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Thursday, May 7, 2009

TTC: No Follicles :(

I had a doctor appointment on Monday, May 4 to go in for a follicle ultrasound to see how many, if any, follicles I produced from taking the Clomid. Before the u/s, I told the nurse that for the last few days, I've had some light cramping/movement around my right ovary area and she said that it sounded like the medicine must be working and that my eggs were probably having a party. Then she proceeded with the u/s and there was nothing there. No follicles, no eggs, no nothing. I was heart-broken and immediately started crying. After I got dressed and dried up the tears somewhat, Shawn and I went out to the nurses station and she said that she would need to talk to Dr. Gentry, but that he will probably want to start me on the Femara Pills/Follistim Injections Therapy, which is a combination of pills and injections to stimulate my ovaries to make eggs. Before I start the medicines, I'll go in for a baseline u/s while my ovaries are at rest. The nurse will then instruct me on the dosage of medicine and how to take them and how to give myself the injections. After so many days of taking the medicines, they will do another follicle u/s and an estrogen blood draw to check my response. The goal is to have 2-3 eggs mature. Of course this will raise my chance of having multiples, but I am completely OK with this. When you want children and have trouble having them, I think the more you can have at one time, the better, because you are going to love those children so much more. At least I know I will.

So she gives me the names of the medicine and some mail order drug companies to call to get prices since most insurance companies don't pay for anything related to fertility. At least mine doesn't, or so I thought it didn't. I called two different companies - Freedom Fertility Pharmacies (FFP) and Metro Drugs (MD). FFP quoted me a price of $13.63 per pill for the Femara pills and $807.20 for a 600 unit of the Follistim injections. MD couldn't quote me a per pill price, but it was $410.89 for 30 pills and $503. 20 for a 600 unit of the Follistim injections. Naturally I plan on going with the cheaper company. However I started thinking about things and thought to myself, my insurance paid for my Clomid and for the HCG injection which I didn't get to use because I didn't have an follicles. And then I started remembering that, at either the end of the year last year or the beginning of the year this year, we had a firm-wide insurance meeting and got a new Schedule of Benefits and I think our insurance does pay for some infertility things. So I dug out the SOB (that stands for schedule of benefits and not what some might be thinking….LOL!) and sure enough, my insurance does pay for a minimal amount of infertility treatment/prescription drugs once I meet my deductible. Granted it's minimal, every penny is going to count now.

So that's my visit in a nutshell. Now I'm just waiting on Dr. Gentry's office to call me back so we can focus on what we can do next.

1 comment:

FncyFce said...

So sorry to hear this. In time this will all work out. God has a plan for us all. Is seems like he wants ya'll to just work a little harder having kids, LOL.

Good to hear that the insurance will pay for some of the meds. This baby/babies will be oh so worth it in the end!!