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insurance debacle...cont'd

Sunday, August 31, 2008

after i figured out that my insurance company doesn't cover much in the realm of infertility, i started doing some more digging around.

what i found only made me even more angry. (as if that were even a possibility)

apparently, texas has a law on the books that mandates insurance companies make available the OPTION for an employer to choose coverage for infertility. so, that means my anger has been misguided, kinda. and now it's directed towards my employer. and for those of you who know who that is...yes, i had a good laugh, too. assholes.

i should point out that we're not even to the point of either IUI or IVF, yet. i mean, once we get the green light (remember, we're on a sabbatical until jan '09), we've decided to do at least 3 months of monitoring and drug therapy. after that, we've discussed IUI w/ injectables. but that's as far as our discussions have gone. or perhaps that's as far as we're allowing our minds to wander. either way, it's still as upsetting knowing that none of this will be covered by anything other than our bank account...dwindle, dwindle.....

***
AF started this week....told ya i wasn't pregnant. i wonder if i'll ever get back to the point of being so excited, i can't hardly wait to POAS? doubtful.
***
completely off-topic but am i the only one who experiences punctuation issues (specifically spacing) with blogger? it's driving me insane!

the big read

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The Big Read (a program of the National Endowment for the Arts) guesses that the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books on this list.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I have started but not finished it entirely)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (I've read it but now that I'm older, I'd like to re-read it)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (saw the movie; I think the book is probably better)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

38 books; not bad! thank you AP English! i'd say about 1/3 of the books that i have marked "to be read", i actually have them and they're in a stack, waiting for me.

i'm sorry, what was that?

Saturday, August 23, 2008

*warning: language

part 1

while i was checking out @ my annual, the nurse asked me if i'd like her to call my insurance company & ask what my "infertility care" benefits were. knowing they probably weren't great , i decided why not, i'll spare myself the frustration. right?

wrong.

i received a letter in the mail from my dr's office about a week later. here's a summary:

"...we were told you have limited benefits and are not fully covered for infertility treatment....Excluded services will include IUI's, sperm wash and HCG injections."

it gets better...

"These charges (see above) must be paid at the time of your visit and will be discounted 20%. To assist you in planning, we have enclosed a fee schedule."

forget frustration! i was (am) livid! so, what better thing to do when you are livid and your eyes are popping out of your head but call the insurance company? oh what a lucky day it was for the rep on the other end of the line. this was our conversation:

me: i just got a disturbing letter from my OBGYN's office. i have a couple of questions regarding my "infertility care."

rep: ok. what can i help you with?

me: all of it.

rep: i'm sorry?

me: i want a full explanation as to why you don't cover anything other than the diagnosis of infertility. please explain my coverage, or lack thereof, for fertility drugs and treatment.

rep: well, we do cover the drugs....as long as they're not used directly prior to and to aid an IUI or IVF.

me: what? you'll cover them as long as i don't use them for IUI or IVF?

rep: yes.

me: and why don't you cover IUI or IVF?

wait for it...

rep: because both are considered experimental.

me: you're shitting me?

rep: i'm sorry. what was that?

me: you've got to be SHITTING me!?! ((( EXPERIFUCKINGMENTAL?))) in 1978, the first successful IVF baby was born but IVF history goes back further and even further is when the first IUI was performed (see here). so you tell me? how the hell can IVF and IUI still be classified as "experimental"?

rep: i can't answer that ma'am. but our coverage changes annually; feel free to call back to see if it's been updated. i'm truly sorry ma'am.

me: yea, me too.

********************************

part 2

i've been slowly compiling research on infertility. i've read that 1 in 6 couples are infertile. ONE in SIX. that means there is someone in your life who is infertile. that means this is not an uncommon diagonsis. that means this isn't some obsure condition. what that means is that infertility treatment needs to be mandated and insurance companies need to be forced to offer coverage just like any other medical condition!

shortly after i had that conversation with my insurance company, i was reading Infertility Diaries, a blog on Redbook's website, written by Jen from Maybe If You Just Relax. Jen did a post about the lack of coverage for infertility treatments. Jen is very lucky in that she does have some coverage. Here's an excerpt that thru me for a little loop-de-loop & gave me whiplash:

So imagine my surprise when I get my explanation of benefits...
Total Charges for IVF #1: $14,650
Total Paid by Insurance: $4,750
Total Patient Responsibility: $350


are you reading that correctly? do you see that? do you see that for ME, an infertile without coverage, i would have to pay upwards of 15G's for ONE cycle of IVF. but those motherf'ers...i mean, insurance companies, only have to pay $5K?

oh, yea. i'm bending over alright. assholes.

but being the person that i am, i look to the brighter side of things. i like to think of life as a glass half full...which is why i'm ever-so-thankful that my OBGYN has offered to give me a 20% discount.

