Report

I can certainly think of a lot of things I'd rather do than lie on a cold metal table and have people messing around my lady parts, but it wasn't awful.  Quite frankly, at this point, having been up for more than 24 hours is worse than the crampies from the hsg.   If you don't want to hear about the procedure, skip this next paragraph, I won't be offended.

My sister and I got there a little early and reported to my usual waiting room.  The nurse then called my name and took my blood pressure, and asked me a couple of questions.  Then, she pulls out the map.  Now, mind you, the University of Iowa Hospital is ginormous.  We had wind our way through the maze and find Diagnostic Radiology.  It was seriously a LONG way from my RE's office!  When they called me back, I had to wind around some more.  I was really beginning to think I was being punk'd.  Finally, I get my clothes changed and get in the room.  The very nice x-ray tech had me lie on the cold metal table (seriously? Can't they make it warmer in there?  Some of us are going commando!), where she took a couple of shots of my stuff pre-dye.  Then, the physician's assistant came, and they started the procedure.  Let me tell you this:  no one warned me before I went that there was going to be lidocaine shot into my cervix!  Granted, that part wasn't the worst, but still, I had no idea!  Anyway, that part was less than awesome.  In fact, I think I got a little dizzy at that point, but I don't remember.  Then they shot the dye up, and it was VERY crampy.  I mean, I didn't cry or anything, but I think I said, "Wow! That IS crampy!"  They had me do all sorts of stupid human tricks like rolling side to side and holding my hips at a 45* angle and lying on my stomach, which is all quite fun while trying to avoid flashing people unnecessarily.  They got the shots they wanted, so I sat up and waited for the PA to come back to talk to me.  I quizzed the tech about what I was seeing on the screen (Is my uterus supposed to be shaped like that? I always pictured it bigger.  What's that white thing? When can I put my pants on?)  The lady came back in the room and said everything looked good.  My right ovary is evidently up significantly higher than the left one, which she attributes to my being overweight (while we're on that subject, does this lady not realize that I'm AWARE of that issue and I'm working on it?  She stinking dwells on it and it makes me want to kick her...or eat her for lunch, since she seems to think I'm a big fat fatty.).  She also said that the lining of my uterus is a little more jagged than usual, but that could just be because I went so long without a period that my lining didn't shed all the way during this past period.  I wouldn't be surprised.  This period didn't seem nearly as bad as I was thinking it should be based on the 90-ish day cycle.  I got dressed and found my way back to my sister, who was sleeping in the waiting room.

The other thing to report is that I called them on our way home to have them get started on our pre-authorization for infertility treatment with our insurance.  CIGNA says that it can take 20-30 days, so I figured we should get a move on.  The next step is 5 days of femara followed by 3 days of follistim.  I'm supposed to continue losing weight (Yeah, lady, I get it! Lose weight.  Check.  Yep.  Doing it!  Sheesh!), and call when I hit the goal they specified and they'll bring me in for baseline ultrasounds and teaching on the follistim pen.  When I got back to my grandma's to pick  up Asher, I got a call from the RE's office saying they'd talked to my insurance company, and gotten everything taken care of.  We really don't need a pre-auth, she said, but she gave CIGNA the codes and stuff in case they decided to be doofuses about it.  She also said that we have the best infertility coverage that she's seen in quite awhile, so that makes me feel pretty good.

I'm sincerely hoping that we can get the ball rolling on this.  I'm not getting any younger! lol  In the meantime, I'm feeling crampy and when I laugh or strain, my cervix hurts where she shot me with the lido.  I'm also grumpy and have accidentally taken it out on my husband multiple times.  He's bringing home pizza, which I know is counter-productive to the weight loss, but I'm writing it off as a post-gynecological procedure requirement.  I'm willing to write it on the information they gave me beforehand.  Don't even try to stop me, Physician's Assistant Lady!  I. Will. Fight You!

The Witch Has Arrived

Well, she arrived in full force on Saturday.  Lucky me.  I'll be picking up my femara tonight in conjunction with some much-needed grocery shopping.  I feel terrible, because I just don't feel like it's going to work, but third time's the charm, right? *eye roll*  Nick maintains his ever-optimistic point of view, though.  I suppose one of us should.

Speaking of Nick, he called the insurance company today to inquire about a few things:

• Why are our bills from office visits with no procedures costing us more than $200 out of pocket?
• Why did a single tube of blood and it's subsequent lab-running cost nearly $300?
• What will we need to do when we go back to do our HSG/IUI/any procedure?
• Why do we have to spend thousands of dollars to do something that lots of women get to do for free? (He didn't really ask them this, but their answer would have been something like, "To keep us in business!")
  

I was on the edge of my seat...er...couch...to hear what they had to say.  I was envisioning an "Oh! We've made a mistake! Let us send you a bunch of money!" kind of conversation.  No.Such.Luck.

Basically, after we hit our deductible (it gets fuzzy after this because I literally understand nothing about insurance), they pay 90% until we've paid $1200 out of pocket for the year, then they pay 100%.  They said I've hit my deductible (yay), so they're paying 90% at this point.  This begs the question: Where, in the name of all that is holy, do they get off charging $2000 for 30 minutes in a doctor's office?!?  Unless I'm doing the math wrong, the fact that I've paid $200 for office visits, and Cigna is paying 90%, says to me that the office visits cost $2000!  Please tell me I'm wrong!  Nick forgot to ask them about the lab work, so he'll call them back soon to talk about that.

As for the procedures, we have to get pre-authorization on a procedure by procedure basis.  Is this normal?  I guess I was thinking/hoping/assuming that it would just be an umbrella pre-auth.  What I want to know is how long they're going to take to do the authorization once we tell them we are doing a procedure.  I mean, if I'm only given a week or two of warning beforehand, will that be enough time, or will I be paying out of pocket for the joy of someone shooting dye up my fallopian tubes?  I just don't know.  I mean, I guess I should be happy that we even HAVE infertility coverage, but it's such a pain in the butt, know what I mean?  They DO cover AI, IUI, and certain types of IVF (I've been putting off doing any overt research on IVF in the hopes that I won't ever need it).  However, we have MedCo for prescriptions and I hate them.  They're all about 30 day supplies of stuff, even though we keep trying to explain to them that I only need 10 pills or a week's worth of antibiotics or whatever.  ugh  It makes me wish I drank!

Anyway, this post is getting longer than I was expecting it to, and I'm sure it's bored you to death.  I'm very sorry.  Hopefully soon, my hormones will make me be in a better mood and all my posts won't be whiny.  One can only hope.