RE appointment

Well we had our appointment today. It could have been done in 5 minutes, but we were actually there for 90 minutes+. First we signed the consent forms with the doctor such as if we freeze any embryos what do we want to do if Paul dies or if I die or if we both die, etc. Based on Paul's test last week Dr. Awad said we need to do ICSI as Paul had 3% strict morphology and normal is 14% or greater. I just did a little searching on the internet and read on a few sites that with a strict morphology of less than 4% IVF rarely ever works if ICSI isn't used. So really this is a "no brainer" so to speak. The RE said this explains why I wasn't getting pregnant from the IUIs. I guess I should have taken them more seriously when they kept pushing IVF. I kept thinking it was better to do inj/iui as it costs less than 10% of what IVF does, but if not even regular IVF would have gotten me pregnant then really those inj/iui cycles were a total waste, but that's water under the bridge now anyhow. ICSI costs an extra $550, but in our case it could likely be the most important process of the IVF in terms of whether a pregnancy is achieved or not.

I asked Dr. Awad about assisted hatching. He said they only do it if #1 the woman is age 39 or greater, #2 if the woman's FSH is greater than 10, and/or if #3 one IVF cycle has already been done and was unsuccessful. Since I don't fall in any of those three categories, he does not recommend assisted hatching. So we didn't sign a consent form for that.

The nurse gave me my Leuprolide kits (enough for 28 days although I think I'll be on it a few days less than that). She said the insurance counts this as a medical expense not an RX? Maybe because it's usually thought of first as a cancer drug? I have no idea if they were giving it to me for free (I think the total cost would be about $350) or if they're billing my insurance. I start those shots tomorrow and will have overlap with the pill. My last day of taking the pill is to be Monday (they wanted 4 days of overlap). My new cycle should start in about 10 days. My next appointment is July 19. I will have to miss VBS that morning. I will have bloodwork and an ultrasound that day, and July 20 I will add two more injections to my daily routine. At that point it will be Lupron and Follistim in the morning and Repronex (or was it Menopur?) in the evenings. I think they're starting me at 150iu of Follistim and 75iu of Repronex. I questionned this since 125iu seemed to be my maximum in the past (to stay away from OHSS), but Dr. Awad said that the Lupron should cause me to have a milder response. Their normal protocol is 150iu in the morning and evening so he did cut back the evening dose at least. Dr. Awad was always the more conservative of the two; so I am going to trust his judgment that he's not trying to have me produce say 30 eggs.

Paul actually is hoping I start having hot flashes this weekend; he said maybe then we'll agree on what temperature to set the air conditioning at, LOL! I think he's right I think the only times we might agree are when I am pregnant (if that ever happens) and post menopause as certainly at this stage in life we do NOT agree. He is always much warmer than me. We dropped off the prescriptions for the other medications, and Paul is going to stop buy tonight on the way home and pick them up as the pharmacy didn't have everything we needed but was getting a shipment this afternoon. Thankfully I think our bill will only be about $100, and it will only be that high because I haven't had any prescriptions yet in 2007 and that's my deductible. But truly it is a blessing to pay only $100 as I am sure the total bill for all the meds he's picking up today totals in the thousands of dollars.

I'll probably post again later today after my conversation with Cathy about the profile. I thank you those of you who I emailed it to who gave me some feedback. I spent many, many, many hours on it yesterday - pretty much the entire day.