Let the Crazy begin...

I know. It's been a week since our return consult with the doctor, and I still haven't written about it. In my defense, I've been crazy busy at work, and then I was out of town for the past two nights. But now things have slowed down and I'm back in town and now I'm ready to write about it.

To keep things brief, he officially diagnosed me with PCOS. It's the diagnosis that I was expecting, so it didn't really surprise me at all. He also said that he wanted to try to figure out what is going on with J. He recommended that J get some bloodwork done to see where things stood with him. He also mentioned with me that I have some underlying health things that aren't really issues yet, but could be in the future...things like the potential for high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol, and diabetes. He said we had two options...we could try to get the some of the underlying health issues under control through diet and exercise to see if that would help my body regulate itself again, or we could start using medication and go that route. The surprising thing was that if we wanted to go the medication route, the doctor said that I wouldn't have to wait for my next period...if I went in and got a baseline ultrasound and bloodwork to see how my hormones and uterine lining look, and everything checked out, I could get started right away. If my uterine lining was too thick, they'd give me something to induce my period and then I'd get started. If we decided to go the medication route, he recommended that we do an IUI as well as intercourse to increase our chances of getting pregnant. He also said that I could either use ovulation predictor kits at home to monitor my progress after I finish the medication to see when I was getting ready to ovulate, or I could do in-office monitoring. If I did in-office monitoring, they would also do an hCG trigger shot and then do the IUI about 36 hours later. J and I looked at each other, and we were both pretty sure that we would want to go the medication route since we're in a bit of a hurry, but we didn't want to make the decision right there in his office. J went ahead and made his appointment for bloodwork for last Friday. Then we talked about it on Wednesday evening, and officially made our decision to go the medication route.

I called on Thursday to figure out what I would need to do. The lady I talked to in the doctor's office mentioned that they still needed to get authorization from my insurance company, so we tentatively set up an appointment for me to go in this morning for the baseline bloodwork and ultrasound so that they would have time to get all of the proper authorizations.

On Friday J got his bloodwork done. The doctor's office called him that afternoon and told him that they want him to take Clomid for a month. He and I had a little chuckle over the fact that we were both going to be taking Clomid.

I called the doctor's office on Monday afternoon to check on the status of the authorization. It's a good thing that I did, because the nurse that I talked to said that she had to re-submit some stuff, but that everything should be taken care of.

Yesterday I spent way more time on the phone than I should have trying to get all of the medication stuff sorted out. First there was a call from the company that manages fertility care for our insurance company to verify whether I had any hCG from a previous cycle...and that would be a no. When I told the lady that it was my first cycle, she gave me a brief runthrough of what I would need to do, and then she said that I should be getting a call from the pharmacy my doctor's office uses for their fertility meds to talk about my copayment and schedule delivery. Then, about an hour later, I got a call from the pharmacy. They wanted to verify my insurance info and discuss delivery. When I mentioned that I might possibly need to start Clomid today, the lady said that I would be able to have that portion of the order tranferred to a local pharmacy and get the rest delivered. She asked when I would know for sure about when I would start the Clomid, and I told her today. She said that they also needed to verify my copayment amounts for the various drugs in the order, so they would call me back today. I got the call this afternoon, and I told them that I still didn't know about when I would be starting the Clomid, so the lady that I talked to today put my order on hold until I could call them back. About five minutes after I got off the phone with her, the doctor's office called and said that everything looked ok for me to go on the Clomid tonight so I called the pharmacy back and gave them my payment and scheduled delivery of everything except the Clomid for tomorrow. Then I called a local pharmacy to have them call the fertility meds pharmacy to get the prescription tranferred and get it filled. And then I took my first dose tonight.

So now I'm waiting for the Crazy to begin...