Money, Alcohol, Cats, and Dinosaurs

I haven't had a good day. I don't know why I'm surprised that the government would choose the middle of my IVF cycle to shut down, but I have to say that going into this without a paycheck in sight is not comforting. I know there's still time for an agreement, but I don't see it happening. And although my husband works hard, for now my income is the majority, so we really need it. We didn't want to have to use savings to pay our bills. We wanted to freeze our embies with that money. We'd just been getting to a point where we were putting money away, and I'm nervous about all of this. I ended up getting so overwhelmed by this, and my kidneys, and everything, that I cried in front of my boss today. I was mumbling about how I don't have any sick time to use and how hard that is, and how we won't be earning any while we're shut down, on top of still having to pay my medical bills with no paycheck. I felt like such a dolt, and I think my co-workers think I'm a whiny brat because 2 of them were chosen to keep working, and they're getting back-paid, and I need money too, so I asked why they were chosen. I thought it was a fair question. I've been working my ass off on my current project. But I digress.

I've had a few hours to calm down. I still feel like a hot mess, and I want to go home. I'm hungry and I need a nap. Andy's stressed out about all this, so he's been snippy, which really isn't helping. And what's worse is that it's all still up in the air. I hate not knowing. I need to rest. My ovaries have been aching a lot lately and I wonder what it's from. I hope it's because there are going to be a ton of antral follicles on Wednesday!!! But I'll have to wait and see.

Tonight I'm going to go home and cuddle with these two who always know how to make me feel better.



Although Rio (the silver one) has been flipping out because a cat keeps coming to the window to visit her. It's rather hysterical, but I feel bad that the cat doesn't have a home and I want to bring it inside. Columbus (black and white) only cares because Rio does, and that makes me laugh too. Normally I wake up or fall asleep with one of both of them on me, and that always puts me in a good mood.

Tomorrow I'm resolving to do nothing but watch sci-fi movies and hang out at the house. I might go to the gym if I am up to it. Fortunately there are awesome movies on, like TRIASSIC ATTACK! and

How can I be upset when that's on tv tomorrow night? Yes, I'm being serious, and my husband is getting punched if he tries to tell me no.

I guess we'll see what happens. I will be drowning myself in bad sci-fi, since I'm not supposed to be drinking right now... something about being bad for fertility? I dunno, it's probably BS, but I don't want to take any chances. Giant dinosaurs will have to fill the void.



My Kidneys are Assholes in Disguise

I knew I shouldn't have posted that blog about my kidneys. As it turns out, they have gotten worse... or so my doctor would have me think. See here's the thing. He says my urine protein/creatinine ration went up from 3.1 to 3.7. This is bad... but I can't help but feel like it's not accurate. For two reasons:

1) My doctor always says my urine creatinine is way too high for my body mass. We don't know why this is, but my thought is what if it normalized? If it came down but my protein didn't, it would skew the ratio.

2) I didn't complete the test. They gave me a smaller bottle and I filled it with 4 hours left to go, so I missed my morning pee. You'd think that this wouldn't affect the ratio, but what it my last pee didn't have much protein. Or had extra creatinine. I just feel like it's not completely valid.

My doctor does, but I don't, so I've asked if I could do another test very shortly. Also because I don't understand this ratio, but I do understand total protein, which we definitely didn't get, so I'd like to know what it is. 

For some reason they didn't send him the blood results, so I don't know my blood creatinine. If it's still around 1 I won't freak out too much. By itself, losing urinary protein doesn't really do much. The problem is when it's reabsorbed by your kidneys and they get damaged. But if my blood creatinine is staying the same, that's a good sign. And as I mentioned previously, it was close to 1 in December, and has never been over 1.25, so hopefully it's still under that mark.

This shouldn't affect my IVF (unless somehow my creatinine completely shot up which I pray it didn't). My only concern is that the prednisone last time kept my protein lower, but when I got off of it, the protein went up quickly. How will they differentiate when I'm pregnant between my kidneys doing what they do and going up in protein, and an issue due to the pregnancy? My blood pressure is likely to go up too, just because.. that's what kidneys do. How will they tell? I guess frequent liver tests? I mean 300mg is huge in someone without kidney problems, but I have 6000mg on the regular.  300 is a drop in the bucket, and statistically insignificant for me. I'm fully expecting to be on bed rest, potentially hospital bed rest, for part of this pregnancy. And that sucks, but it is worth it to have a baby. With creatinine under 1.4 I should be fine. I just don't want them to think I'm having an issue with pre-eclampsia or something when it's a kidney thing. I guess I should probably worry more about getting pregnant right now than something that might not even be an issue. I'm hoping to get to 30 weeks without issue, and if I have to lay in bed for the next 8 that's fine by me so long as my baby and I end up healthy. 

