I have a Law

Much like dear Murphy, maker of fantastic soap for your hard-wood floors and single Mother television icons, I too have a law. Similar to Murphy’s law, which states that if anything can go wrong it will, my law is more specific: anything that can be seen as simple by others will become extremely complicated for me.

Take this here FET cycle. Today should have been a simple pop in to a clinic for your simple, run of the mill, blood work and baseline ultrasound. Except it was anything but simple.

My day began at 6am with the obligatory shower and shave that I like to provide for all of my ultrasound technicians. I’m nice like that. I grabbed the directions to the local women’s clinic that had agreed to perform my transvag ultrasounds and a box of fancy breakfast muffins to thank the staff for willing to work with me. I had one crap conversation with an office worker a few weeks ago and I didn’t want to risk the chance that she would be playing pool up my hoo ha with the tran-stick. The best way to smooth over a bad phone conversation is high carb muffins and kindness. I had both when I walked in to the clinic at 8am.

My banana nut gift was a big hit and I felt all was going to go well. Soon the waiting room filled up with teenagers. Pregnant teenagers. With toddlers. And, no joke, every single one of them was squeezed into the smallest shirt I could imagine. Bottle tanned bellies with stretched out tribal tattoos peeked out from underneath Forever 21 animal print tanks. Shoeless toddlers ran around the room smacking into each other and falling down into a fit of screams.

But I was cool. I was the fucking Muffin girl. I smiled at every other patient waiting and genuinely felt ok with being not only twice the age of the other gals but also the only one with a purse full of tampons. Serenity Now.

My name was eventually called and I could tell by the apologetic wrinkle in the nurse’s forehead that something was up. She brought me back to an office and we sat down and she pushed the orders that had been faxed over from North East Clinic at me. And she began with, “Ma’am” (ouch) “Ma’am, I just don’t think I can do what you need me to do.” She pointed to numbers 3-6 on the fax and looked up at me with wide-eyed wonder and said, “I just don’t know what they mean by antral follicle. I’m really just used to working with pregnant women.”

So all of the weeks of banter to confirm that they had a transvag machine and someone skilled to use it for fertility purposes was a waste. The fucking banana muffins were a waste. I was told that someone that DID know how to use it “better” would be in the office next tuesday. Yeah. I don’t imagine a CD 6 scan will work for me.

Utterly dejected I knew I had to go back to the rip off clinic. Rip off clinic is the one that I used for my October & December cycles that charged me an extra $250 for EVERY visit just to fax the results to NEC. I mean I get charging me a monitoring fee or even a one time out of town hassle charge once, but $250 every visit? & that included if I just needed blood work.

But I figured I would have to bite the bullet this time. This one time I would find a way to come up with the $500 bucks. That’s right- $500. $250 for the b/w & u/s and $250 to fax it. Lovely clinic, right? When this is all over and done with I will gladly say the name of the clinic. They go on the BAD list that I have in the back of my fertility notebook. Right along with the clinics that won’t treat single women or same sex couples. shame, shame shame…but I digress. Because it really does get more shitty. It’s the LAW.

So I call rip off clinic and of course they are all sunshine and Ziggy cartoons on the phone with me and lure me into the trap of thinking that maybe they won’t rip me off. Since I last saw them in December they had moved offices and even had a donor egg program up and running.

I had to run back home and get GM to bring with me as it is now nearly 11am and Mother needed to go in to work. The rip off clinic’s new location was a block away from Mother’s office so at the last minute she decided to come in with me to keep GM amused in the waiting room. Very nice of her.

We show up, I have my blood work and u/s (which, by the way, seemed perfectly normal for CD2 [knocking wood], but am still waiting for NEC to call me back) and then I was pointed towards billing. Ah billing. Those bitches. Here is where I was told that my bill was $850.

Now I will confess that I argued my way out of the last bill from December that rip off clinic sent me, and for a moment I thought it had popped up again like a mythical creature that wouldn’t die. But no. It was $850 for blood work, ultrasound and “out of town clinic” charge. “Our rates have gone up since June 1st” the cock sucker at the computer informed me.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT, batman. $850. And so I lost it. Completely lost it in a messy and complete way. I had brought old invoices from rip off clinic showing what I SHOULD be charged, I had receipts in my wallet that I began to pull out like fancy origami. But my crane shaped receipt was no match for billing bitch. I was basically told that payment was due NOW and that if I had a problem with their fees that I should go to another clinic.

I cried and cried and CRIED. It was one of those discordant monologues where you just try and sell your entire lifer story to someone in the hope that they will suddenly go, “oh honey! Don’t you worry about a thing.” But instead the woman just held out her hand for my debit card.

And I wouldn’t give it to her.

This is where you are allowed to be proud of me. I was firm, even in my messy crying fit, I KNEW I was not fucking paying $850 bucks. No way. Nope. Not me. You can crawl up my vagina and look for the money yourself because you are NOT taking that out of my checking account. You can also be proud that I had my dear Julia Sugarbaker-esque Mother out in the lobby and I didn’t send her into the game. This fight I was going to win on the merit of my own stubbornness.

And that is how I finally was exited from the building by paying $412.

I am a bit fearful that billing bitch will fuck up my lap work or write, “cheap motherfucker” on my antral follicles photo. Whatever. I am just completely irate about the situation and hate that I couldn’t, just this once, have a smooth start to a cycle. I am very lucky that I was able to get a  photo shoot last weekend for a local company as that money will just about cover the rip off. So much for hoping to get extra acupuncture in the Northeast…

When I finally got home (after a quick trip to take GM to her weekly beauty salon appointment) I began a search for another clinic. Finally I just decided to call a place that I went to ages ago when I was looking into being an egg donor. The people that I dealt with in the egg donor division of the clinic were horrible and rude (there is actually an entire message board dedicated to their evilness- so it isn’t just me!) I sort of talked myself into the idea that I wouldn’t have to face or see the donor egg assholes. Just because 2 nurses were mean doesn’t mean EVERYONE at the clinic is. I mean even rip off clinic has some nice people in it…

I called. They totally do out of town cycle monitoring. And blood work and ultrasound is a flat $275. Not cheap. not at all. But certainly better than $850. AND they don’t charge a damn thing to fax the results to your out of town clinic. Because I was in a relieved state it rendered me hopeful, so I went ahead and booked my CD 15 scan with them.

What a damn day. See what I mean about the Law around these parts? I bet most of you have smooth and pretty CD2 clinic moments. But not me. Let’s just hope the universe is getting the shitty out of the way and everything from here on out will be fine and dandy. I have already decided that the FET will work, so all of this extra cycle stress and drama is annoying as hell.

And wow did I have a lot of bitching to do or what?! I can’t imagine that anyone is still reading at this point, but if you are can I just change the subject for a small moment and have a silly girly squeal over the fact that the writer of the book I just reviewed left me a comment on the review?! If you could see his handsome photo on the book jacket you would so squeal too.

So what are we all doing this weekend? Lord knows I wish all of you lived on my block so we could get together for some in real life bitching.

Tagged as: FET