Comparing clinics…

In Colorado, there is basically my clinic and then everybody else, which totals like a whopping five.

Of course, my clinic is the fancy schmancy one. I didn’t chose it for that reason but for the fact that they had done multiple IVFs with PGD and they offered us the most financing options. What can I say? We’re poor and insurance covers nothing. Yay!?

All the fanciness aside, I wonder if my clinic is like all the others. I have no friends in RL who are going through this to ask if my experience with my clinic is like all the others out there in terms of testing. I swear by the time we actually get to the point of implantation, I will have been tested for everything from Ebola to bird flu…

And I write this because I am really, really anxious for AF to start. I assume I am all screwy from the LEEP in March as last month the crimson biatch visited for two brief days three days late, so probably tonight or tomorrow she’ll start flowing. To kick my weekend off right… But once she actually does start, I can schedule my HSC for this month and assuming my pap is clear next month, then I can start cycling. Fingers and toes crossed!

Anyway, to the real point of this post, does everyone go through this?

 I’ve been tested for:

Fragile X (negative), CF (negative for all like 87 of the “most common” mutations) and Thalassemia (it’s a genetic disorder common to people of Mediterranean descent, like Italians, like me). There could be a couble more that I don’t remember, I try not to lug my IVF folder of papers with me to work. It’s too heavy to carry on a daily basis.

Obviously, my hubby has had the semen analysis and we have done the antisperm antibodies test. His numbers were well-above average, I never got a real number, I can, but I haven’t. As well, both of us have given blood and him a semen sample for the lab setting up the PGD.

So, I assume, this is all normal protocol. But I also am having to go to my GP to get all this lab work/vaccinations. I have to get TSH/FT4 (my thyroid? ok?!), ABO/Rh (blood typing), Rubella, Varicella Zoster (apparently, I get another vaccine against chicken pox) and CBC (measuring my blood cells).

Then, both of us have to have our communicable disease testing, which, of course, is only good for six months and cost $600.

I get that they want us to be healthy as we move forward but it seems like my newfound hobby is blood draws.

Needles upon needles aside, I think no matter what we made the right decision. I really do love my RE. He’s younger, he and his wife (a stirrup queen herself) just had a baby, so I think he gets where I am coming from and my impatience to go forward. But, the journalist that I am is just curious about everyone else’s experience.

And you so know my clinic would have done more than what seemed a single test on Addison on Grey’s last night before declaring her infertile. Ha ha…

P.S. I’ll be forthcoming with the poem that A Somewhat Ordinary Life tagged me to write. I actually have to think about that!