A Hopeful Momma's Morning at the ART Fertility Program

We were late.  We couldn't figure out where to park, so we walked into the ART Fertility Program's office about 10 minutes after our appointment time.  Whoops.

Obviously I'm not going to post all of the gory details, but here are the highlights.

The meeting with the doctor was informative.  We decided to take a more conservative approach, and so rather than a more invasive measure, we're going to try Femara, which is Clomid on steroids and apparently without the negative side effects.  I'll be much more closely monitored during these Femara cycles than I was while on Clomid, going in several times during the month for bloodwork and evaluations.
While starting up on that, they're going to be doing a series of labs and tests and ultrasounds and all kinds of stuff to try to figure out the "why" of my infertility, which is a relief.  It's quite possible that there's something going on of which infertility is only an indirect result, or that my infertility is directly caused by a problem much more serious than just "not ovulating" and which needs to be quickly addressed.

When we'd walked into the waiting area, I'd given us a once over.  I was in my longest skirt, a button-down shirt, and a white covering.  Trevvor was bearded (as usual), had on a solid white shirt, and dark pants.  I mused, "People are going to think we're Amish or something."  In the meeting with Dr. Houserman, we mentioned we'd missed a month of bloodwork because we were visiting Pennsylvania.  Sure enough, a few minutes later, despite my French braid and Trevvor's dress watch, she asked if we were Amish.  :)

We also met with a nurse practitioner for a physical, a nurse for treatment plan counseling, and a financial adviser.  Things were going great until that financial adviser walked in.  "Wow," she said. "You have a really big deductible.  Until you meet it, you'll have to pay 100% for things at the time of service."

Needless to say, we were floored.  (And so was the receptionist when we payed the much-higher-than-expected bill later.  "You have a ginormous deductible!" she told us. "Yeah," I said. "So we've heard.")  Sure, we'd known we had a big deductible, and we could understand if BCBS wouldn't cover things like IUI or IVF (which they actually will...if we've met the deductible by then), but just basic treatments?  Really?  We weren't prepared for that, and nor were we prepared for that first bill.  "Our maybe-baby better love us a LOT after all of this," I told Trevvor tongue-in-cheek.

So we're re-evaluating things at the moment, squeezing every possible penny into our savings, and praying hard.  We really can't afford the plan of action they'd laid out for us; buying and fixing up a house has left us with a much reduced savings that we're just beginning to build back up.  But we've dived (dove? diven?) in head first, and would it really be wise to back out now?

Pray that God would give us guidance as we make these big (and expensive) decisions.

Patiently waiting...