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I'm a wife, mom, and gestational surrogate. I've been blessed to be able to have 2 beautiful daughters of my own and 2 cute little surro babes for IPs. With the support of my WONDERFUL family and friends, I'm doing it again!! Follow me on my journey...

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Mock Cycle Begins

I'm all "cleared" from the clinic! (Guess I fooled that psych test pretty well!) :)

Now I start my "mock cycle"...What is a mock cycle? I'm glad you asked!
In a nutshell a mock cycle is basically a "practice run". I am put on the same estrogen medication that I'd be on if I were going to do a real transfer, I go in for blood work and ultrasounds to get my lining checked and that way the Dr's will know if the meds are the correct dosage or if they need to tweak anything. Once they know what will work THEN I stop the meds and start all over again for the real thing.

Kinda cumbersome, but it makes sense. I mean, why would you go in blind for such an important thing? Anywho, I start on estrogen patches tomorrow and I have a check-up on the 1st and the 11th. We'll see how it goes! Hopefully we'll be having a transfer by the end of October. I'll keep ya posted.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

This Is What Persistence Looks Like!

Some of you may know that I have been through the ringer with my insurance situation! United started saying that they would not cover a surrogate pregnancy and I was getting conflicting answers when I would call in to ask. They had previously sent me a denial letter in the mail to which I appealed about a month ago and guess what I got today???? A letter from United stating that the decision has been overturned and they will cover!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am beyond excited and can't wait to share the info with my IP's! When we got the denial they just decided to get another insurance so that we could get the ball rolling and they didn't want to wait for an appeal decision b/c they just figured it would be the same answer. This will save them such an expense and I'm glad I took the time to appeal...I guess persistence does pay off...
WOO HOO!!!

Monday, August 9, 2010

The Medical Screening

I'll try to make this brief...

Went to Colorado on Thursday night after work...stewardess, airline hostess, flight attendant, whatever you wanna call her was a TOTAL BEEYOTCH! Talk about someone that hates their job...
Then when we get to the airport and some sleeze-bag a**hole of a salesman is trying to sell us something and apparently we didnt give him the answer he wanted to hear so he proceeds to degrade any person (including us) that doesn't want to listen to his sales pitch. Kevin (LITERALLY) had to hold me back...or else this blog would be coming from Colorado State Prison....
NTWAYZ... got to the hotel around 9pm (10pm our time), took a shower, went to bed...got up at 6:30am! (so we'd have time to eat breakfast)...had to be at the clinic at 8am, we got there at 7:30. The clinic was really nice, unlike any other "clinic" I'd seen before...they were very prompt and didn't keep us waiting for anything. I had 8 appt's in one day!
7:40a - Got an ultrasound 1st (that was deemed "okay")
8:15a - Had a hysteroscopy done (interesting) (also "okay")
8:45a - "Formally" met with the Dr....which is kind of weird b/c you'd think the "formal" meeting would come BEFORE he was all up in my stuff....anyway.......
9:30a - Psychologist Consult....(again, interesting...amazingly enough I was still deemed "okay") lol
10:30a - Nurse Consult...the IM came for this part, it was nice to have her there...we got A LOT of information and questions answered.
11:30a - Labs for both Kevin and I...this time Kevin was the pin cushion! :) He got stuck 3 or 4 times! YIKES!
12:00p - MMPI...(Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), in layman's terms, I had to take a long ass 597 question "personality assessment!" FML.
12:45p - Just when I thought I was done....I had to take ANOTHER FRIGGIN test!!!! (called a PAI; Personality Assessment Inventory) Oh, but this time it was only 396 questions. FML.

Let me give you a little example of a few of the crazy a$$, random questions that were on these tests:

T/F:  I often contemplate what I would write in a suicide note.        WTF!?
T/F: I would like to work as a mechanic                                            Really?
T/F: I oftentimes find myself angry for no reason at all                   Hmm?
Some of the questions were understandable, but 98% of them were absoulte BS! And then they throw in words like "often, seldom, mostly" (and sometimes all in the same sentence!) i.e. I often think about seldomly killing animals most of the time (not a real question, but u get my drift)... and you're left totally confused...I think the test is made to make you look like a loon!

Well, we finally got out of there at about 1:30. I swear I was about to change my mind about everything if I would have had to take ONE MORE FKN TEST! I felt like I was taking the SAT all over again.
Anyway, then we went to this yummy Italian restaurant for lunch and went to the airport. So, no, not a vacation; for those of you that may have been disillusioned.
Plane was delayed by an hour and a half. Didn't get home until about 11pm.
Now we have to wait 2 weeks for the labs and looney tests to come back, for "clearance". After that I will start on all the fun meds. Lol.
I'm hopeful that will be by the end of this month.
...that wasn't very "brief" was it.... :)