@@

to be continued....yes, there's more.

mini-update

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

spent the yesterday/night in the ER w/ the captain. some sort of "strange bug". horrible symptoms. poor guy; can't catch a break. he's home recovering.

currently on cd26. no signs of AF...no back pain, no leg pain, no cramping. all of this to say, i'm not expecting to be pregnant....

also got an update regarding my insurance and infertility coverage...post coming. oh yes, you should indeed check back.

going to catch up on some work...will bbl to post more.

uno libre

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

i can't remember if i mentioned that my brother, j , was staying with us. he's 12. yes, twelve. yes, we are 16 yrs apart. i know, i've wondered what my mom was thinking, too! haha.

a few weeks ago, he told the captain that one of his friends calls him "Uno" b/c of his unibrow. well, for those of you who know the captain, you know that was j's biggest mistake! it didn't take long for the teasing to start. for the past year or so, i'd been begging j to let me take him and get that thing waxed...but he would never give in. until i started calling him Uno Libre. yep, j had become Uno Libre (& you have to say it with flare "Unnnoooooo Leeebre" - don't forget to roll that "r"). as you can imagine...well, if you know us IRL, you can imagine...that this running joke was non-stop. poor j. i kinda felt bad. kinda. ok, not really. he is my brother after all and therefore, he deserves the same treatment as any other sibling....a bit of ribbing!

he finally asked me to take him to get the uni waxed. but we ran out of time. and i felt bad that he returned home yesterday with all that hair. until i got a call from j....

"Uno Libre is no longer!"

he asked mom to stop on the way home to get waxed...she did...and he's so happy.

too bad he doesn't yet realize that Uno Libre can't be held down.

long live the uni!

;)

some things, i'll never understand

Monday, August 11, 2008

sometimes i wonder if being IF has made me so bitter that even the little things about having a baby can potentially annoy me.

a good friend (who does not know of this blog) of ours is having a baby girl soon. we are thrilled for them! i pulled up their registry and about half way thru it, i noticed a trend. everything and anything that had a color option was PINK. i don't mean a few items....i mean EVERYTHING...bedding, trashcan, pillows, clothes, socks, wall art, car seat stuff, highchair cover, bouncer and saucer (hot pink!)....even pink burp cloths!?!?!?!

i nearly puked.

seriously? this is the 2nd time i've seen this. wth?

still feeling defiant, i got lil' miss some yellow and green things. i know she'll thank me later.

silent defiance

Thursday, August 7, 2008

oh yes, i did.

*i couldn't get the pic i took to load, so i found this almost identical sign for the post

good & bad news

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

we'll start w/ the bad news....

bad news: dr called w/ my lab results. neh. PAP was completely normal, yay! all other labs - not good. my cholesterol is totally out-of-whack...i'm not even going to post the numbers b/c it's just shameful. bah. and my glucose? my glucose is out of range, too! too high...which is weird b/c i've changed my diet and i'm on the met, so i thought that'd help. i dunno. my dr is going to call my "regular" dr and confer...i think i'll retest in 3mo.

gOoD nEwS: i'm fairly certain i ovulated yesterday, cd13. i felt a twinge most of the evening on my lower right side. nothing too painful but just enough discomfort to notice. i am beyond thrilled. this is the first time EVER i've felt ovulation. teehee. doesn't take much to excite me!

29

Saturday, August 2, 2008

august 2

1876 Wild Bill Hickok was murdered in Deadwood, S.D.

1909 The first Lincoln penny was issued.

1923 Warren G. Harding, the 29th president of the United States, died in San Francisco.

1943 PT-109, a torpedo boat commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy, was sunk off the Solomon Islands by a Japanese destroyer.

1945 The Potsdam Conference, in which Allied leaders planned the postwar governance of Germany, ended.

1990 The Persian Gulf War broke out when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

1979 at 6:42pm, the world was graced with a baby girl named dana