Only $50!!!

I'm busy getting everything in order for FET this fall, getting my body ready, getting our finances in order, etc...Well, today I got WONDERFUL news...my insurance is actually going to help some!!! My first round meds for the FET will only cost $48.80 since they aren't necessarily "fertility" meds so insurance will cover. When I found out, I almost jumped through the phone and kissed the guy! So yeah $50 vs $2,000 for the fresh cycle...I'll take that!

I must say I'm feeling good about the FET...if/when it works, I'd deliver at 29 which is when my sister had my neice and my mom had me, the good news about the meds, AND I just found out that someone whose been waiting a year and a half to adopt just got a placement! Crossing my fingers...

Second Guessing and Freaking Out

UgH! I already typed up this whole post when stupid blogger effs up...Blogger I hate you sometimes. Let's see if I can word this just right and even remember what I typed...

First off, update on my last post. I called the second hospital and calmly and politely (both two very difficult things for me to do!) explained the situation about having to pay 2 ER co-pays when the doctor at the first hospital was the one who didn't know what to do and made us transfer. I then waited a week and finally got an email saying "as a one time courtesy" we won't charge you-WOOHOO!!! Moral of this story: 1. We will drive the 45 minutes to the main hospital downtown anytime we have an emergency and 2. It never hurts to ask.

Now to the meat and potatoes of this post...


Second Guessing
I'm getting ready to gear up for our FET this fall. When we did the fresh cycle back in December, I think I weighed around 215. I'm currently at 175-180 which has got to be a good thing, right? (Also, pretty sure another 10 lbs and I can qualify as an egg donor at my current clinic!!! This was a pretty big motivator for me so I can help pay it forward). During this weight loss journey, in an effort to not deprive myself and to stay on track, I "diet" for about 8-10 weeks then give myself a cheat week meaning no counting calories and no working out if I don't want to. I took FULL advantage of it this past week. Starting tomorrow, I plan on going into full FET mode so my body is in the best physical condition it can be in meaning no caffeine, no alcohol, prescription prenatals, etc...Now don't get me wrong, I take prenatals daily, just the cheap OTC kind (small effort to save up for the big bucks treatments). I can count on one hand the number of alcoholic drinks I've had in the last year and I really only drink soda when I'm totally over the taste of water. Well this past week, I've drank soda like it's going out of style knowing I won't be able to have it the next few (or longer!) months and I had two beers yesterday (whoa, I'm getting buck wild!) which is 2 more beers than I've had in the past 6 months. I've also eaten out 3-4 times this past week which is about the number of times I usually eat out a MONTH. So I know that's not too bad for just one week but why then am I freaking out??? Thinking I should have been gearing up longer, afraid all the work I did is ruined...ugh, I know it's ridiculous but I can't help second guessing...


Freaking Out

So this time around, I'm trying to do everything OPPOSITE than I did before...acupunture, losing weight and trying to be healthy, picturing my totsicles in my arms, not being afraid to dream of them. I picture telling people our exciting news, deciding how I'll deliver, what our house would look like with a baby (possibly and hopefully three!) and I picture getting the phone call about a BFP and then I stop. Because when I think of D-Day, finding out yes or no, I can't help but get that feeling of absolute, sheer panickness as I picture Mary calling about the fresh cycle, "Oh A, I'm so sorry..." My heart sinks to my stomach and beats really fast, I lose my breath and then I think about transfer day and how they may tell me we don't have any and that's when the tears come and I can't think any more because I don't know what we'll do then. Le sigh...


So there, that's what's going on inside my crazy, little mind of mine. Please leave me a comment and tell me to stop second guessing and freaking out...it'll make me feel a little bit better. :)

I REALLY Hate Bills

Came home today to a bill in the mail. It was for a $300 co-pay for the 2nd hospital I took DH to when we visited the ER. I called my insurance to see if we had to pay both co-pays...verdict: YES! Since he received treatment at both, we have to pay the $300 co-pay at both. UGH!!! So from now on, we'll just go to the one big, main one downtown 45 minutes away so we don't have to pay twice.

