More from our RE regarding IVF
Following up to my two most recent blog posts, I wrote Dr. Ahlering on Saturday with three questions (yes, he does answer his own e-mails... not always as thorough as I'd like to receive, but they are coming from him, so I'll take what I can get for now).
My questions were:
1) Knowing that we had testing done in Dec '08, do you feel it would be detrimental to our IVF success for us to wait until next January to begin IVF?
This was left unanswered. My feeling is that, no it probably wouldn't impact us that much, given our ages and health issues. However, there is always the small *chance* that something could happen to my only ovary. This past week I have been having soreness near where my ovary is located (like soreness when I push on my stomach from the outside). Who knows what is going on... maybe I'm actually going to ovulate on this 90 day (and counting) cycle I've been on since the beginning of January. Anyway, taht type of thing always gets my nerves jumping thinking "what if" some gianormus cyst is forming on my ovary and will forever kill my only chances at conceiving. I try to block this out of my mind and pray for the best.
2) Without us knowing how my one ovary will respond to fertility drugs, what is your professional opinion as to if should purchase the 2 cycle or 3 cycle package?
To which he answered "I think the 2 cycle plan is best for your situations."
3) I also asked him about the CGH plan I mentioned in my last blog post. My question, specifically, was: Can you tell me, would this be something you would think our situation (one ovary, PCOS and male factor) could greatly benefit from?
His answer: "CGH is something to consider for anyone that has RPL (Recurrent Pregnancy Loss), or IVF failures and decent ovarian response. Or, if someone is looking at fertility preservation/egg freezing. The thing that people do not like sometimes is that one has to freeze the embryos for later transfer."
It's worth mentioning that RPL or IVF failures doesn't apply to us (not at this time, and hopefully never) and we don't yet know how my ovaries will respond, since I've never undergone a cycle with injectables. I'm not sure how the mandatory freezing of embryos would affect our situation. I know they have improved the freezing/thawing techniques so that fewer are lost in process, but if we don't respond very well and get a lot of embryos, it may hurt if we loose even one. I suppose something to think about is that they stated if you don't produce at least 5 ovarian follicles, you could opt out of the CGH plan and covert your cycle to a fee-for-fee service, which is basically like going with one of the plans we'd already been considering. I'm assuming that if you had to convert, you would be converting at the single cycle cost (not the "buy in bulk costs" of the 2 or 3 cycle plan), which would mean it would cost more if you had to do another fresh IVF cycle.
I'm still digesting all of this. I can't help but rethink things a little, knowing Dr. Ahlering is thinking about our health situations and recommending the 2 cycle to us, vs. the 3. I would think that he feels pretty positively about us getting pregnant in 2 cycles or less, otherwise he wouldn't have said it.
Not wanting to be pushy, I brought it up again with my husband via IM today at work. As you can imagine, IM isn't the best way to talk about these things, but sometimes it just has to be that way. Our conversation starts by him commenting on something else entirely, that happened to mention us in relation to IVF... (sorry sweetie, but I'm putting our convo in my blog!)
[14:25] cathy@thinktpi.com: "as we prepare to start IVF in January"
[14:25] cathy@thinktpi.com: that means that Dr. Ahlering's comment from yesterday didn't change anything, did it?
[14:26] Jay: I thought we were waiting on pricing information
[14:26] Jay: I'm all for starting sooner if it's cheaper for the risk
[14:27] cathy@thinktpi.com: well, yeah, i mean there were two things. 1) this whole CGH thing... we are waiting on pricing for that package 2) but then there's the thing where he said "with your situations, i would recommend the 2 cycle", which is seperate from the CGH.
[14:28] cathy@thinktpi.com: i mean that's his opinion and we just have to consider how much we want to factor it into how we feel
[14:28] Jay: sure, but we'd already gone over how two cycles this year leaves us in a bad spot financially if we do somehow end up with multiples.
[14:29] Jay: we can do a two-fer in january to save even more money, but that's about all that his comment really changed.
[14:31] cathy@thinktpi.com: oh... see it thought it may have changed the timing. especially if he's recommending 2, and that, or less than that really does work. (which i would assume he's betting it would, otherwise he wouldn't recommend it, but who knows). anyways, i just wanted to see how you felt about it. i still feel that if we did 2 this year, we'd have to agree to wait until some time next year to do another 2... and we haven't really even played out that scenerio financially, so who knows. i just wanted to make sure we thought about it enough, since he did give us his opinion, that's all.
[14:32] Jay: His comment basically makes me feel good that, were we to do it this year, we'd probably be successful.
[14:32] Jay: The other stuff I mentioned is really unchanged by his comment.
