I Don't Even Know Anymore Who I'm Supposed to Be Mad At

One thing that I forgot to mention yesterday was that I tried to check with CareFirst and make absolutely sure that the PGD had been requested along with the IVF, as I had been told by the fertility clinic's finance person, hereafter referred to in this blog as Finance Bitch.  (No, I don't usually go around calling people a bitch in anything other than a momentary expression of frustration.  But this woman seriously is.  I'm not expecting her to be all bleeding heart about the subject because she gives almost as much bad news to people as their doctors/whoever calls with beta results, and as a therapist I can see how it would be too hard to get emotionally caught up in every couple.  But by the same token, she does give a lot of bad news, and that warrants an attitude at least a little more considerate than one that says "oh well, sucks to be you.")

So anyway, since I was already calling CareFirst to try for the second or third time to find out who was in network for PGD, I asked about the status of the authorization request for the service.  The woman I was on the phone with said that she did not see an approved authorization for it.  I asked about pending/denied authorizations, and she said there was one open request.  I asked specifically what procedures had been requested in that auth, and she said that she couldn't tell me.  I asked to speak to someone who could, and she said that no one could tell me what had been requested, even if they could see the information.  Why, you ask?  Apparently because I'm only the patient.  They're only allowed to discuss that information with the provider, not with the person whose body the procedures would be done on.

Today I come home from a day of work that involved helping others through a loss there that I'm also grieving myself, and I see that I got the denial letter from CareFirst.  It says that authorization has been denied for the procedures of IVF, assisted hatching (a necessary component to the PGD biopsy), and ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection, recommended for us both because of the PGD and because of an extremely minor thing with DH's numbers).  Nowhere there is PGD mentioned.  I really hope that's because that's considered a separate authorization request that is still pending.  Because if it was never requested, I'm going to blow a gasket.  Because it might be Finance Bitch's fault that I won't be starting my first IVF cycle this weekend.

At least the basketball game was good.  My throat hurts from yelling, but my Terps looked good out there, and I was impressed with our 7'1" freshman that started for what I think is the first time tonight.