Balancing Hope and Disappointment

I know there are tons of quotes about rejection and not giving up.

About perseverance in the face of adversity.

About staying positive and moving forward.

Infertility messes you up.

Not just in the obvious sense of not being able to conceive easily, but mentally as well. It's

I'm pretty sure that after I experienced my miscarriage, I went into a state of depression. I'm thinking that it was on the milder side of things since I was still functioning, still able to get out of bed, and still able to do every day things. I did notice, however, that I didn't have the same drive or motivation to do things as I once did.

My dream of becoming a mother had finally come true, and on our own at that, and then just as quickly as we realized our dream, it was shattered. Into a million pieces.

I felt like I was in a million pieces.

Maybe I deal with grief more gracefully, or maybe I just lie to myself that I'm doing just fine.

Infertility infiltrates your life in a way that you might not even see coming. It lingers like that pimple that just won't go away or mosquito bite that just won't heal.

It seeps into your inner thoughts making you wonder why you should keep on believing or keep on trying. What's the point?

We're looking to possibly make a move and move into a bigger home in a better neighborhood for our future kids. The thoughts of, "What if we never have kids to fill this house?" creep into my head and make me question everything we're doing.

And that's not even addressing the stress that comes with everything it costs to go through and treat infertility. It's not cheap.

It's really upsetting that it is so simple (and inexpensive) to end a life through abortion, and yet it can be ridiculously cost-prohibitive for couples to start a family. I'm not trying to get in a debate about abortion, but I'd like to address the elephant in the room. I think that needs to be something politicians think about.

Every cycle that we go into, I start out ever so hopeful. Like, this could be it. This will be the cycle that gets us our baby.  I follow the protocol, the injections, the pills, the medications.

We try to do everything we can to have the best outcome.

And then disappointment.

How do you hang onto hope when you face disappointment? I don't have a clear answer.

I try to turn to gratitude and find the things that I'm grateful for. But I'd be remiss if I said that I didn't also take some time to be sad about it.

I think the key to balancing hope and disappointment is to not remain in disappointment. To take it for what it is and continue moving forward.

How do you hold onto hope in the midst of disappointment?


The Great Follistim Shortage

I was finally able to start a cycle with my doctor's office!

After waiting for a cyst on my ovary to collapse and travel plans to pass, I was finally able to move forward with treatment.

This time around, my doctor had me go straight into injections with Follistim. I was really lucky to have a friend who had some Follistim leftover from another cycle that was not yet expired. However, when I tried to order more, I learned that there was a national Follistim shortage.

How the heck does that happen!?

Considering that Follistim is lab-derived, you'd think that it would be fairly straightforward to keep in stock. Right? Well, apparently not. 

When I used up my supply from my friend, and needed more the same night, I let the nurse know that I didn't have any. She sent out the prescription for GonalF, which was it's own adventure in fertility drugs. However, since I didn't have any on hand and needed to inject myself with a dose that night, I was lucky enough to get some Follistim from my doctor's office that had been donated back by another patient. 

I drove through rush hour traffic all the way across the city and back, and in the midst of it all, one of my tires was losing pressure and I was super paranoid driving back across town in the event that it might blow out or get flat. Talk about stressful...

It boggles my mind how a pharmaceutical company isn't able to accurately forecast med quantities. You'd think that a shortage would be unheard of...or if there was a shortage that the pharma rep would let the doctor's office know.

And let's now get started on the complete and utter racket that the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are. They are no doubt in cahoots with each other for profit. I feel like insurance companies should be a non-profit organization based on principle alone - in order to provide the best care for their customers, instead of gouging them, quoting ridiculous pricing for medications.

I'm not sure how it's possible, but the medication that I ended up ordering through a cash pharmacy was quote to me at almost THREE times the cash price, and that was supposedly the "co-pay". In my experience, co-pays shouldn't cost more than the CASH price of a drug. Maybe I'm wrong, but something just seems terribly fishy there. 

As of this writing, Follistim is still in a state of national shortage, and hopefully should be back to normal stock by July.