While I had her on the phone, I found out we have about $700 worth of MORE bills coming for the renal scan he had. Good news, we hit the deductible, bad news we owe about $1,000 and I JUST paid the last $1,800 for BFN IVF. Awesome...sometimes I wonder if this is God telling us that this is why we can't have kids. Long, rough day and did I mention I'm in my house SWEATING!!! I'm going to sit in front of a fan...

A Twitterview!

I got an email from Kelly with Resolve and MyDestinationFamily.org. She wanted me to pass on some information about a twitterview this Friday. Here's the info:

"I wanted to let you know about a new project you might be interested in—a Twitterview looking at the male perspective of infertility leading up to Father’s Day, this Friday, June 17, at 2pm ET.

Blogger Alec Ross, a leading voice on men’s infertility at Fertility Authority and on his blog I Want to Be a Daddy, will share his experiences through a personal, informative Twitterview with Barbara Collura, Executive Director of RESOLVE. We invite you to follow along at hash-tag #tvFD (for Twitterview for Father’s Day) to read the direct question-and-answer exchange between Barb (@RESOLVEorg) and Alec (@infertility_guy). If you can’t follow the conversation live, you can visit RESOLVE’s MyDestinationFamily.org Twitterview page for a full re-cap following the interview."

I don't think I can follow live but, dealing with male factor infertility in our situation, I will definitely be checking out the recap.

Here's to happy Father's Day to all the new poppas out there and to us still waiting, here's to surviving another one!

Half Mary Pics!!! Thank you Blogger for Working!

YAH!!! I finally got my pictures uploaded from my half marathon last weekend. It was my third half marathon, all ran within a year PLUS I did a full back in October! I'm pretty proud of my accomplishments if I do say so myself! Now on to some fun photos (but still annoymous!)...

The race was about 4 hours from where we live. I rode up with 2 bloggie friends (okay, they are no longer bloggie but IRL friends!) and headed to the expo. What a surprise when I see the banner and my face on it:

Want an even BIGGER suprise? I was on my very own billboard!!! Yes, I was somewhat of the poster child for the race. My first half was this race exactly one year ago.

It was a VERY hard race!!! It was over 90 degrees and VERY HILLY!!! I'm so thankful I had DH meet me every 1.5 mile for water, Gatorade and a wet washcloth...he was (and always is!) a godsend!!!

I beat my time from last year's race by 9 minutes which I was pretty stoked about that BUT I was *only* a minute slower than my half 4 weeks ago. That half was VERY flat and perfect, cool running weather so I feel like I should have been way faster than a hot, hilly course! Then again, I did have a 7 hour ER visit, minimal sleep and stress, stress, stress playing against me. Anyways, hope you enjoy the pics! It was a great weekend because we got to see some wonderful friends and running half marys=burning LOTS of calories=indulging in deliciousness!!!

UPDATE on DH: I never really followed up on him after I posted we went to the ER. He's got bladder stones. He's not in major pain so the doc is letting things go and then will see him to inspect in July if they're still there. Never a dull moment...

UPDATE on Bill: Remember I posted that I got a "past due" bill from the hospital? I called to pay and told the lady, "I know you won't make note of this and probably don't care but I just wanted to let you know that I never got the first notice." She said it wasn't a big deal, but to OCD me it was. She goes on to take my payment and then goes to confirm my address...yeah, my DAD'S address that I haven't lived at in 10 years! I said, "Well, no wonder I never got the first notice!"

Big weekend for us! I'm trying out CrossFit in the AM (wish me luck!) then haircut and wedding (I only get my haircut on day's I have something going on). Sunday is MIL's birthday so church, then DH and I are bike riding then MIL birthday dinner. WHEW! Never a dull moment with DH and I...

