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History, Part IV - The Fertility Doctor
When we decide to use a fertility doctor, we are only a few months from the two year date.
There is no really significance attached to the date. It’s not like some eccentric old uncle passed away, leaving us a billion dollars, but only if we managed to get pregnant within two years. It’s just a marker, but it serves to remind us that we haven’t gotten pregnant.
But we are making head way.
After the emotional high about the good news about our reproductive health, we deflated because we didn’t know what to do next. So we did the only thing we could think of – we chose a fertility doctor for actual treatment – Doc Dos.
Doc Dos – so called because the previous testing had been done under our normal GP doctor, so she was our second doctor – wanted first to retest under certain conditions. P.Pie went to have her eggs check – me tagging along for support – and Doc Dos wanted another sample from yours truly at their location. I went alone.
The first clinic I made a deposit at was more a processing station in a stand alone building. They had a doctors’ offices side and a testing side. I only went to the testing side, so the only person I saw was one technician. This new place was in a hospital building and the testing facility was inside the fertility clinic. So when I checked in, there were two or three women – some pregnant, some not (at least not showing) – sitting in the waiting room.
While awaiting my turn, women came and went. My name was called and I was escorted to an equally tasteful, equally clean, sitting room also with a bathroom attached. It occurred to me that it might be funny if I returned to the receptionist with my hair mussed up and my shirt half untucked and mis-buttoned, exclaiming, “Wow! I am an animal!”
Discretion is the better part of valor. God forbid waiting room women think I’m some sort of rapist that will lay in wait for them. They’d probably need an escort to their cars and the police would have a sketch artist version of me, looking like a deranged Donnie Osmond, which would be the lead story for the five o’clock news.
Anyway, these tests return the same as the last tests – good enough to have babies. It would seem this should have made me happy, but it didn’t.
I was actually a little miffed.
We’ve dicked around for yet another month to find out something we already know. We’re another month closer to year two. Fortunately Doc Dos is used to working with idiots like me and was able to make me see reason.
Doc Dos had a plan and was ready to hit the ground running. She wanted us to get knocked up almost as badly as we wanted to get knocked up.
Because we had been trying for nearly two years, Doc Dos wanted to shoot the moon. She wanted us to straight to test tube baby. She wanted to host a petrie dish kegger - take my boys and some of P.Pie’s eggs, put them in a petrie dish see who takes whom home. Which sounds like a good plan, until you get the price tag: $10 – $15,000 a try.
Excuse me?
Yes, that is correct. $10 – $15,000 A TRY. So if it didn’t take the first time, we would have to pony up again.
Did I mention our insurance doesn’t cover fertility treatments?
I put the kybosh on that plan immediately. First, because we hadn’t tried anything else. Second, harvesting eggs can be painful. And third, because we couldn’t afford it.
I think Doc Dos was a little hurt that we would let something as trivial as pain and expense get in the way of having children.
*not their real names
When we decide to use a fertility doctor, we are only a few months from the two year date.
There is no really significance attached to the date. It’s not like some eccentric old uncle passed away, leaving us a billion dollars, but only if we managed to get pregnant within two years. It’s just a marker, but it serves to remind us that we haven’t gotten pregnant.
But we are making head way.
After the emotional high about the good news about our reproductive health, we deflated because we didn’t know what to do next. So we did the only thing we could think of – we chose a fertility doctor for actual treatment – Doc Dos.
Doc Dos – so called because the previous testing had been done under our normal GP doctor, so she was our second doctor – wanted first to retest under certain conditions. P.Pie went to have her eggs check – me tagging along for support – and Doc Dos wanted another sample from yours truly at their location. I went alone.
The first clinic I made a deposit at was more a processing station in a stand alone building. They had a doctors’ offices side and a testing side. I only went to the testing side, so the only person I saw was one technician. This new place was in a hospital building and the testing facility was inside the fertility clinic. So when I checked in, there were two or three women – some pregnant, some not (at least not showing) – sitting in the waiting room.
While awaiting my turn, women came and went. My name was called and I was escorted to an equally tasteful, equally clean, sitting room also with a bathroom attached. It occurred to me that it might be funny if I returned to the receptionist with my hair mussed up and my shirt half untucked and mis-buttoned, exclaiming, “Wow! I am an animal!”
Discretion is the better part of valor. God forbid waiting room women think I’m some sort of rapist that will lay in wait for them. They’d probably need an escort to their cars and the police would have a sketch artist version of me, looking like a deranged Donnie Osmond, which would be the lead story for the five o’clock news.
Anyway, these tests return the same as the last tests – good enough to have babies. It would seem this should have made me happy, but it didn’t.
I was actually a little miffed.
We’ve dicked around for yet another month to find out something we already know. We’re another month closer to year two. Fortunately Doc Dos is used to working with idiots like me and was able to make me see reason.
Doc Dos had a plan and was ready to hit the ground running. She wanted us to get knocked up almost as badly as we wanted to get knocked up.
Because we had been trying for nearly two years, Doc Dos wanted to shoot the moon. She wanted us to straight to test tube baby. She wanted to host a petrie dish kegger - take my boys and some of P.Pie’s eggs, put them in a petrie dish see who takes whom home. Which sounds like a good plan, until you get the price tag: $10 – $15,000 a try.
Excuse me?
Yes, that is correct. $10 – $15,000 A TRY. So if it didn’t take the first time, we would have to pony up again.
Did I mention our insurance doesn’t cover fertility treatments?
I put the kybosh on that plan immediately. First, because we hadn’t tried anything else. Second, harvesting eggs can be painful. And third, because we couldn’t afford it.
I think Doc Dos was a little hurt that we would let something as trivial as pain and expense get in the way of having children.
Of course, try asking her to donate her services and see how far you get.
We came to the consensus that the Clomid route was both a good start and about $500 a shot, it was affordable.
We came to the consensus that the Clomid route was both a good start and about $500 a shot, it was affordable.
*not their real names
posted by Rob Barron at 5:51 PM
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