Like I said in the last post, this weekend (along with Monday) was a nice interlude where the whole IF thing and the whole fighting-with-insurance-and-the-clinic thing weren't bothering me so much.  It was a good break, but definitely bracketed by a lot of frustration and struggle.

When last we saw Our Heroes, they had just learned the various downsides of the California lab for PGD and were planning to make an appointment to figure out why the heck the RE would be wanting to use that lab.  Our Heroes had also at that point been waiting for 2 1/2 weeks for the medical necessity letter from the clinic to appeal the IVF denial (which I am now comparing to an insurer authorizing bypass surgery without authorizing the opening incision).

Well, we're still waiting for that letter.  The nurse called last Wednesday and said that she was going to follow up because she didn't see the letter in my chart.  I left yet another message for her today because I haven't heard anything.  I'm going to follow my one friend's advice and start calling the doctor instead, leaving messages every day until I get the letter.  I shouldn't have to do that, but nothing gets done if I don't.  Oh, wait, nothing was getting done while I had been calling the nurse every day either. 

I had called to make an appointment to try and get some answers, and got an appointment for the 25th.  Then DH told me that day was bad.  So while I was making calls today, I went to change that appointment.  Best I could get was the second week of February, and it had to be Friday the 10th since the other days that week I will be in a class in the mornings. 

Since I hadn't been getting calls back from the nurse for days at a time, I called the Maryland PGD clinic to try to get some answers.  They can do the testing without a $375 courier fee and without samples from our parents that we pay out of pocket to get tested and without taking 8 weeks to make the probe.  It would take them 3 weeks to make the probe, but that would all be covered in the cost billed to insurance, and 3 weeks is a hell of a lot better than 8 (plus the time to get samples to them from Egypt and several places in the US).  I also found out that this lab and Shady Grove have...differences of opinion...that are why they don't prefer to work with each other anymore.  I was afraid that SG was going to refuse completely to work with them and force me to go to another clinic (which would require 25-30 mile drives in rush hour traffic for monitoring appointments), but my nurse did say when I had caught her last Wednesday that they would work with the lab if people's insurance didn't cover the California lab.  So I'm going to insist that they work with this lab whether they damned well like it or not.  Just as I'm going to have to insist that they do the day 3 biopsy and day 5 transfer if they want my business, since we just can't afford the day 5 biopsy and later FET (especially not after having to spend another $300 on stuff from last plan year now that the insurance stuff from then got straightened out).

So now the plan is to badger the RE till I get my letter, appeal CareFirst's moronic decision, and insist on the RE using the Maryland lab and doing a day 3 biopsy.

And while all this is happening, I've been lapped by yet another person.  Maybe, if I'm lucky, now that I've gotten these posts out (I was going to write most of this last week, but every time I was going to it just seemed like it would take too much energy) I'll be able to concentrate on what I started trying to do 5 hours ago and have to get done before bed.