Please Support Priceless Life Fund Inc.

A friend of mine, with the help of others, have started a non-profit to help couples who are good candidates for IVF, but have been denied treatment coverage by their insurance providers. 

Please visit their FB page and their website.  You can support by donating money or purchasing the Priceless Life Necklace.

http://pricelesslife.org/?page_id=13

https://www.facebook.com/pricelesslifefund

http://www.gofundme.com/433kxg

Junior High Sweethearts Waiting for Their Happily Ever After

Tenyearwait's Story...

My husband and I married in September, 2007.  This was ten years after we started dating in Junior High school.  After marriage, I brought up having kids occasionally, but my husband just wasn't ready.  Then our friends started having kids and it seemed much more realistic to him.
 

In July 2009, we started TTC.  This way I could have a baby in April; I'm big on 'planning'.  Unfortunately, I couldn't plan for this.  How could you?  After a year of TTC, Pre-seed, how-to googling, phantom symptoms, and monthly failed PG tests, I went to my doctor for answers.  

An HSG showed that both of my tubes were dilated and would never work properly.  Both tubes would have to be removed and IVF is our only choice to carry our own babies.  Our paychecks would never cover surgery and IVF.  We had to put baby-making plans completely on hold while my husband went through college for the next 2 years. 

I had surgery in January and my first IVF in June.  What a process!  Unfortunately IVF #1 did not take, and we have a nice 5-year loan to keeping paying for it.  We've restarted and are heading to IVF #2.   (We didn't have any embryos leftover for an FET).

I am grateful that we still have a chance at this and am SO, SO thankful for the support I get from the IF group on the Bump boards.  I even lurk on PAIF for a little hope every now and then.  The OOP Meds Program is such a wonderful way to help each other out when we really could use a hand in making this process at least a little bit easier.  I would like to thank everyone for their help and understanding and hope that I can help/have helped someone else out even a tiny bit.

Mayzie15 & Her Husband are Eternally Grateful for the Donations They Received!

My husband and I were married May 2010.  I was 34 and he was 37 and I knew we married later but felt really good about our careers and that we were settled and we both couldn't wait to start a family.  We began trying to have a child shortly after we were married. 

I began temping, charting etc and after about 6 months of trying and seeing a negative pregnancy test each month I began to worry that something wasn't right.  I went to my OB and had FSH, AMH, HSG, Saline Sonogram etc and my husband did several tests including a sperm analysis test and we waited for the results.  My tests came back okay but my husband's test showed he had a very low sperm count.  We were told to meet with an RE and that our chances of having a child of our own was less than 1%.  We were devastated and told IVF with ICSI was our only chance of having a baby.  I have good insurance and live in CA - A mandated state for infertility insurance - but I found out we had no IVF insurance coverage for medications or the procedure. 

We saved for the first cycle and medications which were over $20k and our cycle didn't go as planned and we failed that cycle.  Our RE told us to walk away and not "break the bank”.  During this difficult time I consider myself so lucky and fortunate to have met a wonderful group of women on the bump boards for TTC after 35 and the IF board to help me.  I had so many questions and they were incredibly supportive.   I really believe that without these ladies I don't know that I would have been able to continue this process for a second time and really believe IVF could work for us. 

We switched RE's and began the process all over again.  We exhausted our savings from our first cycle and started saving again.  I signed up for the OOP Meds donation program.  This cycle my meds were doubling and the price was doubling too.  If I was lucky to receive any donations - I was beyond grateful.   I received responses from women all over the country who were willing to ship their meds to me.  I offered to always pick up shipping as a small gesture and many women wouldn't accept and I sent Thank You cards to all and yet it seems like such a small gesture for what they were doing for me.  It is really important to me that they know without them I wouldn't be here - where I am today. 

I'm 30 weeks along and due August 19th with a baby boy.  As I write this the tears fall because I want all these women to know that the OOP Meds donation program and the ladies that run it and dedicate their time are truly angels to me. 

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of these women.  I think of all the women that are still going through IVF after multiple cycles and still trying for their take home baby - these ladies will be a part of me always and I will continue to follow their journeys.

Futurehuber 's Inspring Hope to Help Make This Dream a Reality

Our Story

by futurehuber

 

 

 

After being together 11 ½ years and married for just over six years, we finally decided it was time for a baby!  I had actually been ready for a little while, but the mister needed some time!  Well he got way more time than he bargained for!

I went off of birth control and we started “trying but not trying” in September of 2011.  The first few months I didn’t worry about temping, ovulation kits, etc. and I had no idea what cervical mucus was or what it meant (nor did I care to)!  We were in the la-la stages of baby making and I just tried to make sure we “had relations” around the textbook 14^th day of my cycle. 

