His Eye is on the Sparrow

Miracles of any size always seem to happen to other people, but today one happened to me. We're approaching a holiday weekend and I needed to order some extra follicle stimulating medication to get me through it. I called Freedom Fertility Pharmacy and they told me they could do a refill of up to 4 Gonal F pens but my maximum medication prescription benefit of $5000 had been reached and that I would have to pay 100% of the cost of the medication, (an exhorbitant number in the thousands of dollars, that my husband and I cannot afford).

There I sat, on the tile of the kitchen floor absorbing the fact that my meds (for one round of IVF) had been exhausted and that I was past the middle of my cycle approaching my egg retrieval and this person was essentially telling me I would not be able to complete it. This was not the first bad news in the last few days.

Earlier this week, we continued to negotiate with our fertility clinic over their embryo dispensation paperwork. They wanted to have a signed paper on file before the egg retrieval that told them what they could do with our embryos if something happened to both Jeff and I between the time the embryos are created and the time they are frozen. While it is a logical idea for them to have a dispensation directive on file, they only gave us two options on their paper: we could donate them to science or have them destroyed. As neither of these options is morally acceptable to Jeff and I as we believe life is sacred and it begins at conception, we couldn't, in good conscience, sign this paper. They could not, with due dilligence, continue our treatment. We temporarily got around this issue by promising to produce a will that would give instructions for embryo adoption in the event of both of our untimely deaths.

Now, the clinic rep was calling to say that I could not proceed with the stimulation meds the next day (I'm half-way through the process), unless we signed their form or could produce our will. The nurse assured me they could continue to keep me on Lupron to extend treatment until we could come to some agreement, but that did little to assuage the freak out that was brewing at the back of my mind and threatening to spill into the phone receiver. We had previously earned a reprieve when they allowed us to write on that form that we would include a copy of our will with that form giving them instructions on how our embryos are to be given in christian adoption to infertile couples if we died. It was now time to produce the will. Dilemna: we cannot afford attorney fees so we really don't have a will to give them yet. I explained we didn't have the wills YET. She said she would have to check with her people and call me back.

Long story short, she calls me back after giving me sufficient time to panic, freak out, call my husband, get into a fight about getting a will, post alarmist messages on facebook about trying to contact an attorney specializing in Assisted Reproductive Technologies, and get really frustrated, before calling me back to say, if they had the will by the time of the egg retrieval that everything was good and I could proceed with the stimulation meds.

Through more phone calls and on the recommendations of an adoption agency and a close friend, we located Legalzoom.com and we are in the process of drawing up wills with them for a fraction of the cost of hiring an attorney. This brings us to present day.

I am three days into the stimulation meds and through yet another ultrasound and more bloodwork. I have little follicles developing in both ovaries. Right on track. I crunch the numbers and find out I'm going to need more stim meds to get me through the holiday weekend. I find out I have to pay for them with thousands of dollars we don't have. More freaking out. Another call to the husband at work. He is my sanity in my hormone infused, emotionally fantastic world. I'm wondering what our clinic can possibly do to help us. We have a prescription refill in place, we just can't fill it because our insurance benefit is depleted. Hubby says we'll play good cop, bad cop. He'll be the bad cop, and we both have to call the clinic to complain that we are in this situation. Who's idea was it to begin stimulation, knowing we couldn't possibly make it through the weekend and when we had mxed our med benefit? Caveat Emptor I guess. Know your benefit max. Do the math.

Long story short: After getting voicemail for two different people at the clinic and their home office, I decide I'm going to drive down to the clinic to talk to the office manager. I invite you to put yourself in my shoes. View the volatility of the scene in your mind's eye.

You're me. Since the inception of this process, you think you have carefully planned this endeavor in your quest to be financially responsible. You have called around (insurance company and clinic) and had a sit-down meeting with the clinic billing and insurance manager that included a speakerphone call with that manager and your insurance company and researched and made sure you have adequate insurance coverage for meds and treatments. This is after all the painful testing, and driving and missing work and prescreening. Then you have to have a tough discussion with one of the doctors about their paperwork that you cannot morally sign. You work something out, knowing down the road you'll need to have a will, which you will eventually get. Then you need it now, and you don't have it yet and they are threatening to halt your treatment when all your estrogen levels are at an all-time, medically induced low and you are experiencing the worst PMS in history and someone is threatening to take away your last chance of having biological children (having exhausted your insurance benefit), and then it's OK and now you can take your stim meds, whoops they will run out before July 4th weekend when our office will be closed and all this effort will be for nothing, .... on the edge of insanity, I cry out to God....

and he answers.

I am on my way over to plead my case to that office manager. I am working on trying to articulate my case in the car. I abhor confrontation, but I am worked into a lathered, hormonal and mamma bear frenzy and someone is going to listen to what I have to say. I'm pondering what I'll say, how I will have very little chance to logically persuade her to have mercy on us... and my cell rings. It's Jeff. I pull over in a school parking lot to listen.

It's good news.

Our nurse at the clinic says we can combine leftover doses in our pens and she has a couple of extra, unused Gonal F pens that someone donated that we can use to get us through the weekend. No charge to us. Can you freaking BELIEVE IT?! Just what we need, when we need it. The water works start. I just have to go to the office (where I was already headed) to pick them up. Wow.

Flash to my return home. I fill the bird feeder and come inside. From my kitchen window, sparrows begin to feed at the newly replenished food source. It's a God moment. What we need, when we need it, and not a moment before. Have faith. Jehovah Jireh.