We had a consult with the doctor the other day, and although Melody had already got all the information, it was helpful for me to be there and hear it myself too.

The percentages we’ve been dealing with up to this point were 20% chance of getting pregnant.With IVF, the percentage jumps up to 60% chance, with (i think) a 30% chance of multiples (twins, triplets etc).

Considering IVF is going to cost us $20,000 on a 60% chance, it got me thinking….what other things have  odds like or close to 60%?

Next week we’re heading out to a friend’s wedding, and one of the places we’re staying will be a casino. For a brief moment, it got me thinking that we could take $10,000, and put it on red, or 1-18 on roulette, which (because of the 0 and 00 slots), the odds are 47.37%.

Like i said…it only came into my head for a brief moment.

But that’s the kind of things you think about…well…I think about….when we’re dealing with this much money. I didn’t really even blink when we bought the house. Numbers that big don’t really resonate as real values. But $20,000…that is something you can picture…it’s something that is a real number…it’s something that you can look at and save up for.

So…that’s what we’re looking at lately. $20,000 on a 60% bet……but when it’s the only game in town, we’ve got to take the bet.

The one that comes in a pen is the Follistim — it’s for telling the body to produce as many eggs (from follicles) as possible, to increase the likelihood that one of them will get fertilized. The process with this one is to attach a brand new, sealed, sterile needle-tip each night for the injection. You then remove and discard the needle each night into the sharps container. All you do to give the appropriate amount is dial the number on the pen up to what the doctor says (in Melody’s case it was 150ml to begin with, and now it’s up to 225). They come with 900ml cartridges that are removable when you run out.

The second one that comes pre-packaged in a syringe is the Ganirelix — it’s for stopping the eggs from being released down the fallopian tubes too early in the cycle (ie: to make them wait until there are a whole bunch of them to send at once). These ones, you throw away the whole thing (the whole syringe) and use a brand new everything each night.

Here’s the pix:

Anyway…I’ve been giving her the injections for a couple of days now, and then this morning she had to go in for an ultrasounds to check to see if any follicles had formed (ie: the medication is working properly).

Turns out….there is only one small follicle (they were hoping for at least 2 or 3), and then the worst part is that during the ultrasound they found a couple of recurrences of the endometriosis.

Bad news bears.

It’s not terrible…yet….but it’s far from good news.

When Melody had the surgery 8 weeks ago, they removed the endometrioms (that cause endometriosis i guess), which were 5.9 centimeters in diameter. That’s 2.3 inches across.

Today, the one he measured was already 2.5cm across….basically half of what was removed just 8 weeks ago.

We’re pretty upset and depressed about that, because it means things are regrowing at a rate that is not very conducive to fertility.

So….steps from here….

He increased the dosage that I need to give Melody each night of the hormone medication. We were at 150ml, but now we are at 225ml per night. AND he said we needed to start the next medication early, which is the one that prevents Melody from ovulating earlier than what will be the right time for the whole process.

Basically things are moving quicker than expected (but not quite in the right direction), and that means Melody needs to go in twice this coming week for an ultrasound, and then a saline ultrasound (not fun from what i hear).

It sucks….but as usual we’re dealing with it. Sunday has now turned into a sit-in-front-of-television-and-watch-movies-together.

I’m going to get back to that now.

The going rate for IVF was going to be around $6000, give or take a few nickels.

As Melody found out, the rates we’re looking at for the procedure outside of the clinical study are a little staggering.

First off, there’s two plans we can sign up for.

One is essentially a one-time process, where you basically get one run through the procedure of IVF. It’s called “Single Cycle.” It involves a lot of medications, several visits, ultrasounds, screenings, the works. Basically you get everything you need for a one-hitter of IVF to see if you can get a spawn from it.

Single Cycle runs about $11,000.  If it doesn’t work, and you want to go again, it’s another $11,000. The down payment on this option (due on the first day you start everything), is $5500. The rest is out of pocket expenses for medications and procedures as you go through the process and need to buy more things.

Oh yeah…here’s the point in the story that I say that from here on out, we have a 60% chance of conceiving through IVF.

So…that would be a 60% chance of $11,000 not working.

Option #2 is called the “Shared Success Program (SSP)”.

It’s obviously more likable from the outset, because it has the word sharing in it….right? Sounds a lot better than Single Cycle….so clinical…..so cold. Shared Success sounds like you get a life coach that’s going to say nice things all the way through, buy us dinner, clean the house, help Melody down the stairs if she gets pregnant while I’m at work.

Turns out there’s not a lot of sharing going on in the SSP. So…here’s a better name for it….

“Partial Warranty Against Failure Program (PWAFP). I pronounce it “Per-Waff-Puh.”

