Insurance & Vitamins

Laying in bed the other night, I had the bright idea that maybe insurance would cover drugs.  Of course, Holly H. was emailed to ask if the drugs can be used for other things and thus maybe get covered.  Her reply was "no" and "we can't fake it!"  I called our insurance this morning and was very nicely told "no" but that I could "try and submit a claim" and one of the books mentions someone who did submit a claim and got reimbursed.  So we'll try it.  Oh well, but we can still attempt.  The worst they can say is no right and then we are in the same place as we started right?

In other news, a recent study found that if insurance companies chose to cover all infertility benefits - including IVF - the cost to each policyholder would be about $20 a year!  $20 a year!  That's crazy cheap.  Whereas, prenatal care costs insurance companies about 200 times the amount of fertility treatments!  Yet that is covered by many (not ours), but fertility treatments are not.  Who set up this crazy cycle?!

Yes folks, we're on our own for this one.  So want to make sure that we do everything we can to get it to work!

So in that respect, let's discuss vitamins.  I've told you all about my anger towards my prenatals and while I now take them every morning with my birth control pills (which stop on Tuesday), they still aren't my favorite thing.  But this isn't about my affliction to vitamins, it's about J's.

Last year, I was way lucky and won one of Busted Kate's raffles.  It was chock full of fun things...Fertiliaid for J and myself, a fertility bracelet, and a slew of other things.  They've all be dwelling in the cupboard until this point.  Why not use all the best things during the first cycle of IVF right?  So after checking with Holly H., I gave the Fertilitaid Men's Vitamins to J and instructed him to take 3 a day please, per the doc.  This was the beginning of May.  And then I left it alone...I often don't see J all day, but when I would randomly see him in the morning, I would watch him take his pill.  So I thought we were all good.

Cut to last Friday when I picked up the bottle to see if I needed to order more and it felt A LOT heavier than I thought it should have almost a month after beginning to take the pills.  Open it up and the dang thing is three-quarters full!  ARGH!  I started to get really mad!  Now J had said that they thought the vitamins made his stomach hurt, but I really didn't think much of it. And my second thought was, "I don't care if your tummy hurts, this is important and nothing compared to the shots that I will do next month. Suck it up!"

He doesn't like to take pills, and these happen to be horse pills...so because he finds them difficult to swallow, he was cutting them open and putting them in his morning protein shake!  First off, eww!  Second, that's why his stomach was hurting is what I thought.  But after that first notion and my idea to actually EAT something before taking the pills, I never heard anything about it.  So I emailed Holly H. again and asked if I could look for different pills that he could take, and what they needed.  Also, what would he have to do to not take them.

So when he came home last Friday, I asked him, "when was the last time you took one of these?"  Knowing he was busted, he said, "at least a couple weeks.  They upset my stomach!"  I replied, "I wish you had said something earlier, because now we've lost all that time!"  I told him I had emailed Holly H. but as she wasn't responding (found out later she was at a convention in San Fran), he needed to take them.  He got a little upset, but realized I was right.  So downstairs we went and he pulled one out.  Now remember, he is supposed to take 3 a day!  To me that means, all at once.  I watched him take the first one and then said, "aren't you supposed to take 3?"  He got a little heated at that moment and said, "not all at once" and read me the bottle.  To which I replied, "so you've been taking them at lunch and dinner too?"  And with that, he zipped it, knowing he was not only busted but wrong!

Holly H. finally emailed me back on Monday and said J could stop the pills if he did the following:
1. Gave up soda entirely
2. Gave up beer entirely
3. Gave up all fast food, junk food, etc.
4. Only ate veggies, fruits, whole grains and healthy meat

So when J came home on Tuesday, I relayed the following message to him...
"Holly H. says you can stop the vitamins IF you do the following..." (his eyes got all bright) and I told him the above directions.  First words out of his mouth were, "I'll take the vitamins."  And since then he's been very good.  You can bet I've asked him every day if he got all 3 doses, but he's done very good.

We're on track now.  And Tuesday is our first appointment for our injection class.  My plan is to take goodies so Holly H. likes me more, and doesn't get frustrated with all my question.  I'd like to say I'll take goodies to all of our appointments, but I can't promise.  As this office is pretty healthy based, I have to try and make them pretty healthy snacks...so we'll see how long I can hold out.  But at least for the big appointments!

Here we go....