The first cycle after I went off birth control, I actually thought I was pregnant!  I even went out and bought hubby a “we’re pregnant” gift, devised a grand plan for telling him, and also got gifts for the future grandparents.  So as you can imagine, those gifts have probably gathered about 10 inches of dust sitting up on a shelf in my closet. 

The first few cycles I didn’t notice anything unusual, my periods were pretty normal for the most part.  As months passed, I started to notice my periods getting funkier and longer.  Sometimes even super short. They were all over the place!  This on top of negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test, I started to realize something was wrong.

However…even though I knew something was wrong…nope, no going to the doctor!  We hadn’t been trying the lovely minimum of one year yet!  Silly me for thinking I could go see a doctor for something that I knew was wrong with me.

Meanwhile I had already started to buy all of the infertility books, download all the apps, taking my temp, charting, and loaded up on ovulation kits.  I kept that up until I finally got to see my doctor at the one-year mark, and not a day later!

Before I knew it, I was making an ultrasound appointment, getting blood work done, being referred to a reproductive endocrinologist (RE), etc.  And at the same time, I was seeing dollar signs “cha-chinging” in my head as I booked each appointment and did each test.  While I was happy to have some coverage on testing/diagnosis as I know some women do not, my 50% copays were definitely starting to add up!  And this was just finding out why, not helping us to actually make a baby (which would be 100% copays!).

Soon came the diagnosis of PCOS.  I of course bawled my eyes out the second I got off the phone with the nurse.  I thought my life was over, read horribly scary things online (that I now know aren’t true or are at least rare), etc.  Little did I know this was the least of our worries.

Soon after my diagnosis, I scheduled an HSG.  It went pretty smoothly and wasn’t too painful like I had heard.  The doctor doing the HSG said at the end that my tubes looked good and they were all clear!  I embarrassingly burst into happy tears right when she said this as it was so great to get some good news for once! 

Fast forward about 30 hours later when I get a call from my regular doctor (at 8pm at night mind you??).  It went something like this: “I got the results from your HSG and now I know why you’re not getting pregnant!  You have a bicornuate uterus.” And then I heard various words such as heart-shaped, surgery, miscarriage, etc. as I tried to hold back the tears.  (And note that having a bicornuate uterus has nothing to do with conceiving, it has to do with being able to carry the baby. Nice one doc!)

Hang up the phone…straight to Google.  Oh my gosh, my life is seriously over!!  Now do I not only have the inability to get pregnant on my own, I also have problems carrying a baby once I do??  Massive amounts of crying ensues.  I’ve got my mom crying on the phone with me that night.  This is just unfair.

I discuss this diagnosis with my RE and she says my uterus can be bicornuate or septate and there is only one way to know for sure and that’s by doing a surgery called a laparoscopy (meanwhile I read about other, less-invasive alternatives to this surgery and wondered why we wouldn’t start there first?).  Again, dollar signs start flashing as I consider the cost of 50% of a surgery??  Yikes! 

I schedule the surgery appointment and just start feeling really uneasy about this decision.  Luckily thanks to the lovely ladies in The Bump community, I got the idea and the courage to ask my RE for a saline ultrasound.  Supposedly they can tell the difference between a bicornuate and septate uterus by doing this simple, in-office procedure that is similar to an HSG, but a lot less painful.  Plus it was only going to be about $150 OOP for us versus who knows what amount for the surgery!

I go in for the ultrasound and within like 10 seconds, my RE says “Well it looks good, you don’t have either one!”  What??  Are you kidding me??  I just stressed and bawled my eyes out for a month and almost had surgery for nothing??  But of course I am ecstatic to get this great news!  Now I am just back to dealing with PCOS.  RE gives me a prescription right then and there for Clomid (perfect timing in my cycle) and I am on my way to my first medicated cycle and I’m filled with hope and excitement!

Then the next day happened.  The most dreaded call of all.  Hubby’s semen analysis results are in.  Low everything.  We, ourselves, hit an all time low.  This happened at the beginning of the weekend and we barely spoke to each other all weekend.  We just didn’t know what to do with all of this bad news, all of the ups and downs.  It was exhausting. 