This program is the same as the single cycle, except you get a repeat procedures if the first doesn’t work.

The way it works, is that they freeze a bunch of embryos, and then basically they keep inserting them until they work, or until you have none left. It’s like an all you can eat buffet that you can keep going back to, as long as you have frozen embryos left. Wow…that’s a really weird vision of a medical Golden Corral restaurant i just had.

Anyway….moving on.

The cost of this one though, is around about $20,000. The down payment on this option is $15,500, due on the first day you start the process. If you go through the whole batch of embryos and still aren’t pregnant, you get a $7000 refund though.

That’s a lot of money.

That’s a Ford Fiesta, and enough to deck it out with spinners, and another car towed behind it almost.

So…..we have a decision to make….and it’s not an easy one.

Go with the cheaper option….and possibly get lucky, and therefore only have to tell the spawn that they have to start mowing lawns at age 10 to earn money for our family.

or…

Go with the cheaper option….possibly get unlucky (and seriously..we’re not really feeling lucky…have you read the rest of this blog?)…and then have to find another $11,000 to try again…or even another $20,000 so we get more attempts. Then we tell the spawn that they need to start mowing lawns at age 5, but that a mower is too heavy for them, so they have to use safety scissors instead.

or…

Go with the more expensive option…get lucky on the first try….and regret spending the extra $9000

or…

Go with the more expensive option, don’t get lucky…..and then get $7000 back to put towards a really nice vacation, or the start of a down payment on the next $20,000……but we’ve still had to come up with $15,000 as a starting amount, which will not be easy.

Either way…we don’t have too many shots at this, and that sucks. It sucks hard. We know that we can put together enough from different places, and do some shuffling around to find enough for either procedure, but if it doesn’t work, it will be a fair amount of time before we could try again if it doesn’t work.

And that’s hard to stomach. It really is.

We are hoping for the best, but as we’ve said before….all the well wishes in the world don’t really matter at the end of the day. We’re good people. We’re nice people. It hasn’t worked for us up to this point in time, and there’s no guarantee that it will work with either of these procedures.

The other thing gnawing at us a little, is that kind of money is almost enough to start thinking about adoption. That’s something Melody and I have talked about before, and it’s something we’re both interested in, but our obvious first choice is to have our own baby.

So it’s difficult to look at what could be 80% of the cost being spent on a 100% certainty (adoption) being spent on a 60% possibility (IVF). Adoptions run somewhere in the range of $20,000-25,000 depending on what country, background you’re looking to adopt from.

Anyway….Melody will, I’m sure, fill in more of the details from the meetings she’s had with the few doctors this week….but there it is. I’ve done my manly duties and put the hard numbers on the table.

So….spawn…..if you’re reading this in the future, there’s the numbers you need to start looking at when you’re considering summer jobs (notice the “s” on the end of “job”).

BabyZone.com

You can click a button and get suggested baby names. Pretty cool idea right? Yes. Pretty bad implementation of that idea? YES!

Here’s the names I got back when i asked for Girl’s names :

Here’s the list that i got back when i asked for Boy’s names.

This has so much fail in it, i dont know where to start. But….it’s so awesomely bad, that this particular blog post is getting used on both my personal category, and the SpawnWatch category.

I’ll never judge Melody’s ideas for baby names as harshly now, knowing how bad it could be.

Jadepavid? Guisa? Knnstop?

I think somebody mixed up the Baby Name Generator with the “Hardest Words Ever Found in a Game of Hangman Generator.”

Brrtha? Seriously? Because Bertha was too difficult to spell? Didn’t want to include a silent “e”? Is Brrtha always going to be cold?

I have to stop now. Too. Much. Fail. Too. Much. Funny.

As Nick mentioned, I have had a couple of bad days.  I had several very nauseous spells that were really awful.  I don’t think anyone likes to be nauseous, but to be honest, I usually do okay with it.  The past few days, I have been terrified of vomiting because my incision is quite large and it hurts.  It hurts even more when you add vomiting.  The strain on my incision just simply hurts.  On Friday, I got an awful headache that was quickly heading to nauseousness.  The meds the Nurse gave me did not stop me from feeling sick, and I struggled for quite awhile.  I had an even worse nauseous battle on Saturday morning at around 3:30.  Luckily, the night nurse was awesome.  Lorilyn gave me the same meds the previous nurse gave me.  Of course, they did not help me, and I started to vomit and moan, cry, etc.  She heard me a return to my room immediately.  She was very proactive and call the doctor immediately to see if she could give me something else.  She did not realize that Dr. B had give us permission to call him and not the on-call doctor, so she spoke with Dr. On-Call.  He allowed her to give me the new meds, which helped me sleep and stopped the nauseousness.  The new stuff unfortunately made me very tired for about 10 hours.  (It was like being shot with a tranquilizer dart, but I am not complaining–it truly saved me.)

