Road Trip!

Each year K and I try to go on a vacation. Now, this vacation might just be a few days, but it's still away to get away from work (in K's case) or the house in general. This year we had been pretty set on just driving a couple hours to get to Cincinnati and exploring the city. However! K's co-worker had recently taken a trip to Nashville, TN and bragged it up big time. K was in awe of the cool sounding bars and general country atmosphere. So we threw the plans for Cinci in the trash and decided to venture to Nashville instead.

A few days before we left, we changed our plans a little bit more and decided that, while the city would be our main goal, we also wanted to do some general exploring. On the way down we stopped at a rest stop outside of Louisville, KY and found some super cool looking brochures for places in KY. One of which was the Jim Beam distillery. We plugged its address in the GPS and guess what? It was about 5 mins away from our rest stop! How cool was that? So we went there and also a really cool cave, The Lost River cave. You could literally take a pontoon boat ride through this cave. And the neatest part? Back in the 20's the enterance to the cave was actually a night club. People had put in a bar, hung a large chandalier, and put in a concrete floor. They said now this place is not only used for tours, but also parties and weddings. Super awesome.

After arriving in Nashville, we decided to take a dinner cruise and then make our way to the Jack Daniels distillery in Linchburg, TN. I must say, that distillery's tour was free and awesome. Totally worth the drive. The dinner cruise was eh....a bit hokey but worth the experience. I must say however, we were shocked at the price of the drinks on board the boat. It was probably the most expensive beer Ken has ever had and for me, the most priciest bottle of water ever!

On our way home we stopped at Mammoth Cave for a 2 hr cave tour and then found the coolest little park. This park had a really big slide down a huge hill, a chair lift, bumper boats, horse rides, etc. Ken tried out the slide while I rode the chair lift. Pretty cool!

The Delightful Place (a.k.a. Walgreen's Pharmacy)

As wrote in my last post, my previous cycle was not successful. Obviously, this meant I needed to reorder my HCG. And this, my friends, was not something I was looking forward to! I had done a bit of research and discovered that it appeared that the Walgreen's pharmacy had my meds for significantly less than the other place did. But I learned my lesson folks: don't take anything for granted! Especially fertility drugs!
So I did what any sane person wanting to save money would do: called Walgreen's! And yes, they had my drugs for Less Than Half of what I paid for the last round. You can imagine the shock I felt when I heard this. Now, mind you, this is not with help from insurance. But heck, I would rather pay more than go through the trials and tribulations of using their "speciality pharmacy" and discovering in the end that they wouldn't have paid for it anyway.
I had my friendly nurse call in the script and soon Walgreen's called to set up my order. I got it two days later. Upon opening the package I discovered the following:

• The Dr. placed a refill on the script! Yay, no more calling the Dr. to get him to call in my order!
• Paperwork describing how to take the drug, why some people take it, and possible side effects (Note: This was not included in the last order and I fruitlessly looked up HCG online. And discovered that the majority of the online world is taking it for weight loss. Not helpful!)
• Small shots! TEN of them! And they're already assembled! Woot!

Just as my Dr. has earned the term Dr. Delightful, in my book, the Walgreen's Pharmacy has earned the term: The Delightful Place.

How do you open this?!?!

I will preface this post by informing you that I'm not pregnant this cycle. You'll need to know this so you won't think bad of me for what I'm going to tell you next!

Alright, so yesterday was a hard day because well, I found out that this cycle was indeed not the cycle we had been waiting for. However! One must look on the bright side and relish in all of the things that can't be done if one is pregnant. Such as drink caffeine and sip yummy wine. So, that's what I did today. I stopped by the good ole' MacDo and picked up a caramel frappe (I highly recommend...especially if you have sworn off caffeine for the past 4 weeks).

And that brings us to tonight. We've had a bottle of wine in the fridge that had been waiting for such an occasion. So, what better night to open it than tonight? Except the little peely strip meant to get the foil off the top would.not.come.off. I picked. I peeled. I picked some more. And then I said, heck with it! And went to get our Houdini bottle opener. I went through all the proper steps, but instead of hearing the reassuring "pop!" of the cork I hear.....nothing. Hmmm. That's odd. And then I try again. Nuthin'.

Upon further investigation I realize that oh no, there's not a cork. It's a SCREW ON CAP. Of course the bottle opener wouldn't work on a screw on cap! (As I tell this story to K his reaction was: "Oh honey, you've been away from the booze too long!")

One would presume that once I realized how my bottle of wine was capped I would be able to open said bottle, right? Ummmm....think again! I twisted. I turned. I tried to pick the foil cap off. I twisted some more. After about 5 minutes (no joke) I was finally able to get the cap off.

Jeesh, it was a lot of work for one glass of wine! But it was worth it.

