Time for an update - treatment should be starting soon

So here's what's happened in the last week:

My estrogen, STD and ultrasound results were forwarded to the Greek clinic.

The clinic sent me a prescription for the medications they want me on: decapeptyl, progynova, and utrogestan. After a lot of googling and calls to my pharmacy, turns out this is basically Lupron, estrogen and progesterone. So today, I have to call my RE's office and see if they will issue me prescriptions based on the Greek prescriptions, so that the pharmacy will honor them. I'm a little concerned about the cost of the Lupron, which looks to be about as expensive as the Follistim was. :(

I closed on my HELOC, and there is now $15,000 sitting in my bank account. But I also have $3500 sitting on my credit card. Between that and the cost of these meds, plus the $7000 procedure, $1200 for freezing leftover embryos, $2800ish for two plane tickets, and about $1800 for hotel/tours and the
like... plus what will probably be $2500 in meds, we're looking at around $18,000 in debt when it's
all said and done. Ayyy. I'm sincerely hoping I'm overestimating some of these costs. It's still probably $10K less, or more, than doing a procedure with a donor egg over here. But I will be so devastated if this doesn't work.  X.x

The clinic sent us the website of the sperm bank they work with (http://dk.cryosinternational.com) and asked us to pick a donor. Kaitlin and I fell in love with one profile in particular, a redheaded actor/comedian with such a delightful personality -- only to learn that we wouldn't be allowed to choose him because he hadn't chosen to be exclusively anonymous, and Greek law will only allow us to pick from anonymous donors. So it was back to the drawing board last night, and we spent probably three hours going over the other options. Finally settled on another red-headed guy. Kaitlin really likes the idea of giving our kiddo the chance at red hair. And the names we've picked out are strongly Irish, so it does seem like it would be apropos, somehow. I emailed the clinic again last night with our second choice, here's hoping it goes through.

I've been emailing with a Greek travel agency as well (www.fantasytravelofgreece.com). We're going to get a touring package, to make the most of the money we're already spending just to get to Athens. At first I was really hoping to do an island tour - especially Lesvos, which I've always wanted to see - but most of the islands aren't very active in the winter, and apparently traveling between them is a bit rough and expensive. So rather than spend most of our time on a ferry or waiting at airports, we're just going to do an expanded tour of Athens and the nearby area instead. The package includes a half-day tour of the Acropolis, a four-day "classical" tour of neighboring areas like Olympia, Delphi and Meteora, and a one-day island cruise between three of the smaller islands, in addition to hotel stays. I did ask them for less expensive hotels, as it's not the bed we sleep in that I want to spend my money on. So we've narrowed it down to the package and hotel bracket we want, and I just need the actual
transfer date so I can buy plane tickets and make reservations.

It's looking like the trip is going to happen end of November / beginning of December. I'm actually hoping for December, because the last week of November is Thanksgiving and the cost of plane tickets goes up several hundred dollars. Ugh. But I don't really get to dictate to my body, or the egg donors, what I want the timing to be. I guess we just see how it plays out.

The Greek clinic asked for some photos of myself, I guess so that they can narrow down their list of egg donors and send me a few options to choose from that are similar to me in appearance (and available).  I'm waiting to hear back from them on that.

Now, add to all of that the fact that I got the edits for my next book back from my publisher, and they want them returned by December 1; and there is a big SCA event in two weeks that I'm trying to make an appropriate dress for AND do some work for my apprentice-sister who's being elevated to Laurel (it's a really big deal in the group); and all my staff's annual performance evaluations have to be completed next month before I leave on a vacation; and I am feeling just a wee bit overwhelmed with trying to coordinate everything.

Still, it feels nice to think that we're taking action, above and beyond the "let's take some meds and throw some sperm in there and wait to see if it takes, knowing it's unlikely" approach that we've had all year. I am praying to every power in the universe that might be listening that this will work (and work the first time, and work with just one embryo.) Who would have ever thought that getting pregnant would be this hard??

Tests this morning

I went to the RE this morning and had another blood draw and ultrasound. They printed out the Greek clinic's email, and they're going to email the results to them for me.