I will say one thing though, the timing of these results could not have been any better because just two days before (when I thought we were still dealing with the uterus issue), my thoughts were if anything else was wrong with us, that was it, I wasn’t going to do anything more.  I would have accepted that having a baby was not in the cards for us.  No more testing, no extreme measures to get pregnant, etc.  If I couldn’t ovulate and my husband didn’t have the proper sperm to get me pregnant and I didn’t have the ability to properly carry a baby, or most likely lose the baby once pregnant, this just had to mean something!  It was just not meant to be.  So I am thankful I was cleared of my possible uterine issue the day before as I would have thrown in the towel right then and there once we got the semen analysis results.

Eventually we do an IUI (artificial insemination), change RE’s, have hubby see a urologist, gave a shot at working on his swimmers via vitamins and antibiotics (per the uro), then try two more IUIs.  All of this resulted in negative pregnancy tests, slightly better swimmers (but not good enough), more tears and frustration, and an onslaught of medical bills.

After three failed IUIs and the fact that we are dealing with male infertility, we knew it was time to move on to IVF.  We just didn’t want to waste the time and money anymore.  It was time to pull out the big guns…and the checkbook (again)! 

IVF is a lot of money but we truly believe it is worth it and are willing to do whatever we can to make our dream come true.  We are so thankful for the OOP Med program for helping us make this dream a reality.  It is a wonderful program and stems from such an exceptional online community of women.  I honestly don’t know what I would do without this support during our struggle.  I look forward to “paying it forward” and donating any leftover meds I might have in order to help out other women in need. 

Thank you for reading my story and may all of your stories have a happy ending!

Determined program participant’s wish!

 

I’m Karen, but you may know me as “sheetskr”. I’m relatively new to the TTTC board, though no newbie to TTTC. It has been four years now since my husband and I cheerfully traded birth control for wedding vows. Our story is not unusual for those of us with infertility. In our efforts to start a family, we predictably progressed from “not not trying” to “trying” to “WTH?” to more profanity of an inquisitive nature. Along the way, we sought medical answers and continued to hear all was normal until we finally found an OB who believed my assertion that my menstrual pain was excessive.

My first surgery revealed stage III endometriosis, with endometriomas on both ovaries. The pictures looked messy, like someone took a spray bottle of blood to all my major pelvic organs, including my uterus, colon and bladder. I worked with the same OB for a year, with cycles of both Femara and Clomid pre- and post-laparascopy with no success.  All the while, I continued to experience a pain on my left side, a constant reminder something was awry.

We then switched to a RE who tested my AMH and found my ovarian reserve in the “undetectable” range at <.16. I have yet to meet anyone else with such an ominous AMH level, a measure of egg quantity and quality. The doctor felt my eggs were compromised from years of suffering from an undiagnosed and progressing disease. Refusing to give up hope, our RE wanted to see how well I stimulated on injectables. My first IUI produced but a single follicle, and the ultrasound revealed what appeared to be a refilled endometrioma on my left ovary.

Instantly, the pain of it all hit me. I sobbed on the exam table. I cried like the baby I so desperately wanted, yelling at the doctor she couldn’t possibly understand about infertility. To my surprise and embarrassment, she shouted right back she had the same diagnosis and two egg donor children of her own. Upon collecting myself, we decided on more surgery to first address the endometrioma.

I write this from my recovery bed. I can tell you I have no active endometriosis, but a pelvis full of scarring adhesions, my body’s way of healing from the first surgery. My left ovary was stuck to my abdomen and my left tube and bladder to my uterus. It is Christmastime, and instead of sugar plums my visions are of sweet little follicles plummeting to their death. But that’s all in the past now. With my lady parts back in order, I am ready to try again.

The plan is to try one more round of IUI starting next cycle to determine my dosage and eligibility for IVF. My next assisted cycle will be IVF, with my own eggs or a donor’s, depending on the outcome of this stimulated cycle. I do not have the audacity to ask another woman on this earth to be my egg donor, so I’ll be leaving that part up to the agency. I can ask for help with medications for IVF, as we are out of pocket for fertility treatments. Thank you for all the remarkable people who continually support each other through this tiresome journey, whether emotionally or financially. Every day I am humbled and filled with gratitude by the support of those in my daily life and online who can only be called friends.

Hopeful program recipient, awaiting their forever baby!

 cherylanne3550 and her husband are still waiting...

