SF's last blog post made me blush, a lot, not only because of his generosity in not blaming me for the problems we've had, but also because he's right about the other stuff -- my passport renewal form is sitting on the piano and has been for ... awhile. Sigh.

Friday started out on a rough note. Our cat had a tooth pulled a few weeks ago, and we were referred to a specialist with the news that two more of his teeth looked abscessed but were hard to get at. At his appointment on Friday, we found out he has resorptive disease and we needed to have five of his teeth pulled or consign him to a painful process as they dissolved and fell out of his head. The good news is that he seems to be recovering well from the extractions (he's curled up on my lap asleep right now). The bad news is that it was an $800 bill weren't exactly expecting, an we found out about it as we were walking out the door to go to talk about IVF.

Things went more smoothly with the RE than I'd feared they would. It was absolutely nuts there that afternoon. Every seat in the waiting room was taken, and everyone we talked to seemed a little punchy. I realize that sounds like a bad thing in a medical practice, but it really was what we needed at that point. We asked most of the questions we had, but we also laughed a lot during the appointment. Anytime I laugh more than cry in that room is a successful appointment in my book.

Although he did say he could see an argument for continuing on injectables, he pretty clearly agreed with our decision to move on to IVF. We went over a bit of the medical stuff -- he doesn't think the diminished ovarian reserve is likely to present a problem; he said he'd expect 1-3 follicles if it were trouble, but we've been getting 7-8. He seemed to think our chances were at least reasonable.

Then they brought out the price list.

My eyes went wide.

Eek! The new price listed didn't include the Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis!

We brought that up so they could add it in ...


... and the result was still $3400 less than the price they quoted us in June. They have comped some of the procedures and have added an option of making payments (which we're hoping to avoid). And they've offered to do all of the monitoring and blood work for one set price now that our insurance coverage for even the lab has conked out.

We were ecstatic. We are ecstatic. It's still going to cost a lot of money, but it takes so much of the pressure off to know that we might have the option of doing a second try if the first doesn't work.