When Dr. B came in to check on me on Saturday, he prescribed a med for me to take to prevent nauseousness.  I explained to him that I really had no appetite, and I thought it had a lot to do with the nauseousness.  I asked him if he would allow me to bring in non-hospital food to eat, and  he said that was fine.  I seriously considered kissing him full on the mouth.  I really think the outside food made me feel better.  I was finally able to get some of my strength back when I was allowed to have good, tasty food.  (I’m not knocking the hospital food, but it was not great for me; they listed me as “vegetarian and picky”.  I think the Peanut Butter and Banana Milkshake that my Dad got me from Cook-out was really key to the new and improved me yesterday.  Also, I did not take any percocet yesterday because I am convinced that it and my empty stomach was what made me so sick.

Yesterday was pretty good.

The general surgery, who did a portion of my surgery, deemed by bowels well enough to go home today.  (I’m going to call the General Surgery by the name of Dr. Colon because I don’t know his real name and he worked on my colon.  Sorry Dr. Colon; I’m usually really good with names, but you introduced yourself while I was sleepy and high.  Please forgive me.) Once he discovered that I was able to keep liquids on my stomach for 24 hours, he released me from the IV and told me I was fine to go home this afternoon.

Dr. B came in around 12, and he happily released me as soon as he heard Dr. Colon released me.  I was so excited.

I got home at about 1 or 2.  I will stay here, in Apex, tonight because Dr. B wants to see me tomorrow.  He thinks it is best to stay here tonight just in case something goes wrong.  Also, he is going to take my staples out tomorrow.  I am supposed to call the office in the morning to schedule a time to see Dr. B.  After my appointment, he says he will allow me to go back to White Lake with my parents.  I’ll stay there until at least Friday.  I may come back to Apex on Friday to stay with Nick for the weekend.  (I’ll probably go back to White Lake on Sunday)  Dr. B says I will not be allowed to drive or work for two weeks, which feels pretty spot on right now.

Here are a few things about my past few days (more details to follow):

• WakeMed Cary was really great.  The staff was awesome.  From my prep nurses on Friday, to the nurse who cared from directly after my surgery, to the nurses and techs who cared for me during my stay–they were GREAT. We were especially thankful for Kristen and Beth on my first night, who were very gentle.  We really enjoyed Lindy, who was very friendly and added her own personal stories to help me through the past couple of days.  And, Lorilyn was an absolute angel when she saved me from my vomiting spell.
• I have a renewed respect for Dr. B.  He was really great this past week.  He has been very caring and very gentle with me.  He came to the hospital to check on me each day despite the fact that he was not on call.  He even gave us his private number to call in case I had another bad night.  I can’t stress enough how great he was.  Today my dad even said that he really liked Dr. B–that’s pretty great.
• We have received so much love and support over the past few weeks.  We are very grateful.  Thanks to everyone for you emails, text messages, facebook message, phone calls, flowers, and cards.

That’s all for now.  I’ll try to start to retrace the past few days to include some details.

The most important thing though, is that the bowel surgeon came in this morning and said two very awesome things:

1. Melody can have the IV Drip taken out, and she can go on solid foods
2. Melody can probably go home this afternoon.

We’re pretty excited about those two things.

He did make the comment that we may need to order a moving van though to remove all the stuff we’ve brought in.

So…right now we’re waiting on breakfast to arrive. Melody has attempted to interject and get them to bring some french toast instead of the cream of wheat. We’re not sure if they’ve updated their orders to reflect her new dietary allowances. So…in the next few minutes we’ll find out if she has to order something new, or if they get the new instructions in time.

I had a better night of sleep…still not great, but i also slept through from 1 to 6am.

Melody’s parents are getting breakfast for themselves at the moment, and we’re just hanging out here in the room. I’ll probably still switch shifts with them again this morning so i can go home, get some breakfast, take a shower (much needed), and watch the soccer. Then, in the early afternoon when Melody is supposed to be able to check out, i’ll head on back with a stack of moving boxes.

I left around 9:30am, handing over the reigns to Melody’s parents for the day. Upon arriving back, i found Melody in 500% better spirits, and feeling much better. I would describe her demeanor as having moved from ‘numb, headachy, hungover, completely overwhelmed by the surgery melody‘ to being ‘normal melody just dealing with a lot of pain.‘

Dr Brannon came by to check on her again, which was nice, and basically said that she would be good to go home already, EXCEPT, for the complications they had to deal with from the connection to the bowels.

Right now, the bowel surgeon specialist is the guy we’re waiting on to find out when she can go home. He comes by promptly at 6:30am every morning (the nurses say you can set your clock by him).