I Hate Bills...And This and That

I came home today and had a bill from the hospital where Dr. Val works at. It says the bill is past due, yet its the first time I've seen it. Of course, it's too late to call by the time I get home. I pull out all my receipts and have all my documentation to prove I paid then I start looking closer...it's for the ICSI and storage fee. UGH!!! Like I really want to be reminded of my BFN and want to PAY for something that FAILED! So looks like I'll be calling tomorrow and dropping another $1800+ for the last IVF. Bringing the grand total for our failed IVF to $14,852.77-awesome. I would have rather paid this in December and be done with it. Hospitals suck.

I had my second acupunture today. It went awesome! I brought music and closed my eyes. I focused on our babies, holding them in our arms, telling people it worked...being positive! As the songs came on, I pictured myself teaching my kids Jimmy Buffett's "Cheeseburger in Paradise" (yes I was listening to some Jimmy) and running through sprinklers as hot as today was. It felt REALLY good! I'm actually looking forward to next time.

Oh a sadder note, which is why it's hard to be TOO upset about much tonight, I had a frantic phone call from one of my camper's parent today. I knew the parents were divorced and I was dreading getting in the middle. Turns out, her mom was calling to tell me that her ex-husband (the camper's dad) had died two weeks ago. This was just three days after I met with him. I meet lots of parents throughout the course of a summer, some I remember for good reasons, some not so good, others come and go and I don't remember them at all but him? Him I remembered. It was a crazy stormy day and we were trying to get in the basement of the building running outside only to find the doors locked. Most parents would be PISSED because of this and because we were VERY distracted trying to take care of things with the storm. But he was laid back and calm, very friendly, shook my hand, introduced himself. She is in our junior counselor program and he treated her like an adult, making her ask the questions or feeding her info to ask. I REALLY liked him because he seemed like a great guy who was really interested in his daughter actually gaining something from our program, not just using it as babysitting. So my heart's sad tonight for her and her family.

Sorry this is a mish-mash of a post!

When We're Not TTC

Hey ladies! I'm sure you've wondered where I've been...or maybe not. Not really doing much on the TTC front so I bet you're saying, well A, what do you do when you're not jabbing yourself with lupron/PIO, taking cupcakes to the RE's office or researching other clinics in my area? Well, let me tell you! I had some awesome pics to go with this post, complete with captions and all so that might be a post for another day.

Since our BFN three days before Christmas, I picked myself up and decided to make some changes for the better. I've lost about 20 pounds since then and I feel better and have gotten tons of compliments that I'm looking good which makes me feel good. I did a 40 flight stairclimb and beat last year's time which was only the start of my PR's (personal record). I ran a 5k, 10k and half marathon all in one week...PRing in all of them and SMASHING my old records (a sub-30 5k!!! Big girl can RUN!). A month later (this past weekend), I ran another half marathon and didn't PR but beat my time from last year's race so I was pretty thrilled about that. I started speed training so I'm sure a 5k will be on my schedule soon. I swam 15 miles in about 3.5 months to join the Swim Mileage Club-big deal for me. I've survived one week of summer camp (even if we only had 23 kids the first week vs 160 the other weeks, it still counts as survival!)! I endured my first ER visit with DH and I didn't stroke out at the cost (I even thought about going to my RE's office to nap because it was 2 streets away and they have much comfier couches). I had planned on doing a tri but Dr. Val denied it but I'm still planning on training just probably not as intensely. I've read a TON of books, blogged a ton on my non-IF blog and had some awesome outings with friends and family. I've volunteered for some really awesome organizations.

So yeah, I've been busy because all of that is OUTSIDE of work. I've tried to loosen up on the OCD and "go with the flow." It's been a fun, active winter/spring time and I can say that I'm VERY proud of myself. So see, I DO have a life outside of TTC! ;) And because I'd planned pictures but cant' get the ones I want to upload, I leave you with this picture I took while in FL last fall. We won't be going on a vacay anytime soon but at least I have pictures to brighten my day!