (which is necessary since hospital privileges are required to prescribe an infusion here.)  I got a call from the infusion center and hour and a half before my appointment to tell me they never got the order and they’d called my docs office which is closed for the day, by the way, this is on Friday so I’m effed if I don’t get someone to sign this thing!  I called everyone I know that I thought could help but I don’t have any doctor friends with privileges at this hospital, I even called my docs cell but she was in training out of state and didn’t get the call until too late.  Finally I got a hold of her on call doctor who agreed to sign the order, 10 minutes before my appointment.  After my infusion started we finally heard back from my doctor’s office saying that she had signed the order the day before and sent it over, they even had the fax confirmation.  So in the end this was mostly an IT glitch but still took me half a day to solve and stressed me out to the max.

The above 4 reasons are why I think travelling out of state for IVF is actually a good thing.  We leave Thursday and then the real world goes away for a week.  Yes, it is expensive, but it’s only a fraction of the cost of IVF and stress plays a huge role in getting/not getting pregnant.  I can’t imagine trying to sneak away from work here and balance life and a toddler with the actual process of IVF.  It would be too much for my type-A personality. 

So instead Blue and I will be taking a baby-cation.  Vegas here we come!