Tuesday 25 April 2017

The Boyfriend Chair

I feel sorry every day that K has to go through all of this because of me. All the magic being drained from the idea of natural conception, never seeing the look of surprise on your partner's face when you tell him he's going to be a father. These are things I feel like I've stolen from her and can't give back; and that's not even taking into consideration the countless uncomfortable procedures, needles, and the costs that come with the fertility treatments.

Even through all of that, she still tells me she can't wait to have a little Lefty running around, with blue eyes and spiky blonde hair like mine, getting into all kinds of trouble - and I know she must love me because she's married to me and she knows how much trouble I can get into. I imagine having a little K too, with long blonde hair, and huge brown eyes that you can see well up with big fat tears when she gets to hold a bunny, or a cat...or any animal at all, because she loves them so much - just like her mom. A curious mini-K that plays with dolls and hosts tea parties, but also wears cowboy boots and helps dad out in the garage, and wants to learn how to change oil and build stuff. Ya, we're both a little baby crazy at this point, but I feel like we've earned the right.

K was booked for a saline ultrasound to have a look inside her uterus to make sure there weren't any fibroids (whatever those are) or cysts inside that could hinder our shot at a successful pregnancy. Since I had the day off I decided to go with her to the appointment and being the supportive husband I am, asked if she would like me to come in with her. She immediately said no, which had me feeling partly relieved, and partly disappointed. Relieved because I really wasn't sure how I felt about seeing my wife, laid out on a table, with the doctor (K's fertility buddies have nicknamed him "Doctor McDreamy") poking around in her undercarriage, and disappointed because I'm genuinely interested in the process and felt like I was missing out. Lucky (and unlucky) for me, while we were in the waiting room, K had a sudden change of heart and decided I could come in with her.

We were escorted to a little change room and K was asked to disrobe below the waist, enter the exam room, sit on the bed, and cover up with the giant napkin. Once K was ready, the nurse came in and noticing that I didn't know what to do with myself directed me to the "husband chair" at the head of the bed (which reminded me subtly of the "boyfriend chair" I had used outside change rooms in my younger years when I was forced to follow my girlfriends around the mall and tell them how great they looked in everything they tried on). Shortly after that the doc came in and I realized that my intuition had been correct on many levels. Watching "McDreamy" messing around under my wife's napkin was just as awkward as I thought it would be. When he took out out the stainless steel speculum I simultaneously felt a sudden rush of gratitude that I was born a dude and wondered if my being there might be just as awkward for him as it was for me. However, when he pulled out the Harry Potter wand and covered it with a condom and a DQ swirl of lube, all the awkwardness faded away and curiosity took over. It was very interesting to see the inside of K's uterus on ultrasound and watch as they slowly injected the giant syringe of saline solution which could be clearly seen on the screen. The doc said this would likely cause some cramping and I kept checking K's face to see if she needed me (like I could do anything about it anyway), but she took it like a champ. Turns out K was still as healthy as a horse (an expression I've never really understood) and the doctor instilled some optimism about our chances of reaching our goal.

After the ultrasound we had some time to kill so I trudged behind K to a Starbucks in the nearby mall where she stocked up on her newly limited single daily dose of caffeine. Then over to the David's Tea, so K could show me her "super-ultra-favorite tea, Just Peachy". And then we wandered through The Bay and looked at furniture, where the "husband chair" seriously started to resemble the "boyfriend chair" before we made our way back to the clinic for our afternoon of injection teaching.

Giving needles isn't a new thing for K, as an EMT it's a big part of her job. Giving them to herself, however, is definitely new territory and with IVF comes several daily self-injections that must be administered on a strict schedule. To help ease some of the responsibility and maybe some of the anxiety of having to jab a needle into herself, I also came with her to injection teaching to learn how to administer her injections (I say that all proud and self-righteous but truthfully I just wanted to learn to give needles). The nurse took us into a little training room and extracted from the cabinet what I call the "Star Trek Needle", a regular syringe, some little mixer things, and the Easy Button.

We started with the space needle, which is a pre-loaded syringe (kind of like an epi-pen) which was super easy to use. Basically you just turn the dial to the correct dose, pop off the cap, "pinch-an-inch" of belly skin, jab the needle in all the way, and push down on the button. Then when you're done, if there wasn't enough medication in the syringe left for a full dose, it calculates and tells you how much of a dose you have to give yourself with your next medication pen. Fancy right?

