It's been a week since RN ordered the pharmacy to mail in my meds, but the package is still not here. I'm expecting AF any minute, after which Day 2/3 blood work and US will be done. They might want me to take some of the medicines/injections with me that day, to show me how to use them. But I still don't have them! This is probably the only aspect of my insurance I don't like. For all fertility drugs, it has to be mailed in, cannot buy and get reimbursed. But like many other things, with the cons come pros. The pros here are- I don't have to stress about filing reimbursement, and then follow up on its status.
My second concern was I'm already having periods' discharge past 2 days, yet I changed the estrogen patch last night. Was I or was I not supposed to do that? Until how long do I use those patches?
Left a VM at the RN's desk. Hoping to hear back from her by tonight.
DH and I plan on meeting with acupuncturist today. DH is pretty upset with acupuncturist's repeated promises his herbal pills and acupuncture will lengthen my luteal phase. We really didn't expect it to be 8 days short despite putting in months of treatments and pills. All without any insurance coverage!I'm too meek to talk sternly with any doc, in fact this guy ends up playing with my emotions by asking me to be patient. Asking me for another month of postponing IVF which, isn't happening now. DH will talk with him tonight. It's so easy for women like us to fall prey to such doctors who claim success on their websites. There will be 10, or 20, or let's say 50 success stories of couples struggling with TTC, who may have had multiple IUIs, IVFs fail, and then this acupuncturist helped them conceive either naturally (that works instantly to attract at least 20 new clients), or through IVF in conjunction with acupuncture, where the couple says "Dr. ____'s treatment made all the difference! He gave us our precious baby, we had lost hope." There will be at least few cases of women with DOR/POF who'll say IVF doctors were frocing DE on them but this acupuncture and herbal pills changed it all! They conceived naturally! Or through IVF without DE. All thanks to Dr. ___!
But do all of us, even once wonder if it's possible that some of the cases might be a work of the Dr.'s own imagination? A marketing strategy? Or, the 50 success stories we are reading, is that 100% success rate of doctor, or 50% or 10%? What if the doctor has 100 patients, and only 2 are successful? Those 2 put their testimonials on doctor's website, or the doc asks them to, and we end up reading those 2 stories! We think this acupuncturist got these couples a baby! So he'll help us too! But what we don't know of is the other 98 who went home without any baby, and had lost too much time, patience and hopes. I know the same applies to IVF too. WSJ gave an article few months back on how we never get to know how many IVF cases fail. We only see the successful part of it. I agree. I'm an example of it.
However, we kind of know something about what goes on in IVF, but we've no clue with acupuncture or herbs. Hence, though I strongly encourage Eastern medicines and therapies, for something as critical as DOR/POF cases, I highly recommend not giving the acupuncturist more than 2-3 months of trial. If really all your other western resources are lost, you've had 4/5/6 IVFs, nothing helped, you've nothing to lose, go on for as long as you like. But I think when time is running out, 2-3 months is good to see how we're doing. If you see improvement in your cycle, the cervical mucus, or something, stick on for anotehr month or two. But you need to have some parameter to check for improvement. My acupuncturist failed me with all the parameters I had. Neither my CM changed (it remained thick, yellowish all through), nor did my luteal phase lengthen. Despite five months of acupuncture, and four months of pills. So all I ended up doing was raising my hopes, taking $100 ea nap thrice a week on his table, and paying $90 for pills that I don't know did what in my body. But I sure did increase the acupuncturist's bank balance.
My second concern was I'm already having periods' discharge past 2 days, yet I changed the estrogen patch last night. Was I or was I not supposed to do that? Until how long do I use those patches?
Left a VM at the RN's desk. Hoping to hear back from her by tonight.
DH and I plan on meeting with acupuncturist today. DH is pretty upset with acupuncturist's repeated promises his herbal pills and acupuncture will lengthen my luteal phase. We really didn't expect it to be 8 days short despite putting in months of treatments and pills. All without any insurance coverage!I'm too meek to talk sternly with any doc, in fact this guy ends up playing with my emotions by asking me to be patient. Asking me for another month of postponing IVF which, isn't happening now. DH will talk with him tonight. It's so easy for women like us to fall prey to such doctors who claim success on their websites. There will be 10, or 20, or let's say 50 success stories of couples struggling with TTC, who may have had multiple IUIs, IVFs fail, and then this acupuncturist helped them conceive either naturally (that works instantly to attract at least 20 new clients), or through IVF in conjunction with acupuncture, where the couple says "Dr. ____'s treatment made all the difference! He gave us our precious baby, we had lost hope." There will be at least few cases of women with DOR/POF who'll say IVF doctors were frocing DE on them but this acupuncture and herbal pills changed it all! They conceived naturally! Or through IVF without DE. All thanks to Dr. ___!
But do all of us, even once wonder if it's possible that some of the cases might be a work of the Dr.'s own imagination? A marketing strategy? Or, the 50 success stories we are reading, is that 100% success rate of doctor, or 50% or 10%? What if the doctor has 100 patients, and only 2 are successful? Those 2 put their testimonials on doctor's website, or the doc asks them to, and we end up reading those 2 stories! We think this acupuncturist got these couples a baby! So he'll help us too! But what we don't know of is the other 98 who went home without any baby, and had lost too much time, patience and hopes. I know the same applies to IVF too. WSJ gave an article few months back on how we never get to know how many IVF cases fail. We only see the successful part of it. I agree. I'm an example of it.
However, we kind of know something about what goes on in IVF, but we've no clue with acupuncture or herbs. Hence, though I strongly encourage Eastern medicines and therapies, for something as critical as DOR/POF cases, I highly recommend not giving the acupuncturist more than 2-3 months of trial. If really all your other western resources are lost, you've had 4/5/6 IVFs, nothing helped, you've nothing to lose, go on for as long as you like. But I think when time is running out, 2-3 months is good to see how we're doing. If you see improvement in your cycle, the cervical mucus, or something, stick on for anotehr month or two. But you need to have some parameter to check for improvement. My acupuncturist failed me with all the parameters I had. Neither my CM changed (it remained thick, yellowish all through), nor did my luteal phase lengthen. Despite five months of acupuncture, and four months of pills. So all I ended up doing was raising my hopes, taking $100 ea nap thrice a week on his table, and paying $90 for pills that I don't know did what in my body. But I sure did increase the acupuncturist's bank balance.
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