Roller coaster

The last two weeks have truly been a roller coaster of emotions for us.  If you have ever considered going through IVF, or think you might in the future, don't believe the initial price quotes you are given, especially if you are a self-paying (cash) patient.  If your health insurance covers IVF, you are one of the lucky few.  Our insurance does not cover IVF, so everything that goes into this process is coming out of our pockets.

A week or two ago, we received the final fees from our doctor and pharmacies.  Little things keep popping up with our doctor that are not included in the IVF package, which means more cost.  The injections were more than double what we were initially quoted.  Our hearts sank and we became scared.  Scared that we would either have to stop the IVF cycle or that we would drain everything we have just to continue.  We applied for several programs that offer financial assistance to families going through IVF.  We were either turned down or were presented with an offer that was not going to save us any money.  But, we held on for a few more days, and without going into details, a miracle happened and we are now able to proceed.

Andrew and I met with our doctor yesterday to discuss results from labwork for both of us.  We both passed the infectious disease screening with flying colors...woohoo!    But, my vitamin D level is in the low-normal range.  IVF patients are more successful with normal vitamin D ranges, so I will be adding a supplement to my long list of daily pills.

My doctor also ran a panel for recurrent pregnancy loss, which found some abnormalities.  Although I've had only one miscarriage, she wants to be sure that there is nothing going on that could potentially result in another miscarriage following IVF.  The initial test for lupus came back positive; however, every confirmatory test for the lupus inhibitor came back negative.  There is a good chance that the result for lupus is a false positive.  My doctor said that, for an unknown reason, there is a higher incidence of false positives in Caucasian females. Just to be sure, she will run the test again in 12 weeks.  In the meantime, I will take a baby aspirin every day as an anticoagulant.

Another abnormality that was found is the MTHFR A1298C gene mutation.  It seems that this mutation is of little clinical significance.  However, conditions associated with this mutation include recurrent miscarriage.  This could be because folic acid is not metabilized the way it should be.  For that reason, I will be switching to a prescription prenatal vitamin that contains easily-metabolized folic acid.  (In case you don't know, folic acid is crucial for the developing embryo.)

Andrew and I sat through an injection teaching yesterday, where we learned how to mix the medications and administer the shots (the part I am not looking forward to).  The mixing of powders and diluent is a complicated process!  I think we are both nervous that we won't mix the right amount of medication or that we won't be able to get it all out of the bottle.  And I'm definitely nervous about the long needles.  How can they expect non-clinicians to do this?!  Ugh...

So, that's where we are with things right now.  Next week I will have my baseline ultrasound, where my doctor will look at my ovaries and hope she finds what she is looking for.  My understanding is that they are hoping to see no follicles at the baseline.  A few days following that ultrasound,  I will start the injections, which will hopefully stimulate the ovaries to produce many follicles with good quality eggs.