Keep Calm and Carry On

I've been not-quite-almost-trying-desperately-to-keep-from-panicking for much of the past week. 

Before I left for Costa Rica, I was calling the PGD lab and the fertility clinic and then calling around to insurance trying to get the auth changed from the California PGD lab to the Maryland one.  The Maryland lab was telling me the fertility clinic was supposed to submit the changed auth because they don't get auths from insurance even though they do take insurance payments.  The fertility clinic was telling me they had done their part and that the PGD lab was supposed to get the auth and that if they didn't than I was supposed to.  The insurance company was saying that the fertility clinic was supposed to do it.  And so on. 

I wanted to get it done before I left so that DH and I could get the samples submitted and the probe could be made, since it takes 3 weeks if nothing goes screwy, and I started CD 1 for the cycle before our treatment cycle the Saturday before we left.  Finally, the Friday before we left, I reached G in the local office of the care management division of the insurance company.  She said she would get it taken care of by the Monday before we left.  I didn't hear back from her that day, but I had so much to do getting ready that I had to just go on faith and hope it was getting done.  Yeah, right.

Fast-forward to getting home, and a day or two after getting back last week, I reached G again.  She hadn't been able to get a call back from the person at my clinic that she needed to talk to.  She wasn't going to be in the office Friday and would get back to me on Monday.  Yes, Monday that's a week and a half before CD 1 of our treatment cycle.  On Monday I couldn't get ahold of her, and yesterday she said she still hadn't heard back after bugging the woman at the fertility clinic again.  I explained the time crunch, and she said she was going to talk to her boss to see if she could make it happen without the fertility clinic calling back.  Later that day I was told that she could, and this morning she called me with an auth number.  Whew.

So now I can call my clinic and be able to go in tomorrow with DH to give our samples, right?  Wrong.  There are no orders on file for what to test for, since the Maryland lab didn't contact my nurse to give her that info.  My nurse called me again today (we also spoke yesterday after I called her in my not-quite-almost-trying-not-to-panic) to say that she's going to make a pest of herself with the lab until they tell her what they need from the samples.  Every day that ticks away has me more freaked out, though, even while I celebrate having the auth switched. 

If I can't cycle this month and I know that within the next week, I can't cycle one month from now unless the nurse agrees to use extra pills to move the cycle by a couple weeks, which she wasn't keen on.  I can't cycle 2 months from now unless she agrees to use extra pills to move the cycle by about one week.  So missing this opportunity could mean waiting 3 more months.  In both cases, this is because of things I already committed to.  I'm trying not to commit to much right now because of the possibility of treatment cycles, but how do I find that line between being available no matter what changes and putting my life completely on hold?  If I can't cycle this month and I find that out sometime after I start the pills, all bets are off as to timing because I'll have to completely figure out again when my CD1's will be for the upcoming months.

But of course I keep calm.  Right.  Or at least I carry on.  That's all I can do.