I was going to take time off from writing for the break. What was there to say, really? Nothing is new. We had debated going to OHSU and have an appointment scheduled for Friday for a second opinion, but we have decided to cancel. Why should we pay one more guy in a white lab coat to tell us what we likely already know from experience and have heard from another guy in a white lab coat? We will take that money and either blow it on a nice meal or sock it away and know that we are $39,600 closer to our goal amount. Sheesh. I'm going to be 50 before we ever get there.
The harsh reality of what we are up against is slowly settling in and I think that each day I try and come to terms with what will likely be a childless future for us. We haven't thrown the towel in, yet. If we can do this, we would like to do it between late spring and the fall. That would give us a window of opportunities if the first embryo transfer fails. But unless we get a miracle of sorts, things are looking far from feasible - financially. We still have a few options to explore, but refinancing the house is out. So that leaves us with about two avenues to explore before we are done - a grant through a foundation out of North Carolina and possibly financing through a medical financing company. We shall see.
That is all from inside our little world. And so you can see why I was going to take a break.
But then there was this week.
The outside world - truly a mess. Last night, after reading through the names of the victims in the Sandy Hook school shooting, I thought to myself, Why would we even want to bring a little baby into this world? This is one jacked up place.
I can't even begin to imagine the pain and grief that the community and families are going through. It is such a large-scale loss. A pointless loss. I thought about all those devastated parents. It's just so, so sad. The news this week struck me as both a teacher and an aspiring parent.
As a teacher, stories like this make me stop and think twice about my job. I thought about all the drills we do and how they always seem to be such a pain in the ass and waste of time. And then you hear about this and you think, Next time I'm going to take it seriously. On some unconscious level, I realize that there is a part of me that must be somewhat prepared for this sort of thing. I always leave my door locked after I open it up. I don't want to have to go out in the hall and lock it if I do need to shut us in during an emergency. I usually leave it open but think I will leave it shut now most of the time since I'm the first room at the top of the stairs.
I have never felt this way after other school shootings. That is a depressing sentence to type. Yes, other school shootings. But this one just strikes at such a deeper level.
Brett said to me the other day, "Why are people so messed up?"
"People? Men. These are men that do this."
It is true that there was one woman in California responsible for a mass shooting, but the rest have been men. Mostly young men. What does that say? We talked more about the lack of options our culture gives young men. Young male culture is void of anything truly meaningful and anything that really prepares and creates strong, compassionate, and caring men. We don't give our young men enough to care about, enough to feel invested in and what we do offer plays off of their physical need to exert testosterone in violent ways. I know that it isn't as clear cut and as simple as what I've said here. But I can't help but think that we desperately need to change the experience and caring that we give to our young men.
In our quest to become parents, this week's news has reminded me that even once we become parents, there is no guarantee that life will go the way we expect. I know, it seems obvious, but it is so easy to get caught in the web of our own mind. We think, "if this, then this, and then that." No one expects the unthinkable. No one expects their child will turn into a soul-less killer or be killed by one. And hopefully, our world will become a place where none of us will ever have to experience that kind of loss again. But something must change.
Many have put forth that one simple change is to stop remembering the names of those who have committed these horrible acts and start to remember the victims. I am going to start there. Emilie Parker is the young, blond 6 year old whose father was one of the first to speak out about their loss. I am committing this young girl's name to memory.
As desperate as our situation can feel at times, this week's shootings remind me that what Brett and I are going through is merely a passage, something that reminds us we are human and we have limits. It is merely the stuff of life. It is sad at times, can feel devastating and all encompassing; but, we will survive this. We are, indeed, very fortunate that THIS is our struggle. And it is not forever, it is simply for now.
I'm thankful that we have friends and family who have and continue to support and love us - who send us their love and many, many kind words; who share in our ups and downs. We simply could not do it alone.
Much love and happy holidays! Our saga continues on for now.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
The 1%
Today we met with Dr. B to chat about our options. Long story short, we basically have a 1% chance of having a baby with my eggs and Brett's swimmers. And it felt like he was being generous with us. In his view, the high FSH and the low AMH point to an 'insult' my ovaries endured as a result of the chemotherapy. Add that to my age, which isn't so much a factor, but... He has seen women with the high FSH and the low AMH get pregnant and have a baby, but it is very, very rare. And none of those women had undergone chemotherapy.
We can try, for as many times as we want, a medicated IUI (intrauterine insemination) with injectables to induce a crazy hyper stimulation of my ovaries, a trigger shot to induce ovulation and then insemination. The medications are apparently pretty rough on a person and the whole thing does not usually work. (So how is this an option?) We could luck out with a good egg, but, as he said, we only have a 1% chance of success. It's tempting. Our insurance will cover about half of the cost of the procedure. So basically about $2,000 out-of-pocket... for a 1% chance.
Hope. It really gets you.
Then, we were told about our other option. Our greatest chance (if I want to actually conceive a carry a pregnancy), at a nearly 75-80% success rate, is to go with donor egg IVF. And that was it. He suggested we take the holidays off, think about what we wanted to do and then after the 1st of the year, if we wanted, move forward.
We were then ushered to a conference room and introduced to a super friendly lady, probably my age, and given a new folder full of documents. This time, all about donor egg IVF. The tests we'd need, the process for choosing a donor, the timeline for synching your cycle with that of the donor, and then finally, retrieving the eggs, fertilizing them and transfer. Any leftovers, you can freeze for later use (failed IVF, siblings) and or you can donate them. The price tag for all this? $35,000.
