Halfway through 2015

Whoa crazy to think that 2015 is half over already!! I can't believe how fast it has gone. So many things have happened this year already.......

Johnny and his sister had to start going through their moms house to clear everything out of it. Sort through everything that each of them wanted and decide what to do with the rest. It's safe to say that she had A LOT of stuff!!

In January I had the polyp removed from my ovaries so we can continue on our IVF journey. Something that would normally not be a huge concern to someone that is conceiving naturally but when you are doing it at a clinic they want to make sure they look at every possible thing that could limit the chances of the pregnancy actually happening.

 Nevaeh started soccer in the spring, she was a little hesitant at first but in the end she loved it. Her team was made up of a lot of kids that were new to soccer also but all in all it was a good season and they won 1 of their games. She is excited to start back in the fall.

In April, Nevaeh turned 10!! Ahhh so crazy to think she is going to be a teenager soon. She had a pizza party sleep over with a few of her friends. Stayed up until all hours of the morning of course.

We went to Mexico to celebrate our good friend Katie's 30th birthday. We did an all inclusive in Playa Del Carmen. Which is a change in pace from the cruises we usually do. It was definitely a different type of vacation. We all had a lot of fun, but I think that it was just WAY too much walking for me!!

Nevaeh finished her 4th grade year at Summit and is excited for the summer and also to start at a new school for 5th grade.

Last day of 4th grade!!

Johnny really needed a new car since he has been promoted to a lead at work. It's really hard to fit ladders and numerous bags of tools in the back of a two door Honda. But since Mr. Johnny has had bad luck with cars over the last couple of years it was my turn to get a new one and he gets the hand me down. So in late May this chick got a 2008 GMC Denali. I absolutley love it!! 

In early June we took our family trip to Glenwood Springs. This is always a hard but exciting trip. Johnny's dads ashes were spread at the top of Hanging Lake many years ago and a tree was planted in his memory. Its always nice to see how big the tree has gotten each year. This year we took the trip with the extended family to spread Barb's ashes next to Paul. This was her request long before she got sick. She loved going to Glenwood and doing the hike with Paul before he passed and even after. It was an emotional time but so glad the two of them can be together in a place they shared. While we were there we had to visit the Italian Underground!! OMG if you haven't tried it you have to, its delish! We also went to the amusement park and rode the rides. We made it kind of a short trip as we had to get back to town to go to the Luke Bryan concert. Something I have been wanting to do for a while now!

We also celebrated with our friend Chris, his daughter Zuri's first birthday!

Looking forward to what the rest of the year will bring us......... Stay tuned!

Suppression Check and Labs

On June 13th I stopped taking my birth control pills. I also scheduled my first appointment back with CCRM after officially starting the IVF. My appointment was on Thursday June 18th at 7:30am. Johnny did not come with me to this appointment because they were just checking on me and he didn't need to be there. The reason for this appointment was to do an ultrasound checking to make sure no cysts formed on my ovaries and checking on the follicles that are forming. Good News!! No cysts and my ovaries look wonderful and there are lots of follicles in them, which mean lots of eggs!! The biggest follicle was 9mm in my left ovary. I also had labs drawn to check my progesterone and FSH levels.

Johnny also got a call that day to inform him that he needed to have his extraction procedure with TUCC paid in full by the 23rd. The total for this was $2200.00

I got a call mid afternoon to give me my results and the blood results were good and I got the OK to start my medication. I started the daily injections on Friday the 19th. I had to take one shot of Menopur in the morning, one shot of Follistim in the evening, and a pill of Dexamethasone at bed time. The shots had to be 12 hours apart so I chose to do 8:00 am and 8:00 pm, so its not too early in the morning or too late at night. I was already super nervous to give myself these shots in my stomach in the first place and it didn't help that the morning medication burned really bad as it went in!

