Fading into the Distance

The last couple of days have been...well...educational.  I ended up finding out that CareFirst, in their infinite wisdom, had denied the IVF for not trying IUI first while still approving and authorizing the PGD!!  (For those who aren't aware, it's impossible to do PGD without doing IVF.)  Between DH and a couple of friends, we've come to the conclusion that CareFirst's decision-makers are the monkeys that weren't smart enough to be locked in the Hamlet-writing room.

To make life more fun, I had a scheduled phone call with one of the genetic counselors at the PGD lab in California that my clinic wants to go with.  (Why they want to go to one in California when there's one they talk about on their website that's across the hall from the main clinic in Rockville, I don't know, but that's a question for another day.)  Apparently this clinic doesn't work with the genetic testing place that has a patent on actually looking at the gene, so they have to look at whether DH and I transferred the chromosome 5 from our moms or our dads.  To do that, they have to get genetic samples from at least one of my parents and at least one of DH's.  Then they get the same testing on those that DH and I got to see which of each of our parents is the carrier.  When they look at the embryo tissue, since they can't look at the gene itself, they have to look at, for instance, "OK, in this one Jessie's chromosome 5 came from her mom, so that one's the carrier.  DH's chromosome 5 came from his mom and she's not the carrier, so that makes that embryo a carrier but not affected."

So that adds into things time for them to send the sample kits to our parents, time for the sample kits to get back (when one parent out of four is overseas), time for those samples to be tested, and time for them to then create the primer (also with blood from me and DH).  Oh, yeah, and my insurance isn't going to cover getting those samples tested.  That's out of our pockets unless what insurance our parents have will cover it.  As is the $375 courier fee to get the eventual biopsied cells to California.  Yes, a $375 plane ticket for 20 cells or so.  Again, WHY do they not want to use the place across the hall??

At this point, it seems like all Shady Grove wants to do is make us spend more money and time.  Now there's no way we'll get in 3 cycles (if they're needed, obviously) on this round of deductible and out-of-pocket max.  DH was asking if it might be worth going with another clinic, but the closest clinics other than Shady Grove are in DC and Baltimore, and that would SUCK in terms of going there for monitoring!!  I am going to make an appointment for another consultation, though, to try and figure out why the hell the doc wants us to go with the California people.  If I get the answers I need before the appointment, I can always cancel it.  Oh, yeah, and I still haven't gotten that letter of medical necessity for the IVF appeal from him!