Bully!

David and I begin our journey west to Medora tomorrow! We'll leave after work and head to Bismarck to stay with my cousin, Cory. I'm so excited to see his "new" home. He's lived there a long time and this is the first time I've been able to visit! Bad cousin!

Friday morning we plan to go to the North Dakota State Capitol, Fort Lincoln, and then on to Medora. I think I'm more excited about this road trip than any other trip we've been on!

Here are some pictures of what we'll see on our road trip:

North Dakota State Capitol:

Fort Lincoln (Custer's House):

Pitchfork Fondue in Medora:

Medora Musical:

Well this sucks...

BCBS is still stating that I have primary insurance with Great West. I called BCBS and got it resolved-including asking them to run AND approve my pre-authorization ASAP! **If the pre-auth wasn't approved, we would have had to pay the full $15,000 tomorrow morning.

I called Sanford back to let them know. I got transferred to the gal that runs the insurance. She tells me that we cannot do the IVF until JANUARY because the woman who does their part of the genetics (pulling the cell from the embryo, packaging up the cell to go to Detroit, receiving and analyzing the results from Genesis) will not be available in the October, November or December groups.

Son of a.....Have I ever told you that I have a sixth-sense? All day today I've been thinking, is tomorrow really the day? I have a tendency to day dream or envision of what an event will look like...I was having troubles getting a "vision" on this one. When this happens, it usually means that the event isn't going to happen.

I'm not upset. I'm not sad. I'm not frustrated. I'm just, "eh".

Positives:

Gives us time to save up more cash

More time to lose that weight I've been trying to lose

More time for David and Carmen time

Get to work on the DC project (who wouldn't want to work in DC).

Not having to travel to St. Louis while taking progesterone

A fall baby

Negatives:

Hormones during Christmas

Was looking forward to the DE project being my last project for awhile.

Being super, duper pregnant for my high school reunion.

Yeah, in the grand scheme of life-my negatives aren't that bad. I'm thankful I have a God who loves me and a husband who adores me!

Tomorrow is the day!

Tomorrow is the day that we have our "calendar appointment" with the Nurse Practitioner. We'll be able to secure our spot in the November IVF group and find out when I'll start taking the medications.

Paper work has been completed.

Discover card is paid off and credit limit is increased....

We have somewhat prepared ourselves for the sticker shock ($6,100 is due tomorrow) after already spending $3750 on the genetic testing.

We were so excited because we thought we were going to be able to sleep in tomorrow. I looked at our letter and our appointment is at 8 am not 9 am (so glad I looked!). So much for sleeping in. :)

I have nothing to be nervous about tomorrow. It's just a meeting with the NP...no medical procedure will be performed. I think I'm just nervous about the fact that this process is REALLY starting. The days of just David and I are soon going to be behind us. We look forward to having children but I know we'll miss all the time we have alone together. Yesterday we spent 6 hours watching Sex and The City episodes (we're on Season 6 now!).

Looking forward to telling you tomorrow that we have a date set!!!!

Official Confirmation

We have OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION that our genetic test is complete and that we are ready to start making some babies! YAY!

I love cake....

Hence the new background....

Genetic Testing

David and I had the wonderful privilege to speak with Dr. Mark Hughes of Genesis Genetics last week regarding our test. Here is what we learned:
1. He is a VERY smart man!
2. My mutation is located in the 32nd chapter, 23rd book, and 9th sentence or something to that effect. I can't remember the exact location and the information is at home.... :) Crappppp....
3. Right now, the error rate is 1-2% of correctly identifying the embryos with the TCS gene.
4. Our test was VERY difficult because my TCS was spontaneous (this is good news for my sisters and other family members).
5. Our error rate will become LOWER than 1-2% if I create any eggs/embryos with TCS because they'll develop our test even further. Sounds silly to wish for this but we kind of are. Even if we end up with no viable embryos, this would be a success for me!
6. So thankful for my fellow TCS mommy, Amy, because she totally understands what I just wrote! :)
7. All systems are GO! They have completed our test and are ready for our embryos! Yahoo!

Looks like NOVEMBER!

Wow! It has been forever since I've updated my blog and I appologize for this! Summer is a good excuse though, right?

Let's bring you up to speed...

The last I wrote was about deciding between the September group or the November group. My insurance "woes" and work pretty much made that decision for us! We will hopefully be doing our IVF cycle in November. We have our calendar visit with the Nurse Practitioner next Tuesday (8/24) where we will be able to nail that date down.

Speaking of insurance woes....My insurance FINALLY terminated July 31st...or so I thought! I received a call on a Friday afternoon that my pre-authorization to Blue Cross had denied because I was still enrolled in Great West (now part of Cigna). I did the logical thing and called my HR rep to make sure I didn't do something stupid like sign up for medical insurance! She confirmed that I opted out of the medical insurance coverage. I got a membership card from Cigna on Sunday. I called them and they said there was no termination date on my file. This was not a good way to start my vacation!!!! I sent a frantic email to my HR rep. She was SO GREAT! She got it resolved within 24 hours! But...the gal at MeritCare/Sanford that does the pre-authorizations to insurance is out until tomorrow. I really, really hope this doesn't ruin our chances to get into the November group!

As my Grandma always said, "if it's not one thing, it's another." :)