In the meantime, I got an email back from the Greek clinic. They're quoting a price of 5500 Euros (about $7000) which does not include freezing of leftover embryos or my own meds. I was expecting that it wouldn't include my meds, but a little confused that it doesn't include the freezing. Their website says that an embryo donation IVF will cost 4800 Euros, so I was assuming the extra 700 was for freezing... if it isn't, and I have to pay an extra 1000 like they've quoted, then I'll have to adjust my budget by about $1000 in order to account for the freezing of leftovers. Eeep. Doesn't mean I'm not moving forward with it, but I did send her an email back asking where the extra 700 Euros came from. I wonder if the prices on their website aren't up to date?

In addition, she said that their success rate is that about 60% of patients get a positive pregnancy test, and the live birth rate is 46%. But I am wondering if that is with donor eggs, or if that's their overall clinic's success rate including ladies who do IVF with their own eggs. Their website specifies a 70% success rate with donor eggs, which leads me to believe that either they are inflating their rates for their website, or else the number she's quoting me includes both standard and donor egg IVF. Anyway... if the birth rate is 46%, then that would mean that 76% of their positive pregnancies result in a live birth, or just over 3/4 of them. That sounds about right. But it does leave some food for thought. If 60% of patients get a positive test, it stands to reason that many of those patients opted for a 2-embryo transfer rather than just one. I am curious to know what the success percentage is for those patients who opt for just one... is it about the same? And I am curious what percentage of those live births were twins?

I may ask her these questions later, or just save them for the discussion when we're actually in Greece, about how many embryos to put back. A lot of it will depend on the quality of the embryos that result, anyway. If we get at least one really high-quality one, then I think we'll just transfer that one. If they're all somewhat questionable quality, then I might risk 2.

Anyway, I've been keeping an eye on the exchange rate, too. It's 1.28 right now. If it drops to 1.26 or lower I may go ahead and try to change my USD into Euro while the rate is lower. They're predicting that it will be at 1.24 next month, and continue to decrease, so I figure I should probably wait as long as I can to make payments in the hopes that the rate will keep dropping in the next few months. For example, today 5500 Euro is $7040 USD. But if the rate were to drop to 1.24, it would be only $6820 USD -  a $120 difference. And that $120 could cover nearly three of my ultrasound co-pay appointments here. :P So while I am waiting for test results and more information from the Greek clinic, I am entertaining myself with budget planning - LOL.

Kaitlin and I are looking through the Cryos International sperm bank now, to find the donor we want. So far the front-runner is a red-haired actor/comedian/gamer geek, whose profile is utterly charming and full of personality. Since both the names we have picked out are strongly Irish, it wouldn't hurt to have a red-headed kiddo. :P

Now to wait for the Greek clinic to get my test results so we can see what happens next...

Getting the ball rolling

I did get an email back from the Greek clinic, Embio, this morning. They asked me a list of questions about myself and my health history, and requested ultrasound, estradiol, HIV, Hep B and Hep C test results.

So, I called my RE, let them know that AF has shown again, and made an appointment for this Thursday for what has pretty much become the routine - ultrasound and bloodwork. Once I get the test results they get emailed to the Greek clinic - and then I guess we see what happens from there.

The clinic quoted me a cost of 5500 Euro for what they call "embryo donation IVF". It's a little different from typical embryo donation, in that we get to pick the donors, and the egg donor's cycle is synced with mine, and the transfer is done with fresh, never-frozen embryos. I did ask them if they'd clarify for me whether their 70% success rate is per-embryo (meaning that 70% of the individual embryos they transfer turn into pregnancies) or whether it's per-patient (70% of the women who receive transfers, which may include more than one embryo at a time, get pregnant.) I think it's per-embryo, based on the way the info is presented on their website, but it would be nice to confirm.