Just some info on medications. Menopur is a medication that stimulate ovulation, Follistim is a medication that contains FSH that helps stimulate the ovaries to produce eggs, and Dexamethasone is a steroid.

Here is an idea of what my morning and nights look like........

Morning shot of Menopur

Evening Shot of Follistim

Birth Control - Payment - Medications

So because this process has so many details I decided to get a journal and also a few apps on my phone to help me keep all of my appointments, finances, and medications in order. It also gives some short passages to help you keep calm and what to expect with each activity.

The first step in the IVF process is the pre-cycle. During this first step your body is being prepared for treatment. Each persons body is different and therefore this step can take a few weeks to a month.

I started my cycle on May 23rd. I had to start on birth control on my day 3 of this cycle. Yes I know what you are thinking, "Why would you take birth control if you are trying to get pregnant". But this is protocol for most IVF cycles. Birth control helps your ovaries respond better to the stimulation meds and also control  your cycle. I started the birth control on May 25th.

I also take a prenatal vitamin each day.

My body has not had any sort of birth control for over 10 years so it really made me react to it. I had a lot less energy, some days I had no appetite and others I wanted to just eat all day. I also had some body acne that I could of done without especially since it was while the weather was warm and tank tops were my thing :/ I don't think that I was too moody but maybe Johnny would say different LOL

I mailed our checks on May 26th to pay for our IVF procedure. These were the largest checks that I have ever written. It was so exciting to send these out because that means we were one step closer to a baby. But man oh man that was a lot of money to send out in one day. :)

I starting calling all of the pharmacies that were on the list I was given to do price shopping for the medications. I am all about saving money no matter how much it is. I called each pharmacy and created a excel spreadsheet so that it would be easier for me to keep track and compare each pharmacies prices. It was very in detail because each pharmacy has different programs, and discount coupons for each medication. After two days of research I chose which pharmacies I wanted all my medications from and sent the list to my nurse. She sent the prescriptions to all of the pharmacies and I waited for them to call and confirm. In total my medications cost me $2,875.00.

The meds list and spreadsheets I made

June 12th all but one of my medications came to my front door! The other med I will have to get from a local pharmacy when I am instructed to. Yippie!! I cannot start them until my doctor gives me the OK, so I will update you when I get started.

One Day Work Up

The next step for the both of us was to do a one day work up at CCRM. We had this done on April 28, 2015. This was an all day appointment for both of us to meet with the IVF specialists, get  a huge packet of information, have more blood tests done and disease testing. We were also told that in order to prep for pregnancy we needed to start weaning all alcohol and caffeine intake, also I would need to stop playing sports before I could start on any of the medications. If anyone knows me the not being able to play sports was the absolute hardest for me because in the summer I usually play volleyball 3 nights a week and softball 1 night a week. I knew this was all for the good but its going to take some getting used to. The total spent at this appointment was $1,500.00.

We also met with our assigned nurse to get our "mock-up" calendar for the start of our IVF and my medication list. It was my responsibility to call around to different pharmacies to decide which one I wanted to order my meds from since I have to pay out of pocket for these and they can range anywhere from $3,500 - $6,500.00.

The last appointment we had was to meet with the business office to make a down payment for the IVF procedure. Since I had double paid my deductible at my surgery I had a credit and only had to make a payment of $393.80.

The booklet of info we got and had to read through.

A few days later we received our detailed bill of what we had to pay before the start of our procedure. The total was.....................  $19,760.00! This also does not include the extraction that Johnny will need to have done or the harvesting of any extra embryo's.

Johnny had to go back to TUCC to follow up with his urologist to confirm everything still looked good with his hormone levels and confirm the type of extraction he would need to do for the IVF. He got the all clear on his end. The cost of this appointment was $40.00

Now we play the waiting game. We have to wait for my cycle to start in order to move forward!!!

