Monday I visited the Cryobank website to check out the relative prices of our vials. I found the information I wanted, but I also found some I definitely didn't want: our donor's supply of ICI samples is running out.
Two weeks ago, we found out from Nurse Nina that she thought we should do a couple rounds of home insemination with ICI samples before getting her help. We were pissed because we only had enough ICI for one cycle and would have to buy more. It was a financial burden, but we'd just hang onto the IUI samples while buying extra ICI and hope the IUI's wouldn't even be necessary.
When we were in our final stages of the exhausting, painful, laborious process of choosing a donor, one handy thing about Mr. 11961 was that, in Cryobank parlance, he had over 25 vials of each type-- ICI and IUI. We bought two of each, feeling confident that there'd be more if we needed it. Motherfucking hubris is biting us in the ass.
I chose not to tell Heather about the change in supply right away, thinking she was already pretty stressed from work and I'd find a better time. Lounging in the pool today felt right, and she was philosophical about it: we don't know how many fewer than 25 vials of ICI he has left, or whether he has more and they're just in quarantine, or whether he's still in the pipe, expected to donate again soon. And, if we can't get more of his semen, we'll find someone else's. Maybe it wasn't meant to be.
I agreed that, post-pool, I'd call the Cryobank. I had planned to ask them for the skinny on how and when to ship, so it was easy enough to ask about 11961's plans for the future, semen-wise.
What I found out was that a) we could not have the cryo-tank shipped to work, only to the doctor's office or to our house or to a FedEx location, b) 11961 had 8 vials of ICI left, and c) he had retired, so those were the last vials available.
Oh, and it costs nearly $200 to ship the stuff.
I'm not going to lie: the lady at the Cryobank did not excel at customer service. Not that I'd feel anyone was excelling at customer service when they reeled off a stream of fucked-up, shitty news, but she could have stood to be a little more helpful. Why can't they ship it to work? And why did she tell me priority shipping-- overnight-- was $120, when the website tells me it's $205, and two-day goddamn "economy" shipping is $170?
Heather was perturbed at the news-- I think she was frustrated that I interrupted her vacuuming, too-- but said, well, find out where the nearest FedEx is, 'cause we can't be at home and it's a pain to go to the doctor's office. So I looked it up and called the nearest listed location, where "Andre" helpfully told me that, um, yeah, they didn't really do cold storage tanks, but that he thought there's a FedEx Kinko's up the street. I hate Andre.
What it comes to is that we'll have to have it shipped to Nurse Nina's office and pick it up there on Saturday. THIS Saturday. Monday is Day 12 of the cycle and that's baby-makin' time.
Why is this so hard? Is nature really so much against us that we have the misfortune of getting Andre on the phone? I guess I don't want him handling our sperm anyhow, but christ. Can't we just get the sperm and potentially fuck up the insemination on our own, without Shawnbay at the Cryobank-- seriously, I just can't trust anyone with that name; I can't-- with his jacked-up grammar and Andre at OfficeMax with his jacked-up, wholesale incompetence about the fundamentals of his job, getting in the mix? It would be easier just to rape a man.
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