Getting ready for IVF 7

Over the holiday my nurse emailed me to let me know she's moving positions and that I'll have to get assigned a new nurse. It took a few days of back and forth but then I involved my doctor and was finally assigned a new nurse. We set a baseline date around my work schedule and I'm working on getting a quote for medication from several different pharmacies.

In the meantime I also started getting information from our new financial counselor. I got us a refund for a portion of the last cycle because we overpaid for something that should have been submitted to insurance. It's crazy how on top of things I have to be - isn't that literally their job? They just don't care how they get paid. If payment comes from insurance great, if it happens to come from our pocket also great. It's a challenge to constantly be on the ball and know that if I miss something then we lose out.

I'm trying to not overthink this cycle. Whatever will be will be. IVF 6 kicked me in the nuts with recovery and results. I'm hoping that an upcoming Jan trip will be enough motivation to keep me happy and energized. Bottom line is that it's a hellish 3 weeks and regardless of results it too shall pass.

So how did we get to this decision? As I was thinking about what we want to do next, I tried figuring out how to do another cycle and another transfer before January. I don't know why that was a deadline in my mind. It's possible because the clinic OR shuts down the last week of December for their yearly scrubbing and they don't start any new cycles leading up to that week. No matter how I sliced it, I couldn't get the calendar to fit both an IVF and a transfer which meant we had to choose one. In the back of my mind I was also thinking that it would be nice to do a trip and take a real break.

My husband's work schedule dictates our vacation schedule and we calculated that it may be possible to take a trip in 2018. The more we talked about it the more we realized how much we both want to go. We decided to try to book a trip for earliest possible time in 2018. With that decision made everything else seemed to fall in place. We knew we didn't want to try to do a transfer before the trip which made it easy to choose the time in Nov/Dec for another retrieval. At this point the bar is set so low that the very least will be that we tried something and didn't waste the time, regardless of the results of the cycle. My office is closed for winter break at the end of December so I'll have a solid week for recovery.

Even though it's only mid-October I asked my new nurse to see if she can schedule the retrieval for early December. It gives me time to get back to some routine first and get my head in the game. It also allows me to take care of several work events between now and then without the stress of the cycle and meds. It also gives me the chance to enjoy the Thanskgiving break. It just makes sense overall. There's not much that we can control when it comes to treatment, but for the things that we can it makes a difference.