I also asked them to confirm that the 5500 is really the whole complete cost. It equates to just under $7000 USD, which seems like an INSANELY low amount for a fresh egg donor, sperm donor, all the donor's meds and monitoring, anesthesia and retrieval, fertilization, incubation, embryo transfer (into me), freezing of leftover embryos, AND a year's worth of embryo storage. I do know that they may need me on some meds here... probably at least birth control and then a trigger shot, and those will come out of my pocket too... but holy cow that seems like such a deal. I need them to confirm that there isn't some hidden cost somewhere that they aren't telling me about. :P

I'm going in on Saturday to close on my HELOC loan, and then the funds should be available about two weeks after that. I'll use part of them to pay off the remaining TTC balance on my credit card, and then the rest are earmarked for the Greek trip.

I'm encouraged at how helpful my RE's office has been so far -- I was worried they might be upset that I'm not continuing treatment with them at this point, but so far they've been nothing but nice about it. We are on their embryo adoption list, so I did tell the nurse that if an embryo becomes available before we go to Greece, we'll do that instead... but we're a lot farther down on the list and there are a lot of folks who have been waiting a lot longer than us for one, and I don't want to cut in line.

So that's that, I guess. Get the tests on Thursday, send them off to Embio, and see how this plays out.

Still trying to decide between putting back two embryos or just one...

BFN #6

AF showed up yesterday, making it BFN#6 for the year. And we've now used up all our vials of swimmers. I'm not pleased with how this last cycle went. Between my work situation being so stressful I could barely eat or sleep throughout the injections, to asking the doctor to run an ovulation test on my blood sample because I was SURE I was ovulating early (and lo and behold, I was right), to having the IUI done two days after the positive ovulation test (when I pretty much always ovulate within 12-24 hours of a smiley)... I wasn't holding out much hope for this one. And sure enough, just 9DPI, AF showed up again. Cycle's the most expensive one yet - somewhere around $4000 - and it was a complete bust.

I'm so tired of throwing money at this and ending up with no results. I'm so tired of being poked with needles, and probed with scanners, and being crazy hormonal all the time, and having cycle after cycle where we don't even get to make an attempt because my body's not cooperating. Having a baby is supposed to be a delight. It's supposed to be something that happens out of love and joy and pleasure. And this is getting ridiculous.

So that's it. I am DONE pussyfooting around. I emailed the Greek clinic today to find out how to get the process started, and I was approved by my bank for a Home Equity Line of Credit that's going to front me the money to pay for an overseas donor embryo cycle. I think the process is going to end up looking something like this:

-Greek clinic emails and requests information and doctor tests.
-I have tests done, send results and info to the clinic
-Greek clinic sends donor lists. Kaitlin and I look them over and send our choices back.
-Greek clinic contacts our chosen egg donors, and we figure out which one is available and willing.
-Egg donor begins her cycle at the Greek clinic; goes on meds.
-I have my clinic here monitor me and put me on any meds needed to sync my cycle with the donor's.
-Clinic lets us know what date we'll need to be there for a transfer; I buy plane and hotel tickets and make arrangements with work to take the time off.
-Egg donor goes in for her retrieval, while we arrive in Greece.
-We spend 9-10 days exploring Athens and nearby islands.
-We go to the clinic and have the transfer. Still debating between 1 and 2 embryos. My little voice of reason says that 1 is the wisest choice, since their success rates are 70%. But my little voice of impatience is stamping her feet in the background, so we'll see...
-I spend the next couple days on bedrest (This isn't a requirement, from what I understand, but it sure couldn't hurt.)
-We get back to the States and I return to work.
-We find out in a couple of weeks if I am pregnant. If not, we gear up for one second round, using any frozen leftover embryos from the first cycle. That one will cost us about $4000 or so, as it will be a short trip.

We'll have an adopted embryo, meaning that the baby won't have a genetic link to either of us... but on the plus side, he/she will be something of a "designer" baby since we get to pick both the donors. So we will still be creating someone utterly unique, and just for us... and I'll still get to experience pregnancy and make sure I'm giving the kiddo the healthiest possible start to life.

So that's the plan now. And my brain is rushing into full-on planning mode. While I'm really frustrated and sad that all the attempts we've made thus far haven't panned out (we could have already done a Greek cycle for the money I've paid out so far this year) it's nice to feel like maybe we have the opportunity for greater momentum than we've seen all year.

I'm not giving up on my OLW for this year - CONCIEVE. There's still some time for that, right?

