Friday, December 30, 2011

I'm rubber, you're glue

In the baby-making process, there are people you can't escape.

I feel that way all the time at work-- there's the co-worker who belches, the one who makes personal calls all day-- and also on the road, when that asshole in the SUV tailgates me.  Then there's family, of course, but let's set that aside.

I felt that way about Nurse Nina.  If I had a flow chart like this one, there would be no "Do you trust [Nina's] knowledge?"  It would just be: Nina.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Grand Slam

"I like things to happen; and if they don't happen, I like to make them happen." - Churchill

"Human life begins on the other side of despair." - Sartre

I do not believe I have eaten anything that wasn't 50% or more sugar in the past week.  My meal Tuesday at Denny's was a giant, syrupped waffle with a bit of scrambled egg on the side, and it followed a ten-minute crying spell, which followed a four-hour appointment at the Nashville clinic.

We'd filled out pages and pages of paperwork online, so when I rushed Heather out of the hotel room in the morning, she insisted that we couldn't possibly have any more left.  You know I wouldn't mention it if there wasn't, and we each had about five pages, reiterating our innocent family histories and promising to pay for any and all probing.  IDs and insurance cards were copied; I read Entertainment Weekly.  We each had wrist-bands, without which we weren't allowed into the sanctum sanctorum of the fancy-ass clinic.

After a combo of questions from a nurse and a twenty-minute wait in the exam room (Us Weekly this time), we went to a consultation room to see the doctor.  She was, Heather noted, "a sharp lady."  We talked about tests and prescriptions and lifestyle changes, and I felt like things were at least forming into an action plan: Heather would quit smoking, she'd take some kind of Clomid challenge (?) to test her FSH levels, and there'd be some kind of process with birth control later on.  Then we both got ultrasounds (Heather had a generous supply of microfollicles; huzzah) and were sent to the financial lady.

The story there is that the IVF package is $8,800.  That sounded okay.  But, oh, the medication isn't covered, so that, she estimated, we'd be shelling out between four and seven thousand for those.  Thousand.  We also have to come to Nashville for a four-hour orientation, which begins at 9am.  And, oh, it's a three hour drive, so we'll be spending another $80 for a hotel room, along with gas for the car and fast food for us.  (This time we ordered room service and it was both gastronomically and financially disappointing.)

Heather tried to reassure me that this-- IVF, childbearing, et al.-- was really going to happen, although what we'd been talking about moments earlier was whether it was worth spending another four grand to get our embryos tested for genetic abnormalities before implantation. 

How?  When?  What if Priceline gives us a hotel without free WiFi?

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Just back from Nashville

We got back to Memphis around 5:30 this afternoon, having started the day with a wake-up call at 8:15 this morning. 

The details are more than I'm willing to explore right now.  It's been a long day of talking and driving, and I want to lose myself in wrapping paper.  What I will say is that I'm not going to play surrogate; it's too expensive and complicated.  I will also say that the IVF package runs about $8,800... and the medications start at about $4,000 but some can be found on Craigslist.

Heather and I have both been anxious, sad, or angry-- or some combination thereof-- for the past ten hours, and I can't imagine what this will feel like later in the process.  We had lunch at Denny's.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Ho ho ho

It's just before Christmas, so I'm checking my list, revising it, and saving it as a draft in my Gmail account.  I think I'm nearly done, so I'm gonna track my packages and watch the hell out of some syndicated Big Bang Theory.

Tomorrow, we're leaving work a little early to drive to Nashville.  We've got a hotel room (thanks, Priceline-- I got a room and a strange sense of consumer triumph within five minutes) downtown, so we'll crash for the night, then get up and drive only three minutes (again, consumer triumph) to the fertility clinic's offices-- and we don't know for sure what happens then. 

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

If we just follow the light

Well, for one thing, we're going back to the California Cryobank.  They were always the best to work with and I missed them.  ART vials are cheaper across the board and CCB has more of them than most places do, and, goddamn, when you're contemplating IVF, you're already committing enough money and enough sincere hope to the process that you're not distracted by frugality.

For another, we've had a few more conversations about me playing surrogate to Heather's egg.  Inconclusive.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Baby, please come home

Yesterday, a co-worker told me about internet controversy concerning a sperm bank that may or may not have continued selling the sperm of a donor whose offspring had terrible birth defects.  I told her to stop fucking up my day and that I'd have to Google it, but at least the blog post would write itself.  She understood. 

Thanks, Linda.