My husband and I had a shit-tastic first year of marriage. I mean... it freaking sucked. when we got married in October of '09 I was on IV infusions of high-dose steroids for my kidneys. In November we found out Andy had no testosterone. None. Seriously, it was 20 (no missing zeros). Just for emphasis, I think mine was like 42, so it was less than mine (and if you're curious, I am, indeed, a woman). A supplemental MRI showed a pituitary tumor. Aaaaaand another physical anomaly I promised him I wouldn't put in here, but suffice it to say, it was another fertility negative. We got crappy SA results, and my kidneys went back to ground 0 after looking like they were doing OK. It sucked. Cancelled IUIs, more prednisone... I mean it was just a mess. We were starting to lose faith and headed into every month going "this HAS to be better than last month, right?". And it just wasn't happening.
So far, though, 2011 has proved to be just a little bit better. I was cleared to start fertility treatments, insurance actually approved us with no problems whatsoever, Andy is feeling much better, and it seems like we might actually be headed in an upward direction. Now I do not have my latest batch of kidney tests, and I am by no means expecting them to be perfect. I am praying that my creatinine is still close to 1, and that the ratio of protein in my urine has gone down. It doesn't have to be gone... I just want down. Prednisone worked last time, so I'm hopeful, but part of me is thinking "what if?". I'm waiting for my results and.. boy would it just be a kick in the pants to have really terrible results when we're about to start this cycle. Now they say the cutoff for creatinine with having a good pregnancy outcome is 1.4 or less. Mine has not yet been over 1.25, and I was on a medication at the time that raised it some. With me on the prednisone there's no reason to think it would be higher. Plus, after 2 months of prednisone my urine protein was in the 5s instead of the 6s, so it was headed in the right direction, allbeit slowly. So we'll see how it goes. I'm just hoping for "better". And I suppose if it's not, we'll find a way to deal. I feel like there's always a hurdle but if we can clear this one with a "better" I'll be a happy girl. But I'm trying not to jinx myself so I'll move on to what I actually wanted to say today.
I mentioned that Andy and I decided to pay for freezing of our embryos, which is $1600. Having decided this on a whim, we now have to come up with $1600, and we don't want to use credit. We have some savings, but not a ton, and I thought the constant monitoring coming up might drop it to pretty much nothing. I called Shady Grove today, though, and she said I don't have to pay for ANYTHING from here on out. She said all of my upcoming monitoring is covered by the deposit and there are no more out of pocket charges in the office (I assume we'll be getting a bill for about 500-1000 that insurance doesn't cover from what we've paid already, but that's not until later). So our savings can be used for any frosties, and I'm very happy!! Although it sucks to be using up our cushion, it's nice to know we have it there. And I can't imagine how people go through this without help or without really good jobs. Because my God is it financially draining.
Andy said to me this morning "If we have frozen embryos, does it make the next cycle cheaper? Probably not, right?" And I said "Honey with frozen embryos we don't have to go through nearly as much medication or the egg retrieval... even with medications it's about 3 grand at our center". Needless to say he was very excited about this. I wish our insurance covered FET, but we're still paying less than half out of pocket, so I'm not going to be ungrateful.
This of course depends on having frosties, which we may not, but I'm hopeful. We've had a lot of good news lately and I hope that translates into this cycle's outcome. We have a Disney trip to plan with our little one lol.
Edit: I just read in their IVF PDF that if you do elective single embryo transfer, your cryo charges are 50% off!! So if I qualify for eSET, we were planning to do it anyway, and if that program is still going it's $800 instead of $1600. That's awesome, because that much we have sitting there, and the other $800 could be the start of saving for the deposit for a FET if we need it (but we're not going there yet. Positivity is the name of the game!).
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