We still have our gofundme page up if anyone would still like to donate to us. Again we appreciate every donation big or small. Here is the link to our page.... http://www.gofundme.com/Jessica-JohnnyIVF

Surgery

After things calmed down a little bit I rescheduled surgery for January 15 of 2015. I had to drive all the way to Avista the day before to have a pre op appointment with my doctor. At this time I also had to pay the rest of my deductible in order to have the surgery. The cost at this appointment was $690.00.


Sunrise Mom and I got to see from my room at Avista

Since Johnny was busy at work and didn't have any PTO available we decided that it would be best that he go to work and have my mom take me to surgery so he didn't loose out on a day worth of pay. I had to be at the hospital at 6:30 in the morning for check in. They got me all settled in and had me sign some consent forms. The anesthesiologist came in and gave me the "happy juice" and the doctors wheeled me back to the OR room. I remember getting very nauseous while they transferred me onto the operating table. I threw up a few times so they had to give me anti nausea meds and then I was out. I woke up about an hour later and they said that everything went well. They cut a small incision in my belly button for the camera and also went in vaginally to remove the polyp. I was put on bed rest for the remainder of the day and my mom had to stay with me until Johnny got home from work. The next few days I had to take it easy as I was still very sore in the stomach area. I was able to return to work after a long weekend. I received a couple of bills in relation to the surgery that totaled, $885.00.

I went back to have a follow up and a regroup with the doctor on February 3. They wanted to check and make sure that everything looked good after the surgery  Doctor went down to check and said "It looks like a great home for a baby for 9 months". That was the news we were hoping for and now we could move forward with the IVF. The cost of this appointment was $115.00.

Diagnostic Testing for IVF

Life got busy and we knew that this was going to be a bit expensive so we had to put it off for a little while..................

At the beginning of August 2014 is when I started all of the diagnostic testing for the procedure. I went and had numerous blood draws done to check my hormone levels. The cost for this was $510.00.

Next I had a Doppler ultrasound, an HSG, and a hysteroscopy. A Doppler ultrasound is a test that measures your blood flow in your body, an HSG test is where they insert a gas into your fallopian tubes to make sure they are open and do not have any blockage. The last test I had to get was the hysteroscopy, this is a test that shows the inside of your uterus and checks for polyps, scar tissue, or any abnormalities that would cause a reason for pregnancy not to be successful. Let me tell you how uncomfortable this was. I wasn't really sure what I was getting into and scheduled this to be done on my lunch break. Lets just say the rest of the afternoon was very painful. The cost for this appointment was $2,660.00.

Picture of Doppler Ultrasound

During the ultrasound they also checked my resting follicle count to see how many I had. Anything greater than 8 is a lot, and usually a good indication that a great number of eggs will be collected and pregnancy will be successful. My counts were very high which is good but also could be bad because I could overstimulate which could cause a pause the whole process. I had 35 resting follicles on the right ovary and 20 resting follicles on the left. WHOA!!!

 In late August I went back to have a regroup with the doctor to discuss the results of all the testing I had done. During this I found out that I had a polyp in one of my ovaries that would need to be removed in order to move forward. This was just an out patient surgery and would be fairly quick. There was only two places I could have this procedure at, those were the CCRM in Lone Tree or Avista Hospital in Louisville. If I went to Avista Hospital I could send the claim to insurance and would not have to pay as much as if I went to the CCRM office. Well clearly that decision was easy. I scheduled my surgery for the beginning of September. Once the time came around I had to cancel because we were in the process of selling and buying a new house so I couldn't spend any large amounts of money at that time. Then life got very complicated and we had to focus on dealing with was going on with Johnny's mom.

The total we paid out in 2014 was $3170.00.

In October of 2014 I thought I would make a go fund me page to help up raise money to pay for all of our appointments. I didn't know how this would turn out but from our friends on Facebook we raised $400.00. We are forever grateful for the donations everyone made.

Please feel free to check out or site and donate to our fund. We appreciate any donation to making or future brighter.

http://www.gofundme.com/Jessica-JohnnyIVF