Tears

There have been a few times throughout this process that tears have been shed.  When the number of embryos we had dropped from six to three; when we weren't sure if we had more than one genetically viable embryo; when we found out that our transfer had to occur three months after our vacation.  But over the weekend, we had another rough patch.

I have been wearing three Vivelle estrogen patches at a time for a few weeks.  These patches need to be changed every 72 hours.  My original prescription lasted several weeks, but I needed to refill the prescription in order to change the patches on Saturday.  So I submitted a refill request through the Walgreens app on Wednesday and received a "Delayed" notication within the app.  I never received an update, so I checked the status on Friday and saw that the order had disappeared.  I reordered the medication Saturday morning so I could use it that same day.  When I got the same "Delayed" notification, I called the pharmacy to ask what the problem was.

Long story short... insurance only covers one box of patches per month, and I'm using three boxes per month.  So I had to order a box for cash ($146 for eight patches).  We will have to pay cash for any other Vivelle orders between now and a postivie pregnancy test (which will be two more boxes).  Eric called my nurse to ask if there is a generic option and she said the generic doesn't stick to the skin as well and some transfers have failed because the patient didn't absorb enough estrogen.

We obviously want to use the product that gives us the best chance of success.  So I will pay cash for the last two boxes of patches and then switch to an oral estrogen pill once we have gotten a positive pregnancy test result.  It's just painful to pay $500 for patches over less than two months.

The longer version of this story would include details about how the pharmacy blamed Dr. Young's office for not filling out a prior approval for my insurance company, and Dr. Young's office blamed Walgreens for coding the prescription incorrectly so that insurance would only pay for one box every 84 days.  Hearing conflicting information from the two sources was confusing me and incredibly frustrating.

To top it all off, I was trying to sort this out while my mom, sisters, and two of Haley's friends left for Haley's first wedding dress shopping appointment.  I couldn't postpone the phone calls because I needed the patches that same day and Dr. Young's office is only open for a few hours on Saturdays.  I wanted to be enjoying the day with my family, but was instead left behind to deal with this mess.  Thus, many tears were shed out of frustration.  

In a team effort, the prescription was reordered for cash, it was picked up (thanks, Dad!) applied (by me) and follow-up clarifying phone calls were had (credit to Eric).  All is well that ends well, they say.  We're hoping that this journey ends really, really well.