Bright and early was our morning. We got up to have a quick breakfast and check out of the hotel. Luckily the Hyatt was only three miles from the clinic so it was a quick drive down to CCRM.
Our schedule required us to check in to CCRM at 6:45am on the 1st. We settled into our classroom with the other couples who were there; two couples from the Denver area, one couple from Mississippi, one couple from Arizona and the Gales from Nebraska (
Go Big Red)... although Nebraska had just majorly lost to #3 Ohio State 48-7 😰... The instructor informed Greg and I she was a transplant from Lincoln, living in Denver so she felt our pain.
I'm sure we were all dealing with our own versions of nerves and anxieties of what the day was going to bring...but the other couples looked more calm or looked like they had it all under control. The couple from Arizona was there to start the surrogate process, because she wasn't going to be able to carry her own child. Very different spectrum's of the IVF process. During orientation, we listened to many things...mostly it was all new to us.
Fun Fact: Women are born with ALL THEIR EGGS. Men continue to reproduce sperm. Here's some quick stats about how many eggs most women are approximately born with and how many we are left with as we get older. Since women don't reproduce their eggs, the eggs they have today are as old as they are.
- Baby In Utero: 6 Million Eggs
- Baby at birth: 1 Million Eggs
- Puberty: 400,000 Eggs
- 30's: 100,000 Eggs
- 40's: 10,000 Eggs
- 50's: 1,000 Eggs
They talked about the process and what IVF is. They had a lot of focus on how CCRM likes to do business and how their patients are very important to them. One thing that really appealed to Greg and I was, we would have a dedicated nurse and team that we always work with. That was really helpful knowing that if CCRM is where we were going to end up, we weren't going to be shuffled around, since it was a long-distance kind of relationship.
Baseline/3D Ultrasound + Doppler
After our orientation, we went back to check in at the front desk for our next appointments. Greg was off for a Semen Analysis and I was off to have a Baseline/3D + Doppler. The ultrasound tech was so wonderful. I mentioned I was keeping a blog and wanted to take pictures of some things. She had no problems with this. She walked me through every step and I was able to see what she was looking at on a screen on the wall. The clinic rooms in Omaha don't have that type of set up. It was super convenient. She started by simply checking my uterus. Then she counted and measured my resting follicles - I'm working with 28!!! That's apparently phenomenal for my
young age of 33! And yes, she told me 33 was young for women they've seen. Most 33 year olds are working with 12-15 resting follicles. I'm rockin' 28 RF's!!! (15 on the right and 13 on the left) Then she did some Doppler test that checked for blood flow to the uterus. My results were good! She couldn't print me pictures of what she was looking at, but she allowed me to take some on my phone. I do have to say, I love that they have a sense of humor. Gotta love the oven mitts on the stirrups.
Genetic Counselor
While Greg finished up his sperm sample, I met with the Genetic Counselor to talk about the different genetics your father and I have. Luckily we're pretty normal in that there weren't any alarming factors at this time that we're aware of. We can do additional testing on ourselves to determine if we are carriers for any genes that may cause high risk pregnancies or abnormalities in embryos. Since we were still on a fact finding mission and because there weren't any red flags that we already knew about, the Genetic Counselor and I agreed that we would waive the option to test at this time until we knew what the next steps were. We talked about the CCS Process (Comprehensive Chromosomal Screening) CCS testing is performed on a few cells biopsied from a day 5 embryo called a blastocyst. The reason for CCS testing is very beneficial for poor embryo quality and would help to reduce the risk of transferring a poor quality embryo and miscarrying. We finished the appointment and checked back into the front desk for our next appointment.
Financial Counselor
We were taken right away to the business office. We had communicated back in June about finances so we had an idea of what we thought we were going to expect them to say. Turns out it was very different. For whatever reason, we somehow didn't receive information about what the total costs were going to be. We were only provided with half the story. So the information that we received pretty much kicked us in the gut. The good thoughts and good vibes we were rolling on suddenly fell out from under us.
All of a sudden the costs of the procedures went from what we thought was going to be covered by our Infertility Cap budget through insurance to... Costs not being covered by insurance + Fees + This + That + Oh there is at most $10,800 worth of medication (not covered by insurance)... So now we're in the range of $30,000 after the Infertility Cap budget and out of pocket costs.
We knew it was expensive, but we didn't know how the cards were going to call.
The Queen of Spades seemed to have landed on top with the Joker just to her side.
