The Peace of a Dove

Despite all of the craziness of the past week (2 preschool graduations, 3 days of cheerleading practices/tryouts, 2 last-days of school for my 3- and then 4-year-old classes, cleaning my classroom & new developments unfolding with the doctor's office), I've somehow managed to feel some sense of peace and calm (albeit nervousness) this week.

The graduations went really smoothly. Monday night's was the one for the 4-year-old class & it's definitely the more formal (and stressful) of the two. Everything went as planned (except for a minor catastrophe where the church had double-booked the chapel, which was our location...the choir had to be moved, which actually was a pretty substantial hassle for them). The 3-year-old's graduation was yesterday morning...it's actually not a graduation, but more an end-of-the-year celebration, since they're technically not going anywhere & will all be returning next year...it was a really adorable way to end an otherwise stressful year filled with parent issues, poopy pants, and behavior struggles, which all, thankfully started to work themselves out with the proper diagnosis and assistance!

And then yesterday, I decided to email my nurse at the RE's office because I realized that since they hadn't bothered to tell us up-front that we would have to pay for the donor's meds out-of-pocket, or for our psych evaluations out-of-pocket (which had no real likelihood of ever being reimbursed by our insurance), they probably had some other things that they weren't telling us...boy was I right! ugh...I emailed the nurse under the assumption that the RE's office would be handling all charges for my donor's bloodwork and ultrasound, even via distance monitoring, due to the fact that it was for a study and they could simply handle the matter from one doctor's office insurance to another...I mean, since they hadn't given us an itemized list of costs & since we've never done a study cycle before and we OF COURSE have never done a donor cycle before, we would have no idea about any of this...especially since the doctor had told me at the original consultation that the only cost to us would be getting our donor tested, or about $2000. This is a cut and paste of my Q&A w/ the nurse...

Q: Hi - just another question about something I wanted to be clear on...my donor will be doing her monitoring for the IVF study at a clinic closer to her home (not sure exactly where yet - still working on that). I will NOT be billed for the distance monitoring since it is in connection with the study, correct? I just don't want to get blind-sided with a bill or anything after the fact, as it has never been stated that her monitoring must be done on-site in order to be covered under the study. Thanks!

A: I’m sorry, but you will not be reimbursed for monitoring done at another center. You would need to pay them directly for any services done there. We would only cover monitoring for your donor that is done at RMA. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Regards, Jill

Needless to say, I'm pretty nervous about what this means for us...if the office charged us what they actually charge the insurance company, we wouldn't really mind so much, but considering how steeply they inflate their prices for uninsured billing, added to the fact that B could need up to 10 u/s & b/w...well...I'm wondering how the RE thought that this could POSSIBLY be cheaper for us than just any other IVF cycle. If anyone has any insight on this, please, please, PLEASE throw it our way! Otherwise, just pray!

But, yes. Despite all of this, I do still have a strange sense of peace...you know, that "peace that passes understanding." Understandably, my human self wants to worry, but somehow I just know that all of this will fall into place...

And this little nesting mama dove that I discovered (aka almost watered) yesterday in my hanging planter on the porch is a reminder of that peace...