I think we owe everyone an update, we have been a bit tardy in that. Things have been pretty busy and should stay that way for us until the end of the year. Which actually is a good thing as it helps time to go by. We tried to see if there was anyway we could squeeze our way into the October cycle (which there was room for us) between our trips in Oct and Nov but there wasn't enough time between the two, to make it work :-). We basically need 3 straight weeks that we can devote to being in DC. We learned at orientation that we will go for a two day trip which will consist of a baseline appointment (not exactly sure what that entails) but I do know that we will get all of the medicine issued and have to go to a class where they will teach us how to give me shots and I say 'us' because I think Chad is going to have to be the administrator of the shots. I just don't know that I will be able to give them to myself :-). Following that trip, we will come home for 3-5 days and then have to go back and stay for 10-14 days. We plan on driving to DC for the long trip as car rental is very expensive. It will take us a day and half to drive there from here but that's OK anywhere we can save money is helpful. During the 10-14 day trip they will begin monitoring me every other day. We will have to be at Walter Reed at 0630 for the appointments and I hear it is a first come first serve bases, so you want to get there as early as possible so you can be one of the first signed in and not have to wait behind 50 other people. They batch their cycles so we will be cycling with approximately 150 other couples. I am assuming somewhere around day 5-8 they will go in and retrieve the eggs, fertilize them and watch the embryos grow and then 3-5 days after retrieval they will do the transfer.
We haven't been able to pay yet so that we can be financially cleared and actually get out baseline appointment scheduled because they are raising the prices for 2008 and they do not have the fee scheduled available yet. I hope it doesn't go up too much. I am supposed to call mid October to see if they have the schedules available yet, pay and then get scheduled. A couple of weeks go we found out that based on Chad's test results we will have to do
Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (
ICSI); which was a huge shock to us as based off of Chad's initial test we did not anticipate this being the case for us and of course this procedure is more expensive than a traditional
IVF (about $1000.00 more). This was just another blow (at least for me) in this process. I have to be honest and say that at times this is just a little too overwhelming. I get accused by some of lacking faith and being pessimistic but all I can say is that until someone experiences this, they can't judge. In all honesty, having to do
ICSI doesn't really change anything as far as the end result is concerned, they have the same pregnancy rates w/
ICSI as they do w/ traditional
IVF. I think for me it is more that, this was one thing we did not think we needed to concern ourselves w/ but apparently we do. The kind of ironic and maybe frustrating thing is.... If Chad's initial results were even close to what Walter Reed's results are then we would be months ahead of where we are now. As they would have beelined us past everything else (as in the months of additional testing and fertility drugs they had me on "just in case"). Ultimately this information is irrelevant as the end result is the same (we cant get pregnant on our own and need to do
IVF) but if we could have been saved a few emotional months....that would have been nice.
