Good News, Bad News

Infertility is such a rollercoaster. I know I've said it before, but I have to say it again. It feels like good news and bad news go hand in hand sometimes. One thing starts to look up, something bad lurks just behind it. Today, I heard back from the specialty pharmacy that my meds had been ordered. Unfortunately, they are out of the medrol, but she said I can get a prescription from my doctor and fill that with a normal local pharmacy. I won't even tell you all the details of the run around I had to go through to get information on pricing. Let me just say that it was ridiculous. Apparently, they don't really want to tell you what it will cost until they have your credit card in hand. Just take my word for it when I say it was not a fun afternoon.

Finally, though, I spoke to someone who had a heart and was able to place a "test claim" and bring up the cost of my meds. Because of the type of insurance we have, we don't have a choice when it comes to the pharmacy we use. We HAVE to use our insurance's specialty pharmacy, end of story. So, she went through all the meds and came back to say that the entire order would be somewhere around $280. Yay! Great news, right? I mean, it's amazing news. I had pretty much budgeted that we would owe around $1000 at least for the meds, so for it to be under three hundred bucks is pretty freaking fantastic.

Then comes the bad news. She says that after this order, however, our fertility coverage will be exhausted and any future injectible cycles will be out of pocket 100%. My heart sank. I've seen so many blogs where people have three IVF cycles covered, so I was surprised to hear that we only get one. Well, a lifetime fertility max of $3600 apparently. And we exhausted it with this one cycle. It felt like she added a hundred pound weight to my chest.

I am not in any way complaining about this cycle. I completely understand how lucky we are to have most of this cycle covered through insurance. We're incredibly blessed. I know that there are people who don't have any coverage at all, so I'm not trying to be disrespectful. But we've already used up so much of our fertility coverage. We already knew we were cutting it close with this cycle for our primary fertility coverage, so we knew that if we needed a second cycle, it was going to be expensive. Now, to hear that our medication coverage is also gone from now on? It's just putting so much pressure on me. I'm already feeling a ton of pressure to be healthy and to get this book written. Now, I feel this enormous pressure to get a BFP.

I realize how ridiculous that sounds. I can't control whether I get pregnant this cycle or not. Logically, I know that. But now I keep thinking that if this cycle doesn't work, it could be as long as a year before we can afford to try again. Then, that also pushes our dreams of a bigger house further down another few years because of the money. I am trying to find ways to manage this stress and just be okay with it and understand that things will turn out exactly how they are supposed to, but that's easier said that done. I'm so grateful this cycle is going to be inexpensive for us, but so incredibly terrified that it won't work.