Hubs says this is the year of the baby. I hope it's a perfect, normal pregnancy. We'll see what happens. My first appointment for baseline ultrasound and bloodwork is Wednesday! YAY! And I start injections next Saturday. I can't believe it's finally here!! Hooray for babies. 

One thing I find extra cool about the idea of snow babies is that say I do need a transplant in the next few years, but we want another baby and I'm.. I dunno, 36 (it's OK to have babies after transplant if you wait a year or two). I'd have snow babies from when I was 30 to use, so I wouldn't have to freak out over egg quality decline or anything, so that's a cool positive about this IVF cycle. I hope and pray it doesn't come to that. That I'll be miraculously healed, or simply not get worse. But it's still cool to know it's an option. I'm excited for this upcoming cycle, and I just can't wait to get it all started. 

Meds!

Obligatory "I got my medications" post.

This is them:

Please pardon all the other crap on the table. I didn't want to take everything out of the boxes, lest I forget what they are and what they do. So it doesn't look like as much as it really is. I found it interesting that the only thing that came in a refrigerated container was a pack of papers. Thankfully hubs was home. It looks like the only IM injection I have is my lupron, which I though I'd be taking on a daily basis, but apparently my trigger is lupron (not hcg!?). I guess that means I'll be able to take an hpt with soe semblance of accuracy. But because I'm not excited about it, I'm posting a blurry picture of my IM needle, too:

It's blurry, but hopefully my finger gives some scale. I'm too lazy to find either of my actual digital cameras. So there you have it.

Good News, and How We're Getting Some

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!).

I Have a Schedule!

My cycle of emotional retardation continued last night. I was so upset about not going to Chicago, and I ended up crying while Andy held me about how I want him to have everything he wants. He told me he had everything he wants because he has me. I'm not making that up. I got upset thinking he didn't want to do this again, and he got a bit offended and said that's not true, but, again, he's not going to gush about it and obsess. We did get into a conversation about affording all of it, though. My parents were going to pay for freezing of embryos and let us pay them back, but I really don't want to do that, so we're paying the $1600 out of pocket for it if we have embryos to freeze. Planner that I am, we decided we'd do a second cycle if this one doesn't work. But if we have frosties we'll do those first. Andy said he's not sure about doing a third fresh cycle, though. I told him that's how many my insurance covers and I was comfortable doing 3, so if it comes to it we'll have to talk about that. I hope it doesn't take 3, but we'll see. I also told him I'd be miserable forever if I didn't have a baby. But he doesn't want to be flat broke at the end of it and still not have a baby. Which I do understand. We've made plans for him to go back to school full time next year which would cut out his income. Although I make plenty by myself, it would be really tight if we were paying for multiple IVFs, so we decided on a couple of things.

First, we're done spending unnecessary money. Lately my bank account has been bleeding and I've come home with tons of new clothes and new toys (I bought a kindle this week!). We make enough that we should easily be putting a few hundred a month away, but we haven't been, and it's time to strap it down, get some credit cards paid off, and put as much into savings as possible.

Second, we're done thinking about "what if". We've made the decision to pursue a second fresh cycle if necessary if we don't have frosties, so there's no reason to keep talking about it. From here on out THIS CYCLE IS WORKING. There's no room in our lives for negativity over this. We have a month until transfer and we're not allowing anything but positive vibes in. "Relax" may not be the key to pregnancy, but stress definitely has negative effects on the body as a whole, so we're trying to just be positive and support each other and do this! So without further adieu, onto the cooooool stuff I got in the mail!!!

It's a little hard to see, but this is my list of meds. It looks like SO much to me. I knew it would be a ton, but seeing it listed out and designed specifically for me, I'm like "holy crap". I was also hoping to get away with no IM injections, but unfortunately it looks like the lupron is IM. Andy is terrified of giving me needles, so I told him I'd try to do it myself first. He knows he has to step in if I can't do it, but he is so afraid of hurting me. It's pretty cute, actually. It might just be the trigger that's IM, and if that's the case I may get my mom to do it. Also cool about this? It has DATES. I have 4/16 to start stims, which is pretty much set in stone (2 weeks!!!). They expect retrieval to be about 4/27, with transfer 4/30 or 5/2.

Holy. Crap!

I probably shouldn't be so excited about this next one, but I am. So there.