After 2 years of battling infertility, 12 failed IUIs (our insurance covers unlimited IUIs but nothing IVF related), a failed fresh IVF (15 eggs retrieved/12 mature/9 fertilized - 3 day transfer of two 8 celled embies) and failed FET (used 3 embies leftover from the first fresh cycle - one 5 celled - two six celled) our 2nd fresh IVF (only 5 eggs retrieved/4 mature/2 fertilized and transferred on day 2) brought us our first very BFP on 11/20 but it was short lived....on that day my beta was 49.6 - on 11/23 it only went up to 66 - on 11/26 dropped to 9 and I had cramping and heavy bleeding/clotting (sorry TMI!) and on 11/28 dropped to 2.7 - a confirmed CP :( 

Very frustrating as I am a healthy 32 year old with no issues (all of my tests/HSG/hysteroscopies/bloodwork/urine and ultrasounds have showed everything is completely normal - my egg quality is good also - I asked the doc if they recommend we have PGD done they said no), my hubby is 41 - we have both had every test under the sun and the only issue we have is severe MFI (low sperm count caused by an increased FSH). 

We are so determined to have a baby and know medically it can happen, the financial aspect is becoming a huge burden because at this point we thought we would be successfully pregnant....we are extremely appreciative of anything you can do to help us at this point!

A program participant story and wish

"Waiting for our baby ‘gull"

Being in a same-sex relationship, my wife and I always knew that we would need the help of a third-party to achieve our goal of having a child together.  So, like all the other challenges we’ve tackled in the over a decade of being a couple, we embarked upon this quest with a plan and a positive attitude. I have always wanted to be pregnant and decided to carry our child - using my eggs and an anonymous sperm donor. In the spring of 2011, we embarked on the lesbian equivalent of “throwing out the birth control pills” – we went in for our first IUI. 

I was excited, nervous and hopeful. I thought my BFP would show up after a few tries – I felt like we were already ahead of the game starting with IUIs and I kept hearing stories about other same-sex couples who were doing at-home inseminations and got pg or got pg after their first IUI at the doctor’s office. We were going to be one of those stories, I thought smugly.

Unfortunately, we turned out to be another type of story.  Trying to keep costs down (we were paying completely Out of Pocket, which we still are), we opted for no monitoring (i.e. ultrasounds) or medication – rather I went the OPK/temping/fingers-crossing route. For six months of IUIs.  By the end of those six months our bank account was shockingly low despite our cost-saving techniques, we were both frazzled and the only thing we had to show for it was a long line of BFNs.

We decided to stack the deck a little more in our favor and did two rounds of Clomid with monitoring as well as back-to-back IUIs per cycle. I also started going on progesterone suppositories post-IUI for (a mostly self-diagnosed) short(er) Luteal Phase issue. Even though I responded well to Clomid, we were still getting BFNs as 2011 slipped into 2012.

Finally, I read the writing on the wall and went in for a round of infertility testing – the one thing that was (albeit only 50%) covered by our insurance. Everything turned out “normal” – except my AMH was .67. I had just turned 31 years old three days before the test results and was thus was diagnosed with Diminished Ovarian Reserve. Our RE recommended IVF as soon as possible, as she couldn’t predict if my levels would stay the same or continue to spiral downward.

At first, I was shocked and confused. How could I have DOR? I am healthy! I ran half-marathons! I did yoga! I don’t smoke or drink excessively or eat fast food! But, like everyone in the IF world knows, it doesn’t matter – IF is random and strikes people of all ages and walks of life. I just happened to draw the short straw.

(Oh, also, as if IF wasn’t enough to deal with - around the time of my diagnosis my wife got a new job that requires her to be 3,000 miles for 6 months of training. And a close family member passed away about 6 months into our TTC process so the impact of that loss was still coloring many things in our lives.)

Despite all of this, our desire to have a baby was still within us – in fact, it was growing stronger every day. We decided to press forward. I started going to acupuncture and taking supplements and vitamins and we made plans for a Aug/Sept IVF. And, slowly, I began to wrap my head around that I was going to be one of “those people” who had to undergo IVF. That our “plan” on how we envisioned creating our family was going to shift. That we would have to dig deeper and make even more sacrifices for our dream.

And I found out that was ok.

So here I am, starting my stims on August 18, 2012. My wife still has three months of her training left so I have rallied my baby-making troops (close friends and my mom) to be her stand-in during this time. I am excited, nervous and hopeful. But I am no longer smug. As hard as IF has been, and continues to be, it has given me a greater appreciation of life, parenthood and children; a deeper connection in my relationship, with myself and my friends and family; and has been a humbling experience.  Some days I am able to find peace in this journey; other days I wail at the sky in anger and frustration; and some days it just sucks.  I’m sure everyone else going through IF can relate.

We are completely out of pocket for this IVF and my credit card bill is already starting to scare me. My protocol and meds needs are below – if anybody out there has meds they would like to donate to me, I would truly appreciate it.

Thank you and best of luck wherever you are on your fertility journey.
Bump Name:     Seagull