Infertility Treatment Community

Sound like a tough situation. Have you looked into participating in a study http://clinicaltrials.gov/ search infertility. Don't give up. Please. Welcome back.

Cassy

Hi KittyKatJenn,

I think I remember you from when I was on these boards a couple of years ago. Don't lose hope. If you want to move on with your life, and feel like it's time to put aside the quest for a baby, that's one thing. But you might have options. Your insurance may get another doctor in the area now that their existing one passed away. Have you contacted the insurance company to find out? And if a doctor is covered 2 hours away, maybe a 2 hour drive is worth it for insurance coverage. If you can do a fresh IVF cycle with insurance coverage, you might be able to pay for any subsequent frozen cycles out of pocket since those are less expensive. I don't have many ideas, but if you are determined to continue, I'm sure you can find some. And if not, that makes sense too. I wish you all the best either way.

Best Wishes,
Rose

Thanks for the reply. My situation is just bad. Apparantly the doctor I was seeing had a lot more he could have done but for some reason didn't. I have basically been waiting for him to move me onto IVF for about 5 years now and he never did. So, I haven't even begun that aspect. I have been on the edge and then bam. The doc I went to after mine passed said he didn't want to give me false hope and he said IVF was my best bet. Took 10 minutes for him to tell me that. There is a doctor that is about a 2 hour drive. Problem is that no other doctors that specialize in infertility are covered by my insurance. I would have to come up with a lot of money to even go for a consult. I just wish my doc would have told me that it was my only option 5 years ago. I could have been saving and figuring out a way to pay for it all. At this point another 5 years would be pointless. I'm not sure what I am going to do. I think I am just resigning myself to not having children. I mean, people live happy lives without having children. I guess I am going to have to be one of those people.

Maybe this was a blessing in disguise... Especially if your doctor was not doing everything for you that he could (IVF wise or some other treatment plan). From what I know, it's rare for something to happen to a medical doctor, and another doctor to not take over or buy the practice. Possibly there is chance this could happen, and the new doctor would be covered with your insurance?

I agree with some of the other replies, definitely call and talk to your insurance company to ensure you've covered all your options.

Don't give up hope if you're not ready to, maybe giving your body, mind and emotions a little break to step back and reacces the situation and your future journey.

Sending prayers and thoughts your way.

I'm sorry that you are between a rock and a hard place with fertility right now. While our situations are not the same, there are some similarities. The closest RE to do IVF was 2.5 hrs one way and the closest RE with good success rates was 3 hrs one way. Our insurance does not cover IVF and we are a one income family with DH in a clinical doctorate program. Some things that helped up that may be things for you to look into are:

-getting an AMH (local ob-gyn can order it) to give you a better picture of what your egg reserve and timeline truly are (mine was horrible!),

-while my insurance didn't cover infertility treatment, it did cover treatment for conditions such as cysts/endo/PCOS/etc. So u/s and office visits got billed under my annual exam (paid for by insurance) and monitoring for cysts and uterine lining overgrowth. some of the labs were covered that way too.

-some of the labs could be done locally and my RE office coordinated the other labs with appts to save a ton of driving.

-there were discounts and rebates for the fertility meds because insurance didn't cover them. this saved us aboutt $1200

-we used our tax return to help out, a healthcare spending account offered as a benefit at work for pretax dollars, and a discount at the RE for paying in full

-one of my grandmas knew how much we were struggling and generously gave us some $ to help fund it no strings attached

-You may ask the family you are comfortable with doing so to give $ instead of gifts for the holidays this year and put it aside for IVF

-other crazy things we did to cut costs at home to pay for IVF were: I cut DH hair ($480/year), no cable ($1440/year), no smart phones ($876/year), packed lunches for school/work with leftovers ($4000/year), cut back eating out by 1x/month ($600/year), and paid off his car ($3096/year). All of those cut backs equal $10,500 over the course of one year which was enough to put a huge dent in the cost of IVF.

While some of these strategies may not work for you, and some of them were no fun for us, it helped us do what we thought was impossible in affording IVF with 1 income, no insurance coverage for fertility treatments, and having to drive to another state for an RE.

Good luck finding a solution that works for you and your husband.

Hi KittyKatJen, I'm so sorry to hear about your doctor not treating you adequately. It's amazing the number of incompetent doctors out there

However, I agree with the girls!!! Do not give up yet, not until you know you've tried all you could. The girls all had wonderful suggestions, and a combination of those could be a solution to get you to IVF.

I also would consider putting in a grievance letter with your insurance company. It seems like you may have grounds to pursue legal action against the doctor who misdiagnosed you. 5 years is a looooong time for a doctor to have treated you for infertility without moving you on to IVF. Unless of course all your other health issues you mentioned were still pending until recently....? Also, I've found that with infertility, you sometimes need to ask for what you want. Some doctors just think that "you have plenty of time" (based on NOTHING cause I was told that but never did any doctor suggest I get an AMH test despite my age, and that I didnt know existed until Kris suggested to you!), or they think you need to try to beat the odds longer, etc.

But if your old doctor (the one you went back to now) told you so clearly that IVF is your only chance, he may know something. Which is why he referred you out 5 years ago.... And therefore this may be a good grievance case against your insurance company, and sometimes a simple letter to them showing them their doctor messed up might be enough of an incentive for them to quickly want to find you another IVF doctor.... Or allow for you to go see one out of network and cover the expense as they would have with the old one.



Finally - if all else fails... Do remember that it's not because you can't have biological children that your life needs to be childless. I volunteer with a few organizations and can assure you there are many little ones out there in need of a loving home. And these organizations will help you through the adoption program. So you can also consider adoption, I hear beautiful love stories about adoption all the time