Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Still Upset and Getting Mad

Really mad. After posting about this and seeing if others RE's thought it was a big deal, I find out it kinda is. And it makes me wonder about the success rates we were told about for IUI's (15-20% or something) and if those percentages applied to us. I put a call in to Nurse D asking about the Shared Risk call (she was going to see if she could get them to approve us for the Shared Risk non ICSI) and letting her know that I was upset and wanted to hear again how she thinks the strict morph did or did not affect our chances and if the IUI's were a waste of money and especially now that the cost just went up that we were upset about not knowing about this. And I let her know that I wanted a copy of the SA and for her to please call me back.

That was yesterday at 11:35am.

I haven't heard back from her.

I'm just getting more and more angry about it.

I got the contract from Shared Risk though... the contract for Shared Risk with ICSI for $31,800, so apparently she called them and got the application pushed through and approved. But just decided not to call me back.

I don't know what to do. I'm feeling petty and stubborn and do not want to call them first and want to wait and see how long it takes for them to call me. But, I'm also anxious about all this and feel childish. But I also don't want to be the annoying patient who calls everyday (which - let's face it - I probably am already). Part of me wants to schedule a meeting with Dr. M and get her take on this. I want to know why so many other RE's DO seem to think this is an issue and recommended their patients to move straight to IVF. Here's how it was explained to a few fellow nesties:

"The reason you can't find answers is because this a hotly contested issue. Some REs believe it makes a huge difference while others thinks it makes no difference at all.
I liked how my RE described it. Lower numbers (and ours is 14% and above normal) just mean it might take you longer to get pregnant than some people if you were trying on your own. Considering my highish FSH and age, we don't have the time so we went on to IVF-ICSI right away. "

"We have 1-3% strict morph and we were advised to go straight to IVF. Like PP, my RE said it's like trying to hit the lottery basically. I didn't ovulate on my own but even if I did, out of 85 million, if only 1% are shaped right to fertilize an egg, you have to hope that 1% is also moving good enough to get to the one egg released too. It *can* happen, but it may never happen on it's own."

"Our counts are below 40 million, with 1% morph and motility around 30%. We hit the lottery once, but I miscarried... My Re pretty much told me we had about a 1% chance on our own, maybe 5% with IUI and he thought we'd be wasting our money (especially as we're OOP) if we did anything but IVF with ICSI.
It's definitely contested, but I think if the rest of the numbers aren't stellar, then morph could definitely be the tipping point. Our Re is on the morph matters side
of the equation."

"My DH has a strict morph of 0%. We were told that our chances of conveiving naturally is less than 5%, so we decided to go straight to IVF with ICSI. We are 100% OOP, so we skipped IUIs and went with our best odds. We were very lucky that it worked the first time."

Reading these made me want to cry. I mean I knew that IVF had a better chance of working - duh. And I have gotten pregnant twice - maybe that's why they don't think its a big deal??? The rest of his numbers are fine, so it's not really a problem? Really? And this wouldn't have affected the success rates for the IUI's?

And really - let's say for argument's sake that we were told about the strict morph and just have completely forgotten the entire conversation about it - no one ever brought it up to us again. So all the meetings, all the appointments, trying to figure out what we should do and how it was MY body that was all fucked up - and nobody mentioned this. I didn't even realize that we would HAVE to do ICSI if we went to IVF. I knew it was suggested because it is so much better and blahblahblahICSIisgreatblahblah but I didn't think we would have to because of a problem.

And, they still haven't called. Which, really - I'm making a mountain out of a molehill and being totally dramatic. Fucking call me back. I don't care if I just all of a sudden told you that I didn't know I had PCOS this whole time and am upset - you fucking call. me. back.

2 comments:

satto said...

I am so sorry. This is not an easy choice you have to make. We went through this too. For us it was more a scheduling thing that we decided to jump into IVF. (I have 3 months off a year and we wanted to do IVF then).

When we heard IVF was our best choice I cried. I figured I had time before that whammy. But you get used to the idea. And as I close in on my first ER I can say nothing I've had to do was as bad as I thought it was going to be (except of course paying for it).

Whatever you choose I hope it makes you happy. And makes you a mommy.

Good luck.

satto said...

Oh...and call your RE and ask them why you haven't heard from them. This is unacceptable!