In the meantime, working on my next book and waiting for the edits to come back on the second Ithyria book. Daydreaming about how nice it would be to be able to be a full-time author, and knowing I'll never pay off the debt I'm about to leap into if I did that. Pfft.

IUI#6 CD9 - Running Out Of Hope

This has been a pretty wretched couple of weeks, overall. Work is a mess - my bosses have decided to move me laterally, pulling me out of the field I've been in for the last 11 years. And it's not because I have such wonderful skill that they desperately need me in another area.. oh no. It's because my staff threw me under the bus in a recent employee survey because they hate the fact that I've actually started supervising them instead of serving as their teammate. And while that's a long story, suffice to say that I've always done as I was told by my manager in this job, and now apparently I am being made the scapegoat for it because my manager failed to pay attention to me or my unit for many years so I had no idea I wasn't doing what they thought I was doing.

Bottom line - the only real way to try and solve the problem now is to move me out of the program I love, and thrust me into a job where the only portable skills I have are in the areas I don't at all like, and I'll have zero expertise in the new subject area. 

I am depressed and angry. My insomnia is back, and I spend nearly every minute of the day trying to decide whether I should stand up for myself or just accept my fate. It doesn't really matter if I talk back or not, I can't make them not-move me, and I do agree that this is pretty much the only option left now, thanks to my crappy boss and her failure to do her job five years ago. And it's not HER career that's being derailed as a result, it's mine. AND, even when I get moved, I still have to answer to her.

Life isn't always fair, and I'm stuck in one of those super-crappy parts of it right now. Add to that the fact that my staff are all acting like nutcases today, and because my body is more resistant to the Follistim after two rounds of it, we're having to do doses of 350IU every day - that's more than one 900IU vial every three days, or $800ish every three days. They also told me this morning that I'm going to owe an additional $180 for storage of our swimmers at the RE's office. We'll have hit the $10,000 mark with this cycle - and we aren't pregnant yet.

I took Kaitlin to the bank over the weekend and applied for a home equity line of credit against my house, because if this final injectable cycle fails, we're going to Greece for donor egg/donor sperm embryo transfer, and that's going to be another $11,000. Basically, when it's all said and done, we will have spent as much as a stateside IVF procedure by the time we get our positive... IF we get our positive.

And then it will take ages to pay off.

In the meantime, Kaitlin remains unemployed. My career is in a tailspin. I can't get pregnant and the creditor bills keep piling up. I haven't taken a vacation in two years now, and I am burning out fast. I keep holding my breath hoping the sun's going to come out - that we'll get that positive pregnancy test, and the perfect job opportunities will come along for both Kaitlin and I, and life will turn around. But right now we're still in the darkness of the tunnel with no light up ahead, and we just have to hope that it's up there someplace. 

I keep reminding myself that it could be worse. I'm not getting fired or demoted, which means I still have the chance to recover my career. No changes are happening to my job YET, since they don't have any place to move me into at the moment and wouldn't until at least January. I just have to be patient, try not to stress myself into an even worse state of infertility, and take it one day at a time. But it's so hard. If only just one thing would go right... I think I could make it through. Just one thing, universe. Hint. HINT...?

Ultrasound this morning showed 3 decent sized follies. They'll call me this afternoon regarding any changes to my dosage and then I'm going to have to buy another $800 vial in order to have enough meds for the rest of this cycle. I'm praying that it's the last one for this cycle, because we still have the $80 trigger and $293 IUI to go. 

If only, if ONLY this was the one that worked. I could handle anything work threw at me, I would be on top of the world, if this could just be the one. 

No matter which way it turns out, once I have my BF(N or P) for this cycle, I'm scheduling a vacation. It will either be a week of staying home and resting (BFP) or a couple weeks spent in Greece in November or December (BFN) but either way I'll have some time away from work. I just have to make it through the next three weeks first. Right now they feel like a hundred years away and I am just so, so tired. 

Lost track of what CD we’re on

After three weeks of birth control, I went back to the RE office today for the moment of truth – an ultrasound to see if we’re ready to start again. It does look like my ovaries are “calm”, as the nurse put it. So they drew blood, and so long as my estrogen is low there will be no more birth control for me – that means my next cycle should start in a day or two and then we start our injections probably Sunday or Monday night.