[14:38] cathy@thinktpi.com: i just hope you can see where i'm coming from... the idea that he believes we could be successful with less tries, just makes me wish all the more that it was happening sooner than later. i just wonder what it would look like if we got pg on the first cycle and had twins... i mean, less money towards IVF, so more money left over if i had to go on bedrest... i suppose it seems that it could even out somewhat, but i don't think we've done the numbers for that. sorry to open the can again... just want to really make sure we've thought this through.
[14:39] Jay: Doing a two-fer this year becomes viable if... a) The cost goes down substantially, b) the probability of multiples drops substantially, c) we find a way to make substantially more money.
[14:40] Jay: If CGH comes back as a reasonable option, I can see us strongly considering this year since we'd have a dramatically lower chance of multiples.
[14:41] cathy@thinktpi.com: k
[14:41] Jay: *kisses*
[14:41] cathy@thinktpi.com: :(
[14:41] Jay: Kisses are good things...
[14:56] cathy@thinktpi.com: fwiw, CGH doesn't really have an impact on multiples for us, since the most we'd ever put in are 2 (at least right now anyway, because of my age and no failed IVF history). Where it cuts down on multiples is when women have a hard time getting pg so their Dr puts in a handful, just hoping one takes. the only way it could impact us is if we did CGH and had one embryo that was "perfect" so we only decided to transfer that one. doing so, though, in and of itself lowers our chances because you're lowering the odds, so to speak.
[14:56] cathy@thinktpi.com: so yeah, i think i just shot myself in the foot
[14:56] cathy@thinktpi.com: whatever
Based on that, unless I sit down and run the numbers again and want to rehash this all, it's probably still that we're waiting until January, because we know the cost for IVF most likely won't go down and there really isn't a way for us to make more money, given our economy right now. Unless of course I win the lottery! (that I don't play, but hey, you never know!) And I don't see how this CGH thing will be cheaper, but we'll see. I'm still waiting on financial numbers for CGH cost from SHER.
Sorry for the long winded post, only to find out we're back at square one, but it helps me to write it all down, for sanity sake.
My questions were:
1) Knowing that we had testing done in Dec '08, do you feel it would be detrimental to our IVF success for us to wait until next January to begin IVF?
This was left unanswered. My feeling is that, no it probably wouldn't impact us that much, given our ages and health issues. However, there is always the small *chance* that something could happen to my only ovary. This past week I have been having soreness near where my ovary is located (like soreness when I push on my stomach from the outside). Who knows what is going on... maybe I'm actually going to ovulate on this 90 day (and counting) cycle I've been on since the beginning of January. Anyway, taht type of thing always gets my nerves jumping thinking "what if" some gianormus cyst is forming on my ovary and will forever kill my only chances at conceiving. I try to block this out of my mind and pray for the best.
2) Without us knowing how my one ovary will respond to fertility drugs, what is your professional opinion as to if should purchase the 2 cycle or 3 cycle package?
To which he answered "I think the 2 cycle plan is best for your situations."
3) I also asked him about the CGH plan I mentioned in my last blog post. My question, specifically, was: Can you tell me, would this be something you would think our situation (one ovary, PCOS and male factor) could greatly benefit from?
His answer: "CGH is something to consider for anyone that has RPL (Recurrent Pregnancy Loss), or IVF failures and decent ovarian response. Or, if someone is looking at fertility preservation/egg freezing. The thing that people do not like sometimes is that one has to freeze the embryos for later transfer."
It's worth mentioning that RPL or IVF failures doesn't apply to us (not at this time, and hopefully never) and we don't yet know how my ovaries will respond, since I've never undergone a cycle with injectables. I'm not sure how the mandatory freezing of embryos would affect our situation. I know they have improved the freezing/thawing techniques so that fewer are lost in process, but if we don't respond very well and get a lot of embryos, it may hurt if we loose even one. I suppose something to think about is that they stated if you don't produce at least 5 ovarian follicles, you could opt out of the CGH plan and covert your cycle to a fee-for-fee service, which is basically like going with one of the plans we'd already been considering. I'm assuming that if you had to convert, you would be converting at the single cycle cost (not the "buy in bulk costs" of the 2 or 3 cycle plan), which would mean it would cost more if you had to do another fresh IVF cycle.
I'm still digesting all of this. I can't help but rethink things a little, knowing Dr. Ahlering is thinking about our health situations and recommending the 2 cycle to us, vs. the 3. I would think that he feels pretty positively about us getting pregnant in 2 cycles or less, otherwise he wouldn't have said it.
Not wanting to be pushy, I brought it up again with my husband via IM today at work. As you can imagine, IM isn't the best way to talk about these things, but sometimes it just has to be that way. Our conversation starts by him commenting on something else entirely, that happened to mention us in relation to IVF... (sorry sweetie, but I'm putting our convo in my blog!)
