Nurse's Consult and Acupuncture Session

Babe and I had our nurse's consult this morning.  It was pretty brief and simple, since this will be our 2nd IVF with this clinic.  We went through our IVF schedule and the list of the meds that I will be on.  We are on a different protocol this time around, using the antagonist protocol.  Last time I was on the long Lu.pron protocol.  This time no "loopy Lu.pron"(yay!), so the cycle will be much shorter.  I will be starting my stims (Meno.pur and Follis.tim) on July 2nd.  Ganire.lix (antagonist) shots will start when the follicles are 14 mm or larger.  If all goes well, egg retrieval will be on the week of July 11th.

I only have one week left of BCPs.  Yay!  For some reason, I have a hard time remembering to take my BCPs.  I find myself running out of bed at night to take my them, remembering only right before I fall asleep!  It's so annoying.  I'm glad I'm almost done with them.  I was able to get a bunch of free samples of meds last time - Follis.tim, Endome.trin, etc.  I asked about them again, but I wasn't so lucky this time.  We got nothing.  I guess they were out of everything.  This time though, I asked to make sure we get enough meds on the prescription sheet the first time around.  There is a copay for each drug on we get from the pharmacy.  The last time, I needed additional Follis.tim and Menopur because I needed to stim a couple days longer.  So we had to pay copay again for the refills.  Hopefully, this time we will have enough without having to do a copay again.  We also made our payment for this cycle.... ouch!  It's a huge investment.  Let's hope this investment pays us back greatly!

I also had my appointment with AcuGirl this morning.  I am enjoying my acupuncture sessions and look forward to it every week.  Every week, AcuGirl asks how I'm feeling, what my stress level is, how I am feeling emotionally, etc.  She always checks my pulse - today my pulse was fine - fine as in thin, not fine as in OK.  Not really sure what that means.  Also my tongue looks good today.  I had been told to avoid dairy as it can cause "congestion" in the body.  Last week she could tell that I had been been a bad patient and have been having dairy by looking at my tongue.  Today, she was quite happy with the way my tongue looks.  She also advised me to eat a handful of goji berries everyday.  I like AcuGirl.  She and I get along well and chit chat quite a bit.  We always talk about food and discuss new places to eat.  We even talked about how Babe and I are starting to have less in common with our friends because everyone has kids but us, and she's having the similar but opposite experience.  All her friends have decided to not have kids, so now her and her husband (they have a young son) have less in common with their friends.

***While I was writing this post, the pharmacy called to verify my prescription order (the nurse faxed it in this morning) and to tell me that I had almost reached the $5,000 max of my coverage for infertility drugs.  After my last IVF cycle, I now only have less than $1,500 left.  I would have to pay the rest in cash.  That means I have to pay around another $4K in cash!!  This sucks!  I knew IVF meds are expensive, but I guess I didn't really know how expensive they are!  I told the pharmacy to hold off on filling out my script until I've had a chance to talk to (warn) Babe tonight.  Plus I am really going to have to bug the heck out of the clinic for some samples!