Attempt #3 began yesterday, and I'm fairly certain that I was not mentally ready for it. Some aspects of the kick-off of our final pre-paid IVF cycle were at least easier than previous cycles. The Tallahassee office now has a full-time nurse on staff, which meant I only had to drive 2.5 hours each way for the "start" appointment instead of 4+ hours to Jacksonville (saving me a hotel stay and forcing me to only miss one day of work instead of two), AND the Tallahassee office's blood testing machine (I don't know the fancy name) was finally fixed, which means they can draw my blood directly in their office instead of sending me to the local hospital where I'd inevitably have to wait 45-60 minutes to get a 45-second blood draw. And, since my husband is done teaching for the semester, he's able to come with me on my doctor's appointments so we can share the driving.
On the other hand, the pharmacy that ships me all of the fertility medicines decided to switch out one of the prescribed meds with the less-expensive version they carry in order to save me money, but nobody asked me or the doctor if that was okay, so I spent about 24 hours trying to get that straightened out since the meds have to be taken on a very strict schedule. I checked with my doctor's office and they confirmed that I should have received medicine B, not medicine A, so they called the pharmacy, and the pharmacy then called me telling me they had only tried to save me money (not my priority with all of this and they should have asked first), but if I really wanted to switch, I could return the meds for a full refund (how generous) and they'd give me the name of a pharmacy that does carry medicine B for about $150/less per vial. So then I had to call Pharmacy B, figure out how their discount program works, make sure they connected with my doctor's office to get the prescription, wait for the discount program to verify my discount, and then try again to connect with a person who could actually process the order. And they're in California, so everything was with a 3-hour time difference. It's not exactly how I wanted to start this round of IVF.
Like the last two cycles, I'll be giving myself shots in the morning and evening at very specific times for about 2 weeks. I sort of vaguely remembered that the meds affected me more in Round #2 than in Round #1, but until I looked back at my spreadsheets tracking all my injections and how I felt (I love spreadsheets), I had forgotten just how crappy these meds make me feel. I'm not looking forward to the multi-day headache that will probably appear in about two days, or the exhaustion level that will set in by Saturday. Not to mention that my stress level was already high before starting this cycle, so I'm pretty sure that my patience level for dealing with anything is going to be near zero (it might already be there). So, for those of you I see on a regular basis around town, or if I work with you, I'm going to be trying hard to keep my temper and tears in check, but please bear with me for the next two weeks as it's not something I can completely control while under the influence of these medicines.