It feels like everywhere on my facebook page, everywhere in my life, every single day working at my job, I see other people who have kids or who are having kids… sometimes multiple kids. And I can’t even get pregnant with one, even after $8000 and nine months of trying, even after weeks of injections and blood draws and ultrasounds.

So one of my brothers is in Europe today, on his year-long trip around the world. The other is in Hawaii, on his honeymoon. And I am sitting in the fertility clinic for the hundred jillionth time, just hoping that maybe I don’t have to take birth control tonight.

It feels so very, very unfair that I seem to be the only one who can’t have a baby. All my life I’ve been the mother figure to everyone else – to friends, to partners, to family, to the kids at the daycare center where I worked in high school, and even now, to the staff I supervise. People have always looked to me to lean on and help them solve their problems and give them affirmation and security and comfort. Yet they then move on to become real mothers themselves, and I can’t. My body is somehow broken. It feels so unfair I can barely stand it.

And I feel like such a selfish, ungracious, ugly person, because I’m making the happiness of others around me all about my own jealousy and unhappiness. I’m so sad. And, of course, I know that feeling jealous and depressed is only going to reduce my already pathetic fertility so that makes it worse.

So I’m not going to let my pity-party last for long. There’s just no good in it, and it doesn’t get me any closer to what I want. Sometime this week I’m going to go to Wells Fargo and sit down with a loan specialist, as they’re running a “sale” on their loans this month. I figure if I am going to have to take out an $11K loan to do the Greek trip I might as well do it now – we only have one more shot at the injectibles anyway, and then Greece is our last resort.

So I’ll let myself feel like crap today, but only for today ... because starting tomorrow, we gear up for another battle. 

In the meantime, a pic of Kaitlin and I at my brother's wedding:

CD3 – Another BFN, Another Delay

I’ve been feeling so down this past week I haven’t even bothered to blog. But here’s the scoop: Kaitlin got laid off on Thursday. On Monday, I got my period – even though I was on progesterone, which has never happened to me before. So, BFN. Then this morning, I went into the doctor for my CD3 ultrasound, and wouldn’t you know it, I have leftover follicles again. So three weeks of birth control now, before we can tackle our final injectables cycle.

I guess the delay is okay seeing as how Kaitlin’s laid off anyway and it gives me the chance to do a little catchup on the debt from last month’s $3000ish cycle. And it means we don’t have to figure out how to juggle injections and ultrasounds during Battlemoor (a big SCA camping event) this weekend.

But frankly, I am just so tired and sad. There’s drama going on at work, too, with members of my staff going through their own family emergencies and two staff whose roles I’m revising and training and my staff having basically sabotaged all of our managers’ efforts to get us another pair of hands to help us out next year… and I am just done, today. Just done. I don’t want to do anything except go home and bury myself in Korean drama, puppy cuddles, and absolute laziness.

But there’s another day of work to get through, and then two days at least of Battlemoor. I do want to see my Laurel and apprentice family, but honestly they’re the only reasons I’m going. And I’m probably going to mostly just lurk and do nothing for most of the time. I feel crappy and sad and tired. I’m not in an SCA-ing mood. And I’m always so exhausted after them. Even though we’re leaving on Sunday (and thank God I have Monday off for the holiday) I’m still really just going to get a one-day weekend before heading back to work again next week.

My boss also asked me this morning if everything was okay, since I’d had so many doctor appointments this year. So I just told her that we were TTC, and all the trouble we’d been having, and gave her a basic idea of our future plans: this next attempt is our last one, and then we take a few months off to recover financially and we’re going to Greece for a donor egg cycle.  She was supportive, which was really great, and it sounds like she had to conceive at least one of her kids via IVF so she knows what it’s like.

That’s good, I guess.

Kaitlin’s heading to Battlemoor this afternoon, so I’ll be alone tonight. I’m kind of looking forward to it, because I can go to bed as early as I want, I can watch K-drama all night if I want, I can eat whatever I want and be as miserable as I want without making her miserable too.

I just have to make it through the rest of this work day…