A Couple Quick Updates

A few people have mentioned that’s it’s a little difficult to find our account at the credit unions. We have added a Paypal button to our “How You Can Help” page, to make it easier for those who want to help, but don’t live near us. Thank you!

We are in the process of gathering and sorting through stuff for a big yard sale in a month or so. We are trying to decide where to do it. Our house is a little out of the way, which isn’t ideal, but if we advertised heavily it could work. Another thing we’re trying to look into is the weekly yard sale behind one of the antique stores in Logan. If it’s one of those things where you pay a fee to use the space, it might be worth it. We’ll see. If you have any ideas on how to make it most successful (or know someone who lives on a busy-ish street in Logan that would let us use their yard) let us know!

Insurance, oh how we hate you. . . .

Our work is about to switch over to a new insurance provider, and we were hoping that they might have some sort of infertility coverage, but I guess that’s just too much to ask for. Yet again, fertility treatments are elective, like cosmetic surgery. Because apparently, having a kid is equal to getting a boob job, not an actual condition like diabetes. Yeah, that makes sense. PCOS is a diagnosable, generally treatable condition, but because it relates to (and often causes) infertility, I’m not covered. Utah passed a bill last year that was supposed to let those of us who need help to have kids use the $4000 adoption credit to pay for fertility treatments. The people working on the bill talked to the major insurance providers, and they all said they were on board with it. However, EVERY SINGLE ONE of them has opted out of letting people use it for infertility. We’re hoping that those who helped get the bill through in the first place will be able to add something that requires the insurance companies to let us use that money, but we’re not holding our breath. People just don’t get it. Because the next drug that we are going to need – Femara – isn’t technically meant for fertility treatments, the new company will cover that, which will save us about $70 each month we use it. After that, we’re on our own. A doctor visit starts at around $300, and instead of a reasonable copay of $35, we have to pay for the whole visit. Each month, we’ll have to have several doctor visits, for testing at different points of the cycle. They add up quick! If the Femara doesn’t end up working, we’ll get into the injectable drugs. Those cost over $1000 a month, and that’s in addition to even more frequent doctor visits because a small difference in dosage can mean the whole cycle will or won’t work. Once we’ve done a couple months of that, the baby thermometer will be back down to $0. If insurance companies considered infertility an actual condition, even if all they paid for was doctor visits, we could probably start treatments now.

Long overdue update

We’ve been pretty MIA from the blog for a while. . . It’s hard to give updates when all that’s going on is us trying to save!  But the thermometer is slowly but steadily going up, thanks in no small part to the generosity of family, friends, and strangers that have heard our story. To all of you – You have no idea how much it means to us. We’re over $8000 now! We’ve been brainstorming ideas on how we can get that number to grow faster, but we haven’t had many ideas that are easy for us to implement. We’re getting stuff together right now for a big yard sale in a couple months, and I’m working on building up my crafts inventory to sell at the yard sale and our fireworks booth (if we do it again this year). Other ideas we’ve had are a benefit concert (there are a lot of musically talented people on both sides of the family), a silent auction, and an online fundraiser. We haven’t figured out a way to make any of those ideas happen yet. If you know a way, or can think of anything else that could work, let us know!

P.S. We’re going to start putting some infertility-related comics on here, because sometimes you just have to laugh! Forgive us if they’re a little bit snide . . . .

Anniversaries

This time of year means lots of anniversaries for Brett and I - one that's not one we want to celebrate, but a bunch that we do. All the anniversaries this year fall on the same day of the week that they did back then - pretty neat! Today was our 6th anniversary of Brett proposing! 4 weeks and 1 day after our first date (2 weeks and one day after buying my ring). We were planning on going up to Bloomington Lake and recreating that day, including a picnic lunch and pictures, but the weather did NOT want to cooperate . . . So instead we celebrated with homemade Indian food, complete with naan. Yum!

5 Years and Counting . . . .

This month - September 2014 - marks five years since we started trying to have kids. It's hard to believe how much time has passed, but harder is to think of how much longer we have to wait. We're only a little over a fourth of the way to our goal. Family and friends have generously helped us get that number up (thank you!), but we still have a LONG way to go.

One bit of good news is that there is now a fertility clinic here in Logan (more accurately, in Providence) - YAY!!! This means that we don't have to take entire days off of work to do treatments over an hour away from home. It's right between our house and where we work, which is perfect! I saw a billboard near our house saying there was a new fertility clinic, and looked it up online when we got home. We wanted to see if their costs were comparable to the clinic in Sandy, so I called the number online. They didn't answer, and it was after 5, so we figured that we would just call the next day. A couple hours later, I got a call from an unknown number, and I answered it (which is COMPLETELY out of character for me - I pretty much never answer my phone, unless I know who it is). It was the doctor calling! Not a nurse, the actual doctor! The way this clinic works is they have a PhD and an MD - the MD does the medical procedures, and the PhD does the lab work and other procedures. It was the PhD that called me. At 7:30 P.M., way after normal work hours. And then we talked for almost 90 minutes - and got charged NOTHING. Other clinics charge almost $300 for the EXACT same thing. We talked about what fertility treatments we've already done, what our plan for our next treatments was, and his recommendations. It was really cool!

Suffice it to say, we are really excited for this new clinic! Now we just need to trip over a bag of money so we can actually start treatment . . .

Tutu Pricing

I've had a few people want to order a custom tutu, so to make it easier for everyone, here's a price list and order form! Download the form, fill it out, and email it to me. We can work out payment and delivery from there :D.

Order Form

Links to Pages

A few people have mentioned that they're having trouble finding our infertility story. We made it into a separate page instead of a blog post. Here's the link to it! (As well as the links to the other pages)

Our Infertility Story

Our Love Story

Insensitive Questions/Comments

How You Can Help