[14:25] cathy@thinktpi.com: "as we prepare to start IVF in January"
[14:25] cathy@thinktpi.com: that means that Dr. Ahlering's comment from yesterday didn't change anything, did it?
[14:26] Jay: I thought we were waiting on pricing information
[14:26] Jay: I'm all for starting sooner if it's cheaper for the risk
[14:27] cathy@thinktpi.com: well, yeah, i mean there were two things. 1) this whole CGH thing... we are waiting on pricing for that package 2) but then there's the thing where he said "with your situations, i would recommend the 2 cycle", which is seperate from the CGH.
[14:28] cathy@thinktpi.com: i mean that's his opinion and we just have to consider how much we want to factor it into how we feel
[14:28] Jay: sure, but we'd already gone over how two cycles this year leaves us in a bad spot financially if we do somehow end up with multiples.
[14:29] Jay: we can do a two-fer in january to save even more money, but that's about all that his comment really changed.
[14:31] cathy@thinktpi.com: oh... see it thought it may have changed the timing. especially if he's recommending 2, and that, or less than that really does work. (which i would assume he's betting it would, otherwise he wouldn't recommend it, but who knows). anyways, i just wanted to see how you felt about it. i still feel that if we did 2 this year, we'd have to agree to wait until some time next year to do another 2... and we haven't really even played out that scenerio financially, so who knows. i just wanted to make sure we thought about it enough, since he did give us his opinion, that's all.
[14:32] Jay: His comment basically makes me feel good that, were we to do it this year, we'd probably be successful.
[14:32] Jay: The other stuff I mentioned is really unchanged by his comment.
[14:38] cathy@thinktpi.com: i just hope you can see where i'm coming from... the idea that he believes we could be successful with less tries, just makes me wish all the more that it was happening sooner than later. i just wonder what it would look like if we got pg on the first cycle and had twins... i mean, less money towards IVF, so more money left over if i had to go on bedrest... i suppose it seems that it could even out somewhat, but i don't think we've done the numbers for that. sorry to open the can again... just want to really make sure we've thought this through.
[14:39] Jay: Doing a two-fer this year becomes viable if... a) The cost goes down substantially, b) the probability of multiples drops substantially, c) we find a way to make substantially more money.
[14:40] Jay: If CGH comes back as a reasonable option, I can see us strongly considering this year since we'd have a dramatically lower chance of multiples.
[14:41] cathy@thinktpi.com: k
[14:41] Jay: *kisses*
[14:41] cathy@thinktpi.com: :(
[14:41] Jay: Kisses are good things...
[14:56] cathy@thinktpi.com: fwiw, CGH doesn't really have an impact on multiples for us, since the most we'd ever put in are 2 (at least right now anyway, because of my age and no failed IVF history). Where it cuts down on multiples is when women have a hard time getting pg so their Dr puts in a handful, just hoping one takes. the only way it could impact us is if we did CGH and had one embryo that was "perfect" so we only decided to transfer that one. doing so, though, in and of itself lowers our chances because you're lowering the odds, so to speak.
[14:56] cathy@thinktpi.com: so yeah, i think i just shot myself in the foot
[14:56] cathy@thinktpi.com: whatever
Based on that, unless I sit down and run the numbers again and want to rehash this all, it's probably still that we're waiting until January, because we know the cost for IVF most likely won't go down and there really isn't a way for us to make more money, given our economy right now. Unless of course I win the lottery! (that I don't play, but hey, you never know!) And I don't see how this CGH thing will be cheaper, but we'll see. I'm still waiting on financial numbers for CGH cost from SHER.
Sorry for the long winded post, only to find out we're back at square one, but it helps me to write it all down, for sanity sake.
1 comments:
Hi Cathy, Your blog is sooo pretty!
Thanks for leaving me a comment in my blog. It feels good to know that you think it is useful - I sometimes start to think it is too much information, but writing it out let's me think through the many, many things I learn about IF.
Anyway, just like you we do have to pay for our own IF treatments. We can only afford to pay for 1 cycle (despite the numbers suggesting that we need probably 4-6 cycles). We rest on God's will on this and beyond that.
BTW, if I remember correctly SIRM does biopsy for CGH on Day 3 when there are only about 8 cells. So they will get 1 cell only. Other clinics biopsy on Day 5 when the Trophectoderm is clearly delineated from the Inner Cell Mass (which will form the baby). There are about 120-150 cells then and they will biopsy more than 1 cell from the Trophectoderm. This method ensures that the ICM is not disturbed and provides more cell to confirm results and rule out mosaicism. Something to think about...
Arpee @ The Saga of Becoming Fruitful
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