Paying the toll – Baby Fabio

Today was our egg retrieval day. That’s one of the two big days in the IVF process. I could write all about the process, but you could simply Google IVF and find a zillion explanations of what this entails (two months of meds leading into two big days at the clinic). We’ve been a little quiet lately, primarily because we’re just heads down focused on making this happen, balancing work and life and endless doctors visits and injections.

Selfie! — This is what I look like after waking up at 5am for egg retrieval

Here’s the quick update: we’ve got 6 eggs. At this point that’s all we know. We can’t tell how many are viable, and we won’t know until tomorrow just how many are fertilized. And we won’t know whether it’s going to be a day 3 or day 5 transfer until Saturday.

6 eggs isn’t what anyone really hopes for. Mathematically, that number doesn’t work in our favor. According to some research, that puts our success rate at 38%.

Still I’m hopeful. Optimism has gotten me through so many things in life. I’m not even an optimist by nature, I’ve just trained myself to think positively (most of the time). The pessimist would say we have a 62% chance it won’t work. But I’m gonna say this glass is half full.

But the hard truth of it is that the dice are just gonna fall where they fall. It’s all a crapshoot. I’m not gonna lie, this shit takes a toll.

The physical toll: As with most things in life, men have it easy when it comes to IVF. Seriously, I mean how could you not get turned on by this sexy room? I forgot my Marvin Gaye cassette tapes, though.

If you're wondering, yes there's porn in the room. I opted not to touch it. — If you’re wondering, yes there’s porn in the room. I opted not to touch it.

Courtney hasn’t had it quite so easy. The physical toll for her is incontrovertible. For the last two months she’s taken needles like a champ, downed more pills than I can count, drawn blood, been prodded with an ultrasound wand numerous times. Today she went in for egg retrieval, a short procedure, but invasive, painful, and uncomfortable. Her resilience and resolve is astounding, and I am so proud of her. She’s one tough cookie, and I am so fortunate to have her as my wife.

Here are all the meds needed for one cycle of egg retrieval and transfer.

The emotional toll: we’ve been trying to have children for going on three years now. The first year was full of hope, followed by a slow decline into despair. The gradual realization that this might not be working is so difficult to explain, and so devastatingly debilitating. Hope dies an agonizing death at the hands of ignorance – unsure of what the cause is, unsure of what can be done, unsure of the path forward, or if there even is a path forward.

Courtney peed on a lot of sticks. All of them said no.

Year two was filled with picking up the pieces, making sure we had the information. We diagnosed the primary cause of our infertility (we hope), and fixed it through a bilateral salpingectomy (not pleasant, irreversible). We visited adoption centers, fertility clinics, and made sure that we had all our ducks in a row, that we understood all our options.

Somewhere around June of 2015, just after Courtney’s surger and before we were about to begin IVF for the first time, we were hit with a particularly difficult blow, when our landlord at the time decided to hike our rent by more than 30%. Forced to move, we had to put our plans on hold while we sorted out our living situation, our financial situation, and get back on our feet. Now this wasn’t all bad – we bought a beautiful house, consolidated our debts, and I got a new job – but it wasn’t an easy year, and given our age the clock is definitely ticking (fertility falls off sharply starting at age 35).

Which leads me to the financial toll: I’ll just be blunt about it, and tell you that this month we’ve spent $13,526.90 on our fertility treatment. $4,476.90 of this was for drugs, the rest covers the clinic fee which is mercifully set at a flat rate of $9,050.

In the United States (‘Merica!) fertility treatments are not mandated to be covered by insurance (ugh). Some states include it, but not Tennessee. Our insurance doesn’t include any fertility coverage. So we’re paying out of pocket. And I didn’t even mention the lab testing, doctors visits, and all kinds of other shit we’ve paid for that I currently don’t have the brainpower to tally up.

Needless to say, we didn’t have a spare $13,526.90 laying around. So we’ve called upon the slavedriver known as debt once more. We got turned down by one company, another offered us less than what we needed, but the amazing folks at SoFi have given us all we need and more at an extraordinarily reasonable rate. I can’t highly recommend them enough. If you need a personal loan or a student loan refinance, please give them a try (those affiliate links will help us pay off our loan too!).

All this to say that I’m exhausted. We’re exhausted. Midway through writing this post, I took a break to drive a 2 inch needle into Courtney’s left hip, full of progesterone and sesame oil. As Courtney is very fond of saying, “Why can’t I just make a stir fry?!”

And yet, think about it: our child may have been conceived today. That’s a crazy thought. And while 6 eggs retrieved may yield anywhere from 0-6 viable embryos, the thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that it only takes one.