Where was Queen of Hearts when you needed her? 💕
Sticker Shock has officially set in. We asked to be connected with a financial counselor who can review our finances and medical history, to see if we
even qualified for their in-house financial assistance. We left the business office with our Poker Faces on and all our chips still in our pockets, but our hearts were hurting and our stomachs were in knots. We found a bench in the hallway as there weren't really many places you could go to collect ourselves. We could see in each other's welling eyes what our fate looked like moving forward. It really sucks when you're riding high on hope only to have it all come out from under you.
Regroup with Dr. Schoolcraft
Out next step was to meet Dr. Schoolcraft. Again, they moved us right along without hardly waiting. I was nervous to meet him. Last time we talked was in June and it was only like 20 minutes on the phone. He started off by recapping what we talked about on the phone. He was thrilled to see I had 28 resting follicles, again, for my young age!!! He knew that I was a polyp grower, which he would be able to rule in or out during my upcoming Hysteroscopy. We wouldn't have the sperm analysis for a week (which is interesting because in Omaha they had Greg's results within an hour)...but it would be a bit before we would know the whole picture. He didn't think my Fallopian tubes were blocked, but my upcoming HSG (Hysterosalpingogram) would test for that.
We talked about what group of patients Greg and I fall into. We are in the 1/3 of the TTC (Trying To Conceive) population that has no known diagnosis with no alarming factors, that cannot get pregnant. The other 2/3 of the population tend to be patients with Endometriosis, PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome), low sperm counts, bad eggs, etc.
We didn't exactly have any major questions for him at this time, only because he said he needed the test results to paint the full picture of what's happening. This will help drive our chances and the protocol for which he will choose for us. He said again that he felt optimistic and that my age and follicle count were on our side. After meeting with Dr. Schoolcraft, we had a 'let me put a Band-Aid on our skinned knee' kind of feeling, was told it was going to be okay, and were sent back out to play in the yard.
Little did I know the yard was about to get very personal with me, in the upcoming appointments! 😆
Hysteroscopy
Time for the scary tests. I have had a Hysteroscopy before. But I still asked the nurse to step me through exactly what was going to happen. This was basically where they take a camera and look inside your uterus. They push gas or a liquid-like saline through the Hysterosope into the uterus to expand it. This gave Dr. Schoolcraft a clear view of its lining and the opening of the Fallopian tubes. The nurse did prep me, that later that evening or the next day I would likely feel discomfort in my left shoulder from the gas they pumped inside me. For whatever reason, the pain shows up there, which it did. The procedure took no more than 30 seconds, but don't let that fool you. My pain tolerance is not that high...so it felt like it took much longer than 30 seconds. He said everything looked great and there were no endometrial polyps! I've been known to grown a few, but they're easily removed with a minor outpatient surgery if necessary. After that I went out to the waiting area and within minutes of sitting down they were ready to call me back for my HSG!
Hysterosalpingogram (HSG)
The nurse warned me that this one was more uncomfortable. I need to add, the nurses were amazing here. This one was pretty uncomfortable for me. This test is used to see if my Fallopian tubes were open. They insert a catheter with a small balloon at the end of it, into your uterus. They inflate the balloon and at the same time insert a contrast dye and then use an x-ray to watch the contrast move through the Uterus, through the Fallopian tubes, around the Ovaries and out. I was able to watch as the dye moved through everything. It was pretty cool to watch and my tubes are totally open! So that's not the reason why we are not getting pregnant!
Nurse Consult
After my scans and a quick bite for lunch we met with our Nurse Michele. She was such a sweetie. She reviewed everything we had done and seen so far and she would talk to us about what our next steps were. Michele talked to us about personalizing our process with a specific plan depending on testing. Everything we went over was just an overview. Nothing was set in stone. We signed enough papers, it felt like we were buying a house. Most of them were consents, but they were consents centered around "what if" scenarios. Who gets the embryos if I die? Who gets them if your dad dies? Who gets them if we both die? Really grown-up type questions. 😮
Labs
Labs are labs...until you feel like you're giving away all the blood. I work in research and while I'm on the research side of things every once and a while I need to order labs for patients. Little did I know how it actually felt like to be a patient on this side of it, where they need to take a lot of blood to test everything they need to test. I'm pretty sure they took like 8-10 Serum and EDTA Anticoagulant tubes of blood out of me. She just kept reaching to tubes. And Greg...he only had two tubes. Again, I think I drew the short stick on this one. 😏
And that folks, was our one day work up.
We got in the car, got on the toll road this time and headed off to the airport.
Love,
A very tired and exhausted Me 💝