These are the first 4 days of stims. I think 75 is the lowest dose they really give of both meds, so I hope it does the job. My first monitoring appointment will be 4/19 so I guess they'll up it if they need to. In a way I'm glad she thinks I won't need too much medication. It makes me feel like she has high hopes. Which I guess is silly, but it means she thinks I'll have a lot of follies, and that's a good thing.

Tonight I'm hanging out with my girlfriends, and my goal is to get through one day without being a blubbering mess of ridiculousness. I am an emotional jackass right now, so we'll see what happens.

Our Bank Accounts are Bleeding

The Aetna Specialty pharmacy just called about my order. She went through the list of medicines so fast I didn't hear anything but Ganirilex and Menopur. Oh yes, and Follistim pen. I should figure out what those things do. And it's time to update the cost! Hopefully for the last time in a while, because, seriously? I'm over it.



SHG - $100
Day 3 blood work and ultrasound - $145
HSG - $231.50
Deposit - $3250
ICSI deposit - $250
Meds - $1578.19
Lupron - $10

Total: $5564.69
Now really, so far, that's not too bad. I'm sure the cost will go up some, and hopefully we'll be freezing some embryos which will add another $1200. I think, all in all, we're going to look at a final total of around $7500. which isn't truly all too terrible considering that includes all of the testing leading up to it. But still. It's nothing to sneeze at. Please hang out here for a while, tally... until freezing time? I know I've mentioned that my parents are paying for most of this cycle. We've paid for testing, but they paid for meds and the deposit. We'll be paying for freezing and any subsequent embryo transfers. They are paying flat out, but we want to pay them back anyway. So it's a lot of money. Yep.

Edit: Apparently one of the meds wasn't in that shipment. Thank God it's a $10 co-pay. He's looking out for me. It is going through a different pharmacy, though, and now my head is spinning.

Edit #2 - Added the Lupron $10 Co-Pay since I just paid it.

Temporary (?) Insanity

Interestingly enough, Andy and I got into a conversation about how he refuses to go to Chicago this year. He says he's not worried about it, and we need money in case the IVF doesn't work. In my ridiculously emotional state I decided that this meant he doesn't think it's going to work, and I threw a little bit of a crazy-woman fit. I also decided that Chicago was "his" thing and the baby was "my" thing and he didn't care and didn't want to have the baby.

Yes, the same day I wrote the post below about how awesome he is.

He said I deserve everything I want, which I, of course, took to mean he didn't want it, and it spiraled from there into me almost in tears complaining about how he doesn't want to do this and I'm forcing him into it. No, I'm not even on the crazy hormones yet.

He admits that it's more important to me to have the baby, and I get that. I'm a woman and obsessed.He doesn't think about it the same way. He's a guy, and not obsessed. Does he want the baby? Hell yes. Is he excited? Hell yes (this is the guy who put a onesie in his desk drawer so it would be close to him). Is he a crazy person who can't think about anything else? No. And of course this means everything in the ENTIRE WORLD is BAD and I can't survive anymore. Is this what hormonal rollrcoasters are like? If so, I would not like to purchase a ticket. However, if they're handing out babies at the end, I'll go for it. I'll pay 10 grand for THAT emotional rollercoaster. This one notsomuch.

The honest truth of the matter is he does think it will work, but he's logical. In my birth-control-filled rage, logic has flown out the window and I can only think in terms of how everything on earth relates to our baby. Fruit in a market in Asia might make it into the baby food my child will eat when he's on soft foods. A fish swimming in Australia could still be around when I take my kid to the Great Barrier Reef. My friend's refrigerator breaking down. Mowing the grass. EVERYTHING relates to my as-yet-unconceived child. This means there's no room for logic, and saving money and earning sick days don't compute. What's that? I should probably be able to pay my bills? What does that have to do with anything?

And somehow, Andy wanting to give up Chicago for us to have a baby means he doesn't want it. I defended myself with "But if we don't do it now we might never have a baby!". And while he should have given me a "WTF are you talking about, I'm on your side!" look, he said "That's right. Chicago will always be there. This chance might not." And do you want to know what I said??

"What if Chicago's NOT always there?" Really, Erika? Seriously? To which my glorious husband replied "Well then we've got bigger problems".

Oh, twisted hormones of IVF... lay not your hands on me!!!! Dear God I hope this cycle works... but will I find something else to obsess on? Absolutely. My husband deserves this trip. We deserve our baby. And I.. might deserve a trip to the looney bin if I don't control myself. Lord help us.