As I chipped away at my checklist, scan after scan, awaiting results… appointment after appointment, gathering information. The one little thing on that checklist that ended up being a bigger deal than I would have thought: Egg retrieval. Oh ya, if you want the chance to have kids when you are done with treatment due to the effects of chemotherapy on your fertility, you should get your eggs retrieved, and do it before you begin chemotherapy. I had a phone call appointment on a Friday afternoon with a doctor at Seattle Reproductive Medicine who laid out all of my options. The options were 1) go forward with the egg retrieval and freeze your eggs 2) turn the eggs into embryos and freeze embryos 3) opt out all together and hope that you are still fertile after treatment and wish for the best. Oh and by the way… this is not covered by your insurance and it will cost you nearly 8-10,000 dollars. You have to decide by Monday because we need to start chemotherapy as soon as possible. Talk about a rushed decision.
OKAY. Decision made I guess! We decided to do the egg retrieval, just freeze eggs at this time and decide later if we wanted to turn them into embryos. (Cheaper now, more expensive later).
Now for the actual egg retrieval process… a whirlwind to say the least. Starting right away of course since we were on such a time crunch to start treatment. I had to set up blood work, ultra sound, obtain all of the medications and syringes for injecting the medication. I also had the opportunity to apply for grants and financial assistance. We did get approved for the medications to be covered by a financial assistance program called Livestrong which helps cover fertility assist for cancer patients. The medications alone were up to $4,000. I also received $700 towards the egg retrieval process from a grant called TeamMaggie who also assists cancer patients going through this process. Even though it still cost over $7,000 I am grateful for the assistance and support from nonprofit organizations such as these in a time where you don’t expect to be throwing thousands of dollars into a treatment after just a few weeks of being diagnosed with cancer. Anyways… egg retrieval, here we go.
Mandafit 