"I'm sorry you're not feeling icky"

Two shots down and two to go my friends! I've officially reached the half-way point of this regimen. (Only, really I'm kinda like more than half-way because I get my third shot today.) I've learned a couple things in the past few days:

• Needle size: smaller is better. My delightful pharmacy messed up (now, is that really a surprise to anyone?) and gave me five 22 1/2 gage (BIG) and two 30 1/2 gage (small) needles. It's somewhat difficult and, perhaps, unsanitary to use the small needles for all four shots. So, we used one small needle for the first shot and the big needles for the second and third shot. And the last shot? Oh, well I plan on using the small needle for that. You know, so I have something to look forward to.

• I don't seem to have much body fat on the top of my thigh. That came as a true surprise to me...when I went to pinch the area I didn't have much to pinch. Upon further study I realized that my fat on my thigh resides on the inner most portion. Good to know.

• It's important to STAY AWAY from the phlebotomy student when getting bloodwork done. (oh, did you know Dr. Delightful wants to monitor my hormone levels? This constitutes more bloodwork.) You know, I had my doubts about the resident phlebotomy student when she didn't know how to work the copier. But I gave her the benefit of the doubt because she didn't go to school to learn how to use a copier. Oh, bad mistake my friend, bad mistake. We'll just say that after a lot of rooting around in my vein...the syringe was pulled out and put back in by a more experienced person. Phlebotomy students words to me: "I'm just really glad I found the vein!" (Ummm, yeah...but your job is to get blood OUT of said vein...)

• HCG, so far, hasn't given me any side effects. The literature I got about the drug said possible side effects were nausea and tender breasts. I've got nothing, nada. I told K I was kinda sad I didn't have any effects because I didn't know if the absence of said effects meant the drug wasn't working. His response? "I'm sorry you're not feeling icky." LOL, after he said that I realized just how silly I sounded!

One shot down...

Tonight was the night of my first HCG shot. Thought I ovulated on Friday and that would put today as the first shot day. However, there are two reason why I fear that I made a mistake....1st my temp went down just a touch this morning. It wasn't enought to really make me concerned because it was literally two tenths of a degree. Plus I was up in the night and took the temp later than normal. All reasons for it to be a bit skewed. 2nd: after we did the shot I had a small amount of eggwhite cervial fluid. That's after two totally dry days. Way to go body, way to go. I really, really hope things aren't all messed up...

The plus side of this whole experience is that administering the shot wasn't all that bad. I prepared everything and K was the one who stuck me. I was anticipating much, much worse.

Thoroughly Confused

You know what? I'm stumped. I'm confused. I'm perplexed. I'm baffled. I did get my meds today (thankfully); HOWEVER, they are the meds my insurance liaison told me would be covered by my insurance. But the pharmacy told me they won't be covered. Does this make sense to anyone else?
I should be happy, right? I mean I have the drugs. Hopefully they won't make any more potential babies get flushed with my next period. But you know what? I'm a bit angry. First of all...according to Dr. Delightful I pretty much need these meds in order to even carry a baby. Right? Otherwise (like last cycle) aren't I just having a really, really early miscarriage? When you look at it this way (and obviously I do) then isn't this just the first of many things I may need when I'm pregnant?
Second of all, the many, many hoops I jumped though since last Wednesday to get these drugs would be enough to keep Shamu happy for the rest of his life. I really thought that I must be going crazy when the pharm called me on Sat and told me they weren't covered. (Literally, I almost lost it at Menards. Poor K...he was going to buy a new blade for his saw when we got the call. He just bought the $500 worth of lumber instead. Nope not bitter ;) )
Here's what I thought had happened. When I first started this escapade Walmart told me I needed Novarel. So, logically, that's what I told the insurance liaison I needed. And that's what she told me was covered by insurance. Now, this was a bit confusing to me because my script read: HCG. So, when the pharmacy called Sat and told me that HCG was not covered under my insurance I thought Walmart must have got it all wrong. I even asked said pharmacy, "What I'm getting is HCG, right?" To which they replied "Yep."
Except............................I'm holding a box that reads NOVAREL in really big letters. Do you understand my confusion? So, off I went to make a call to my trusted insurance liaison. By the way, I think it's time I gave you her name: Lois. I really didn't think I would have to take the time to type it out here, but honestly? I think I've talked with her more in the past week than I have some of my friends. As I type, she's making some calls because guess what? She's confused too.

ETA: I got a call back from Lois and she informed me that the insurance thinks I'm getting the Novarel for infertility. Well, um...hum. You know what this made me aware of? That I don't think of myself as 'infertile' anymore. Just someone who needs a bit of help maintaining a pregnancy. I explained this to her and she recommended that I have Dr. Delightful call the insurance on my behalf. Quite frankly, I'm done with this drama for this cycle. We'll cross that bridge if it comes.

False Alarm

Remember how, in my last post, I said insurance would cover meds? Whoops, my bad. They won't.

You know, I had a feeling in the beginning that they wouldn't cover them. It makes sense; they won't cover infertility treatments...why on earth would they cover meds? I'm not happy about it by any means, but I might not be quite as livid if I hadn't gone through all the hoops to try to get it covered. Hopefully they will be delivered to me tomorrow and we can be finished with all this drama.

A girl can hope, right??