In case anyone has forgotten, and I haven’t said it in a while – IVF is really, really, really expensive. Even more so, because our insurance does not cover any of the prerequisites that we needed to have done to proceed with IVF. In one week, between our consult, Dean’s semenanalysis and my sonohysterogram, we’ve spent $1,230 of our modest personal savings.
We knew from the beginning that we would need to get some sort of financing, because we (like most people) dont have $17,200 just lying around. Oh, I’m not sure if I mentioned this – in order to begin treatment, we have to be able to pay the entire amount up front. We are tremendously lucky to have incredibly generous friends and family, and through crowdfunding we were able to raise approximately $8,500 after taxes and fees. We are only able to pursue IVF at all because of their generosity and we will be forever grateful to every single person that contributed. So today, we went to our credit union to apply for a $10,000 loan in order to fund the difference we still needed to put towards treatment.
The entire process was handled virtually, which was such a trip because we expected to be sitting on one side of a desk with a loan officer on the other. Not the case. We were sat in a weird little cubicle that had a phone and a computer, but nothing else. When the phone rang, (I felt like it was “the red phone” you see in movies? You know, the governor calls you on the red phone and only YOU can save the city from danger? No?) there was a pre-qualifying agent on the other line who took our information and then ran our credit to see what interest we could get, and if we could receive our asking amount. After about 15 minutes, the phone rang again and we were told that we were approved! Once we accepted the terms, the pre-qualifying agent had a loan officer call us back while they connected remotely to the computer we were sitting in front of. Apparently, the loan officers for the credit union were actually located upstairs, so when they got the information from the pre-qualifying agent, they began processing our paperwork while we talked . I joked with the loan officer and asked if Saturday was pajama day and that’s why she wasn’t meeting with us in person. We signed the paperwork, and left the office $10,000 (temporarily) richer.
We now have enough money to fund our IVF process. This is entirely surreal to both Dean and I. It seemed previously so unattainable, and here we are – making it work.
The only remaining hurdle that we have financially is that we have to figure out what to do about the cost of the medications. The estimate we were given for our medications would be $3,000 to $5,000. I will likely be on the lower end of the spectrum, based off of my hormone levels and AFC count, but that is still $3,000 we are unsure what to do about at this time. What is weighing heavily on my mind is if we do end up needing that secondary fresh IVF cycle, that’s another $3,000-$5000 dollars for the medication. So really, we could be looking at an additional $6,000-$10,000 dollars in medications alone. Cue hyperventilation.
As always, there is never any obligation to donate to us – but every cent that we receive is used towards Our Science Baby, and helps to ease our stress during this tremendously difficult time.
https://www.paypal.me/johnsonsciencebaby
xoxox,
Jen