Melody is up to walking around the 3rd floor twice at a time now, still gingerly, but good that she’s walking that far without feeling nauseous.

She will be trying to forego the percoset tonight, as that really didn’t work out all that well last night. Instead she’s taking a mix of tylenol and toredol, which is significantly less debilitating.

I have brought back our DVD player though, and we have some shows to watch on there — Burn Notice, Psych — which should be better than surfing trough 100 channels of which only 2 have decent shows on.

So….tonight were hoping for a better, more restful night. I know I am hoping for that, and I know melody is hoping for it even more. I passed out at around 1pm today, and slept through 2 phone calls, my alarm, and the soccer, eventually waking up at 6:00pm. So….if i’m that tired, i know melody is more so.

Oh…one more thing….Dr Brannon did authorize outside food for her, which is awesome (for her). Not so awesome for those of us who have now moved to delivery boy status. So today, she had a peanut butter and banana shake from Cook Out, and tonight i brought back some organic apple sauce, a chocolate mousse yogurt thing, and some vegetable broth/soup. She’s definitely sick of the hospital food…saying it all tastes the same now.

Here’s 4 pictures from the event so far.

Hopefully the blog post from tomorrow morning will be even better.

Melody’s been up and walking around a few more times, which is good.

But just recently she started getting a pretty bad headache, and is now back to being nauseous. Obviously she’s getting some medication for it, but it’s a crappy thing to be feeling fairly okay, and then all of a sudden start going downhill again. But i think that’s going to be the state of things for the next 24 hours, as she moves to being more mobile, more independent.

I’m staying overnight again, and we’re both hoping that she’s able to sleep through the night. Melody has taken one of her two allowed percoset, and hopefully that will help knock her out a little, but this headache seems to be delaying things.

I didn’t get any sleep during the day today when i went back to the house, but i’m going to attempt to stay up a little longer each time….just because Melody seems to drift off to sleep, and then 5 minutes later she’s awake again. I’m hoping for her sake that she’s able to completely knock-out, and wake up in the morning after a full night’s sleep.

I’ve decided that i will partake in a little pudding from the nourishment room, where they have stocked it full of things for both patients and visitors. Melody’s been taking advantage of that and the free room service over the past 24 hours….getting things like her oatmeal, cream of wheat and stuff…..

The nourishment room has all kinds of things though….icy-pops, orange/apple/prune juice, vanilla/chocolate pudding, ginger ale, sprite, crackers, cereal, hot water, tea, coffee, milk…and it’s all complimentary, serve yourself.

Melody is feeling much better than this morning, but still not anywhere near 100%. She has been up and walking a little on her own (while holding the rollable IV-drip of course), and has been able to use the bathroom a few times too (which…according to the doctors is a very important step towards recovery).

She’s been able to eat jello, some vegetable broth, oatmeal, cream of wheat, and she’s continuing to drink hot water with lemon, ginger ale, ensure, plus lots and lots of water.

Her friends dropped off a little care package this morning, which was nice. Melody isn’t feeling well enough to take any phone calls or visitors still, so we appreciate the little things that people have done….text messages, emails etc.

I have brought back some flavored tea for her, so she’s really looking forward to that when she wakes up. Right now she’s resting again. I think she’s continuing to just sleep whenever she can, and just keep drifting in and out like that until things really start picking up.

She’s off the morphine…that was taken away this morning. She’s now on Percoset, which i think she doesn’t enjoy all that much….but it’s obviously better than nothing.

So…the plan for tonight is much like last night I think. Sleep as much as possible. Eat when she can. Use the bathroom as much as possible, and continue the climb back to 100%.

We’re still looking at Sunday as the checkout day i think, although i guess if things really go well tonight and tomorrow, it’s possible there could be a late checkout saturday. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Some good news to look forward to:

Dr Brannon said she’ll be able to walk, and should walk as much as she can. Melody was worried that she’d be pretty much immobile for 6 weeks, but pretty much it’s only the first two weeks where she has to stay off her feet and recover (we think).

He also said that there’s no problem with her riding to White Lake with her parents when she checks out of here. Our plan is that melody will go to white lake for a couple of weeks while she recovers, and then at least she’ll have people around to help her during the days. I would have to be at work, so we thought White Lake would be a better destination rather than me deserting her during the work day.

I think that’s all the important details for now. Tomorrow depending on how she feels, we’ll consider taking phone calls, or making some phone calls.

If anyone is sending anything to the room, she is listed under her full name “Melody Caroline Smith Young,” or I can pass information along via email if anyone thinks they need the room number.

FYI — we’re still blocked from getting to facebook and flickr, so i’ll be uploading pictures and things when i get home (forgot to today though).