On Tuesday, I made the payment to the FP office since it needed to be paid before my first appointment. In one swoop, I charged over $7k to get this process officially started....yikes!
On Wednesday, I took the last of the prescribed birth control pills. I'd been on the active pills for 5 weeks, weird when you're ultimately trying to have a baby, but there is a method to the madness. I got a call from the only Walgreens that specializes in fertility meds in the area telling me that they had my order from the FP office and they wanted to know what I wanted filled. I contacted my Coordinator at the FP office and got a rundown of things to order first. Obviously my insurance isn't covering any of this, so we have to be smart about what to order/buy and when based upon the meds being used in what order.
Follistim and Menopur are the two main injections I'm supposed to take first so I made sure to get enough of those as well as the Ganirelix, which is the next step. We held off on the trigger shot (Ovidrel) and the progesterone oil until its needed. I knew the meds would be pricey but I had the shock of my life when I found out the price of 6 days of meds. Thankfully I asked the Pharmacy Tech on the phone so I didn't have a heart attack when D went and picked up the meds on Thursday. We spent the rest of our Wednesday night rearranging our budget and figuring out where to move money from to cover all of these expenses. Anyone else ever spend $3,001.35 at Walgreens?
Friday was a fairly low key day, just putting together my basket of goods and making sure I knew what was coming next. I've been reading a lot of blogs and websites trying to prepare for all of this and the biggest recommendation is to make sure you have everything in one spot and organized. For Christmas, my bro and his girlfriend gave me a basket of gifts and the basket came in very handy for storing all of my meds, sharps container and other goodies.
Saturday I started my prescription steroid...Prednisone, adding it to the already growing list of vitamins I've been taking for months.
Today was the BIG day, we set an alarm for 6:15 this morning so D could give me my first shot. We had to get on a schedule so that we can give the meds 12 hours apart and on a schedule that meshes with our work schedules. Tonight we had to inject both the Follistim and the Menopur. D is my honorary nurse and is injecting all of my shots for me since I'm a bit adverse to needles right now.
Tomorrow afternoon is my first doctor's appointment to start checking my progress. I'll go again on Friday and next Monday for them to track the number and size of folicles before they set a date for retrieval. My hope is to continue to use the blog as my journal for this journey. It's exciting and nerve-wracking and there is so much going through my head thinking about this entire process.
We have had some other things happening as well. While we opted not to tell our families about our IVF journey during the holidays, we did celebrate Christmas and our visit to Michigan passed in a blur. We visited family throughout the state and took a day trip to Frankenmuth to go to the largest Christmas store. I got back to work to complete year-end and then celebrate Christmas and New Years with my family. We had D's work Holiday party on Friday night and then yesterday we surprised my Dad with a Retirement party. It was quite the party at a local restaurant and we had a good turnout of friends, family and co-workers.
It's been a busy and exciting 2018 so far and we can't wait to see what else is in store for us this year!
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