IUI#3 CD18 7DPI – Stepping It Up

We had an appointment with Dr. Trout this morning to talk about our progress. She let us know that basically, if we don’t get pregnant after three Clomid IUI attempts, the chances that subsequent attempts will work are substantially reduced. So she is recommending that if this cycle is a BFN, we try three injectable cycles (as opposed to the clomid) to see if we have better luck.

She agreed that my fertility is really more on par with someone 41-42 years old, which I think is why she’s willing to be aggressive with the treatment. Given that fact, she’d like to see 3 – 4 developed eggs per cycle under the injectable treatment. She believes even with that many, the chance of twins is pretty low.

The bummer is that my insurance won’t cover the cost of the injectable meds, and they’re super expensive. She had her nurses get me a form to apply for a discount on the drugs, but my guess is that the company’s not likely to cut me much of a break. And, she doesn’t want me ordering the drugs from overseas… she doesn’t believe the overseas ones are reliable. From what I can find on the internet, Walgreens charges about $250 per 300iu of Follistim. If that’s accurate it may actually not be that much more expensive than the ones I could order from overseas… but it could still be up to $750 per cycle if I need a lot of it. And, I’ll still need the $80 Ovidrel trigger injections (unless my body will play nice and ovulate on its own. :P)

Also, injectables mean I’ll have to have a shot every day,  I think maybe twice a day, for at least a couple of weeks. Ugh. At least the injections are done with a tiny needle. But, we only have one vial of swimmers left after this cycle. Injectables also mean ultrasound visits every 3-4 days until we’re ready to trigger, bringing the cost of a June cycle to around $1350.  If that one is also a BFN, we’ll be looking at $819 for two more vials of swimmers in addition to the other monthly costs, so that makes a July and August cycle about $1767 each.

If three injectable attempts fail, then we have to see what Dr. Trout recommends in terms of IVF. She actually said today that because of how expensive IVF is, she won’t recommend it for us if she doesn’t think we’d have an okay chance of success with my eggs. I told her if it comes to that, one of the options I’m seriously considering is overseas donor egg IVF, because it would be about 5000 Euro at the Embio clinic in Athens ($6800) whereas it would be closer to $20,000 here. She wasn’t too excited about the idea, though she said she’s never worked with a patient who went to Athens before… she’s seen some disastrous results from folks who went to Romania and Hungary, though. She did say she would help do blood tests the Greek clinic might need. I also asked if she’d be willing to review the clinic and materials they send and give me her thoughts on their reliability/safety/expertise, and she said she would.

The other option we talked about was the possibility of donated embryos. That would have a price tag of around $5000, but the waiting list is 1-2 years long unless there are available embryos that those at the top of the list don’t want… she said she had a couple of Chinese embryos that went almost to the bottom of the list before finding takers. I told her if she has that again to just call me… I would happily take them. :P But anyway, she made a note on our file to have us added to their adoption waiting list, just in case.

So I guess now the plan is this: If we get a BFN this cycle, we move on to three injectable IUI cycles. If we don’t get a BFP from those, then I’ll spend a couple of months paying off the cycles, and we’ll gear up for one great big donor egg attempt in Greece – the overall cost of which will be around $6800 (procedure and egg) + $680(swimmers) + $500(estimated meds) + $3000(flight and hotel) = $11,000. That’s basically going to be a last-ditch attempt. Their success rates are so high with donor eggs (70%) that I’ll have to decide whether to have them put back two or three embryos.

If, in the meantime, a donated embryo were to come our way, we’d likely try that before the Greek trip.

So we’re going to have to buckle up and start really watching our pennies now, because this is about to start getting really expensive. *sigh* Still hoping against hope that we might get super lucky and end up with a BFP this cycle…?