Today my sister restarted on birth control on cycle day 3 of her menstruation. Based on all her previous menstrual cycles she should have been on cycle day 1 on Sunday but didn't start until Tuesday this month. Apparently Aunt Flo's flight had a long layover or her baggage got lost at the airport and she had to wait for security to find it before she could stop in for a visit. What matters though is she made it, and her flight delay only delayed when my sister would start her birth control and did not delay anything else during our cycle. Everything else remains unchanged! Which means our retrieval is still on track for November 19th, our transfer is still on track for November 24th, and our pregnancy test day is still on track for December 3rd.
Everything is really coming together and falling into place. I have all the medication in my possession that I will need throughout our cycle-Lupron, Estrace, Medrol, Doxycycline, Prednisone, Lovenox, and Progesterone in Oil. Its all sitting in my bathroom cabinet waiting to be used. The pharmacy is working with my insurance company to get the Intralipid Infusions covered. I spoke to them today and they told me United Healthcare normally does cover the infusions...which is a total shock to me! I honestly thought we would be paying $500 every 2 weeks to get the infusions done. Hopefully I'm not getting my hopes up about this, because historically UHC has pretty crappy coverage for speciality meds-I have to pay $100 for a 20 day supply for my Cystadane which is used to treat my Homocystinuria and prevents me from getting blood clots from homocysteine build up in my blood and is a medication I will be on for life. I will be ecstatic if they cover the majority of these infusions and I am sure my husband will be too! The pharmacy is supposed to be checking with Dr. Braverman's office to find out the exact week he wants me to have my first infusion. We think it will be the last week in October but we will wait and see.
We've had some other positive things with billing as well, but also some frustrating issues too. We paid $3,000 back in May to Dr. Braverman for our immunological testing and coordination with our fertility specialist in Ohio. We recently found out that UHC covered $1800 of the $3000 charge so we will be getting the $1800 back very soon! This will be added right to our Egg Donor cycle fund since we owe our clinic $17,000 by November 12th. The other good news is that IF we end up pregnant, we will have to pay another $3000 to Dr. Braverman's office for continued immunological treatment but we know that UHC will at least reimburse us $1800 of that again. So instead of paying Dr. Braverman a total of $6000 to test and treat us, we will end up paying $2400 in the end...such a huge difference! The problems we are having with billing right now is with our center here in Ohio. What is it about fertility centers and trying to sneak one past you to make some extra money off of you? Maybe I'm a little paranoid-I don't know. But we had billing issues with our first fertility center too where they tried charging us an additional $1000 in the end. We fought them about that and we won our case with them. With our current center, it is super annoying that they roll all the donor's screening, medication, and procedures into one price. This prevents us from exploring different pharmacies to see where we can get my sister's medication the cheapest. They even include birth control and prenatals into their medication cost and when my sister received her package with these medications, the invoice was almost $300! Her own insurance would have covered the birth control because she's been on birth control for years, and we can get over the counter prenatals for 10 bucks. But no-this charge is rolled into the donor's medication and there was no way around it which is super annoying-actually, it pisses me off. So we have that issue. But we also have an issues where my sister's psychological testing is supposed to be covered in this donor package and instead the psychologist billed us for it separately, a charge of $350. She said the fertility center told her it was not included in our donor package so I emailed the center and they responded that yes it is included. So now I have everyone involved attached to the same email because someone owes us back the $350! My last frustration with this donor package is that I know damn well that my sister's insurance would pay for her hormone testing, STD testing, HIV and Hepatitis and Cystic Fibrosis screening, and most likely her day 3 follicle count that was all apart of her screening. I am fighting the center right now about at least submitting it through her insurance to see if they will cover anything. Her insurance covered her chromosome testing and we paid for the bill she did get which went towards her deductible, but that test was ordered by my genetic doctor and not the center. The center says they can't bill her insurance. I say that's bullshit. Like I told them-their job should be to save the patient as much money as possible, and if they can get paid through an insurance company what is the difference? They get paid, the patient is happy because the patient saved money. This sounds logical right?!
Okay, enough ranting. These are the woes of fertility treatments. It's expensive. On the bright side-34 DAYS UNTIL EGG RETRIEVAL DAY!!!!!!!!!!
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