Ugh.
I knew that we were probably going to get this news, so in many ways, I'm not too shocked, too upset. In a lot of ways, it feels good to know what we are dealing with and that we still have a few options left. I haven't cried, yet. Maybe I will still. If I have to hear about Princess Kate and her entire pregnancy from now until she has this royal baby, that might do me in. I think more than anything, at this point, I feel like some of the pressure is off. If we really only focus on getting pregnant naturally, then time is of the essence, and that's a lot of pressure and stress on both Brett and I. To be honest, it makes everything feel so utterly shitty. Every month, every day, every cycle feels like a ticking time bomb. To know that likely our own efforts have a slim chance of working means we can stop focusing on that so intensely. To know that likely our own efforts have a slim chance of working also means we can take our time. IVF with a donor egg can't happen in less than 4 months time and it can happen as far from now as we want. We can breath a sigh of relief for that. We have time.
We can time it around my work calendar. We can time it around our ability to come up with the funds for this. We can time it around Brett's school schedule. Whatever we want. We now have the luxury of time.
Yes, if we go this route, I won't genetically be this baby's mother. But biologically and in every other way, I will be. At first, the idea of donor eggs just pissed me off. "Oh yeah, great, some young fertile jerk's eggs - isn't she so lucky. So many extra eggs she can donate them to sad sacks like me." But that has passed. I realized that for me, I truly do want the experience of carrying a baby. I've had it twice in the last year and even though it didn't last, it was an experience that I'd like to see through.
So we will go forward from here. We will follow Dr. B's advice and take off the rest of the year from doing much more other than what we might try on our own. And we will start to try and figure out how the hell we will pay for this. We will do everything Suzie Orman would suggest you never do for something like this. We will look into refinancing our house, borrowing from retirement, and might even start a GoFundUs website that a friend suggested. I guess, at the end of the day, we will do whatever it takes in order to do this thing. One way or the other, we will just have to figure it out.
If only we were part of that other 1%, we'd be set.
We can try, for as many times as we want, a medicated IUI (intrauterine insemination) with injectables to induce a crazy hyper stimulation of my ovaries, a trigger shot to induce ovulation and then insemination. The medications are apparently pretty rough on a person and the whole thing does not usually work. (So how is this an option?) We could luck out with a good egg, but, as he said, we only have a 1% chance of success. It's tempting. Our insurance will cover about half of the cost of the procedure. So basically about $2,000 out-of-pocket... for a 1% chance.
Hope. It really gets you.
Then, we were told about our other option. Our greatest chance (if I want to actually conceive a carry a pregnancy), at a nearly 75-80% success rate, is to go with donor egg IVF. And that was it. He suggested we take the holidays off, think about what we wanted to do and then after the 1st of the year, if we wanted, move forward.
We were then ushered to a conference room and introduced to a super friendly lady, probably my age, and given a new folder full of documents. This time, all about donor egg IVF. The tests we'd need, the process for choosing a donor, the timeline for synching your cycle with that of the donor, and then finally, retrieving the eggs, fertilizing them and transfer. Any leftovers, you can freeze for later use (failed IVF, siblings) and or you can donate them. The price tag for all this? $35,000.
Ugh.
I knew that we were probably going to get this news, so in many ways, I'm not too shocked, too upset. In a lot of ways, it feels good to know what we are dealing with and that we still have a few options left. I haven't cried, yet. Maybe I will still. If I have to hear about Princess Kate and her entire pregnancy from now until she has this royal baby, that might do me in. I think more than anything, at this point, I feel like some of the pressure is off. If we really only focus on getting pregnant naturally, then time is of the essence, and that's a lot of pressure and stress on both Brett and I. To be honest, it makes everything feel so utterly shitty. Every month, every day, every cycle feels like a ticking time bomb. To know that likely our own efforts have a slim chance of working means we can stop focusing on that so intensely. To know that likely our own efforts have a slim chance of working also means we can take our time. IVF with a donor egg can't happen in less than 4 months time and it can happen as far from now as we want. We can breath a sigh of relief for that. We have time.
We can time it around my work calendar. We can time it around our ability to come up with the funds for this. We can time it around Brett's school schedule. Whatever we want. We now have the luxury of time.
Yes, if we go this route, I won't genetically be this baby's mother. But biologically and in every other way, I will be. At first, the idea of donor eggs just pissed me off. "Oh yeah, great, some young fertile jerk's eggs - isn't she so lucky. So many extra eggs she can donate them to sad sacks like me." But that has passed. I realized that for me, I truly do want the experience of carrying a baby. I've had it twice in the last year and even though it didn't last, it was an experience that I'd like to see through.
So we will go forward from here. We will follow Dr. B's advice and take off the rest of the year from doing much more other than what we might try on our own. And we will start to try and figure out how the hell we will pay for this. We will do everything Suzie Orman would suggest you never do for something like this. We will look into refinancing our house, borrowing from retirement, and might even start a GoFundUs website that a friend suggested. I guess, at the end of the day, we will do whatever it takes in order to do this thing. One way or the other, we will just have to figure it out.
If only we were part of that other 1%, we'd be set.
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