The Kitchen Sink

I feel like I have a lot of material to cover here. I'm not sure where to start and how to organize this information. I'm going to try to go chronologically. That means the easy stuff comes first.

My phone interview went well. We have scheduled a real, face to face interview for Tuesday morning. She asked when I would be available to start working, which sort of freaked me out. I don't really know if I want this new job. So much is going on. I just know that it's a good thing to look around. I'm under no pressure to find a new job, so I can wait until something feels exactly right. That is a good thing. So, the beginning of next week is going to be busy. I have my interview at 8am on Tuesday. We're going to the Sox/Yankees game on Tuesday night, and my final is Wednesday. Maybe I'll take Wednesday off.

On to the IVF appointment. It was fine. It bascially was what I expected. Things remain the same. It will be difficult for us to get insurance coverage for IVF. Since we've only been ttc for 6 months and have 'only' had 2 miscarriages, our case isn't really strong enough to even try right now. So we'll have to ttc for 4-6 more months and then reassess.

Let me take a moment here to tell you how fucked up this whole insurance thing is. I know I've said it before, but it really became even more evident after yesterday. Insurance coverage is different for each carrier. One carrier will cover PGD but not IVF. In order to get them to cover IVF you must go through 3 cycles of IUI. For people who have trouble conceiving, IUI can be helpful. Since conception isn't our problem, there is no point in T and me going through IUI. I have no doubt that I would get pregnant via IUI. But it does not alter our chances of having a healthy baby. That procedure is a waste of money for us. Also, they count the 'one year of ttc' from the last miscarriage. So every time we get pregnant and miscarry, we start the one year clock over again. So, it looks like we're not changing to that insurance carrier. With our current carrier, they usually refuse to cover IVF unless the couple can't conceive. But that office did get them to cover it, one time, in the past, so the insurance person thought we ought to stay with this carrier. Good for us, since it's the cheapest up front. But in order to make our case, we're going to have to ttc for a lot long and have a lot more trouble. The more miscarriages we have, the more likely we get coverage. This is completely insane. It just seems to me they would save money in the end if they just helped us to have a healthy baby rather than spending money on tests and procuedures that are irrelevant. We have a diagnosis. We know what the problem is. Also, forcing us to go through the trauma of multiple miscarriage, forcing me to pretend I'm not pregnant when I am, not allowing me to connect with this potential baby for fear it will die at any moment just seems cruel. But we have to live with the way it is. We are going to ttc, and there is always a chance, if we're lucky, that we can have a healthy baby. It's really just not feeling like luck is on our side these days.

Other interesting things that we learned was that Dr. Young RE thinks that there is truly a very small chance that an unbalanced embryo/fetus would live long enough to be born. That makes me hopeful that the embryo would destroy itself, and if I was pregnant long enough to get to the CVS stage then the chances are low that it would be an unbalanced fetus. Since that is pretty much our biggest fear, that made me feel a little bit better. I hope it made T feel a little better, but I think he largely remains skeptical.

T liked Dr. Young RE because when he saw that I had a partial colectomy due to recurrent diverticulitis he said, "Bummer. Wait, no pun intended." Such a T joke. Honestly, that surgery seemed to have very little to do with my bum. But it was sort of funny anyway.

Back to interesting things. Dr. Young RE had never heard of this human sperm karyotyping test that I had read about, and didn't understand what sort of practical applications it would have to our situation. So, no sperm analysis at this point. I didn't really think about it much, but there is no way to test all of the millions of spem. I guess they do it like a regular sperm analysis -- see how much of the sperm in a specific, random sample is and them make inferences. (See, biostatistics is everywhere!) Anyway, I emailed a few links where I had seen mention of this process to his office. We'll see if he gets back to me about it. As he said to me, "Maybe I'll learn something."

So, the bottom line is that my plan before we went into the IVF place remains the same. TTC for a while, and reassess in a few months. So T and I have to try to relax. T's boss told him to go on a vacation. We definitely need a vacation.