Infertility and the final frontier...

Yes Jill, I can now say infertility. I spent almost 4 hours at the doctor yesterday talking about egg harvesting. :-)

OK...so we are now knocking at the door of IVF. We really did spend 4 hours at the fertility clinic yesterday learning every frightening little detail of this process. I'm going to do a series on it as we go along - I think some of it is interesting, and may be good for folks who are landing here from Bing.

For today, you get highlights:

Big thing #1 - my insurance covers it ALL!!! Basically, there is the amount that the doctors bill to my insurance, then there is a negotiated rate that my insurance pays. This round will cost about $10,000 - the insurance will say...uhhh...we'll pay you 6. And that's the end of it...no $ out of pocket for us. The thing that amazes me about health insurance...if we didn't have any, we'd be paying the full 10 grand. Because we do - and my insurance has a "deal" with the doctors, they pay 6 grand, and we don't owe anything. Boggles the mind. So...even after this round...my infertility benefit won't completely depleted. Yay!

Now for the interesting info about this adventure:

1. I'll spend this month on birth control. Crazy, right? They keep me from ovulating this month, so that next month they can manipulate my ovaries and make them do our bidding.


2. The amount of hormones I'll be taking (about 4 injections per day for 2 weeks) will probably produce about 20 eggs. Not all of them will be mature and viable...but they still expect to get between 5 and 10 good eggs. And to think, your ovaries normally only produce one egg per month. Crazy.


3. Once they figure out which eggs are the good ones, they dump out the vial of sperm, do some magic, then the technician uses some mac-daddy microscope to grab one swimmer (there are millions in there), and push that little guy into the egg. I hope he's a good one.


4. The inseminate all of the eggs the day after harvest...(now that sounds like we should be standing in a corn field)...anyways...they inseminate them all, and stick them in the oven...er...incubator.


5. Two days later, they haul them out and take a look. See how many started splitting cells and growing. From that we'll get a handle on how many we'll have to work with.


6. 5 days after the harvest, they'll take one or two of the fertilized eggs, and implant them back in my uterus. After that I have to be on complete bed rest for two days. I'm going to lose my mind.


7. Any eggs we don't use are frozen for next time. I guess you could say we might have leftovers. ;-)

We'll be starting the prep month (birth control) sometime this week or next, and December will be the month that we jump in with both feet. I'm sure I'll be an anger ball...or be having crying fits...that is a whole lot of hormones. Steer clear...unless you are bringing wine. And think of the wife often...she's the only one who isn't allowed to run away screaming.