I was driving home from my old job one day when I noticed a sign right across from the bank. It read "New Leaders In Fertility and Endocrinology - or New LIFE" and touted that they were the best. I was super excited, because I didn't know there was anyone in town who handled infertility. A couple of weeks later, I decided to make an appointment.
I went in and was given a slew of paperwork to fill out. Finally I was called back to Abbigail's office to talk about my options and what brought me in. It was clear that the office was new and that Abbi was having some vertigo issues - so I kind of let slide that she wasn't the nicest person to me in the world. Besides... I wanted to have a baby so badly that I would have overlooked most anything. After talking about what we would do, I thanked her and left to go up front to make my follow up appointment which would be based on the time I started my next monthly cycle.
I was back within two weeks. They took blood work and did an ultrasound of my uterus and made some snapshots form the ultrasound and bid me good day. I was back three days later for more blood work and another ultrasound and another three days after that. Each visit's co-pay was costing me $50 or $100 depending on whether they did the Ultrasound or blood work or both. And we went through this at this pace for the entire month. When it came time for me to ovulate, Abbi told me to have fun with my husband the day before and the day after and to come back in the office afterwards for more tests.
So Evan was a good sport and played his part. And then I went in for more tests. After a whole month of collecting data, it was finally time for me to meet the doctor and discuss the results. I was actually quite excited, but then I got into his office and he basically said that they should never have even bothered to test me, that because of my weight, he couldn't help me because it would be borderline unethical. There was no sympathy in his voice at all. He said if I lost 60 pounds that he would reconsider but until then, no.
Now if you know me, you know I've had issues with my weight since I was very young. And I had just recently lost 70 pounds after hiring a personal trainer and starving myself basically. But I hit a brick wall and could lose no further. What really angered me is the lack of compassion but the eagerness to bill my insurance company more than $20,000 is fees associated with all of the testing.
I was devastated. About this time, my normal OBGYN retired and I had to find a new one. Dr. Friall came highly recommended and I ended up falling in love with her. She guided me through some things to try - we had Evan's boys counted a couple of times and Evan got to go see a Urologist - and we eventually tried two inseminations which both failed. That led us to try Clomid to see if we could get me to ovulate for another insemination, but it made me really sick and I basically exsanguanated for 6 months before having a D&C to stop the blood loss. I finally had my D&C while our foster daughter was in the ICU recovering from a lower respiratory infection. I figured if she had to be in the hospital and so did I maybe we couild recover together.
Dr, Friall eventually sent me to Dr, Winslow who also had the initial bedside manner of a slug, but once he warmed up to me he mentioned that it would be basically a 1% chance of me being able to carry Evan's baby because his guys were just way too damamged. So our choices were limited to IVF with ICSI ($15K a pop usually needing at least 3 cycles and not covered by insurance) or using a donor ($2-3K a pop). Both of these seemed so awful. I mean, I want to have a baby, but at what cost...
So we started really looking at adoption or fostering for serious. And that will be the next post...
No comments:
Post a Comment