We moved on to the regular syringe which was a little less intuitive, but K's experience let her breeze through it. It required mixing a powder medication with saline in one of the little mixer things, taking it up in the syringe, and injecting it, again in the belly. I asked the nurse if all the injections were administered in the abdomen, when she said yes, K noticed the disappointed look on my face and made sure to mention to  the nurse that I was sad I didn't get to jab a needle in her bum. Obviously I didn't get to stick K in this training session at all but they gave us a little red hockey puck shown in the picture to inject with the needle. I kept imagining it singing back to us "That Was Easy!".

Wednesday 12 April 2017

Snowballin'

Men's testicles are located on the outside of their bodies for a reason, they have the ability to retract and go up towards the body when its cold, as well as to come back down when they need to cool off. This motion serves to regulate the temperature of the testicles because sperm need to stay cooler than regular body temperature to survive. Which is why an undescended testicle like I had (where one of my balls didn't drop) or a retractile testicle (where it has the ability to move between the scrotum and abdomen) can wreak havoc on a man's fertility if it's not corrected. It's also why they tell you not to wear tight fitting underwear, or keep your laptop on your lap, or spend too much time in the hot tub; the heat prevents the nuts from regulating properly and can reduce your sperm count and quality significantly.
 
In previous posts I talked about different things I did to increase my sperm count. Two of those things involved scrotal temperature regulation. The first was to stop wearing boxer briefs to bed at night and start wearing loose-fitting pajamas. The other, was to start what I have come to call Snowballin'. Snowballs are underwear K found online. I'm going to tell you my experience, and give a bit of a review on them.
 
The underwear are tight fitting and they come with a pocket sewn into the front along with a second pair and three ice packs. They're shipped in a nice little box and include an information packet on how to use them. The cost was about $50 US which would be fairly reasonable but with shipping and handling and the exchange rate they ended up being closer to $90 Canadian.
 
The ice packs, or SnowWedges™ as they call them are strange-looking. They look exactly like SportCheck's Firefly logo and the way they fit in (at least the most comfortable way I could figure out after awkwardly reaching down the front of my underwear for 5 minutes) looks to be totally counter intuitive but as it turns out is not bad comfort-wise. You tuck the ice pack down into the front pocket and underneath the scrotum. The idea is that icing your balls can reverse the effects of heat exhaustion from wearing tight underwear, or sitting down all day, or if you're like me sleeping hot. Initially, the cooling can be a little much and I find myself sitting with my legs wide apart  like I'd been riding a horse for a week to alleviate some of the direct contact. The ice packs are really shallow and don't come with a lot of gel inside so they don't last very long, so it's good that the set comes with three ice packs because you can rotate them as they warm up.
 
The underwear itself is relatively comfortable and is made from a soft organic cotton, but I find the waistband digs in a little. Could be I just need to hit the gym though. Since I only wear these in the evening, I haven't put them through any rigorous physical activity but they seem pretty solid and imagine they would hold up well. I'm a little disappointed they only come in the one grey color though.
 
I can't say for sure if it was Snowballin' that caused the increase in my sperm count, but the theory is sound and there are some studies about the positive effects of cooling the testicles. The Snowballs website lists some studies but the studies are relatively small so I would recommend doing your own research. Based on my research I would definitely recommend using this approach in some fashion.
 
That said, although the overall experience of using this product has actually been kind of nice, the price tag, is not. If it wasn't for the exchange rate, that may not be the case, but for now the reality is that I'm pretty sure I could find a used sewing machine, take a sewing lesson, buy the fabric, and sew these myself for cheaper. Or better yet, just get K to sew a pocket into my existing underwear (I could do it, but the quality would be sub-par). Now that I have them though, I'm going to use them, but the cost far outweighs the benefit. I could buy more than 10 full size ice packs for what we paid for these and just ice my boys normally. Or if I was really desperate, I live in Alberta so 9 months out of the year I could walk outside, get some snow and truly be Snowballin'.

Wednesday 5 April 2017

Funding Our Little Frankenstein

Unlike K (who had 16 pages of questions), the very first question I had when I started researching IVF was: "How much is this going to cost me?" Once I found out the price tag of 10 to 15 grand the second question I had was : "How in the hell are we going to pay for this?"

The obvious answer was to use credit. We could rack up our credit cards at 14% to 20% interest, we could get a personal loan from the bank, or the clinic even conveniently works with a financier who charges a minimum interest rate of 7.49%. I mean if we were going to go into debt for something I think a child would be worthwhile right? Except for the fact that we had worked incredibly hard up until now to pay down our debt so we could bring a child into the world without too much added financial strain; we really didn't want to let all that hard work go to waste.

So we sat down together, determined to pay up front for at least the first round of IVF (if a second was needed, we'd either be going into debt or selling organs, and I'm already going to be down a nut so my vote goes to K's kidney), and by a few different avenues, I can proudly say we will be able to pay for the treatment without using any additional credit. In this post, I'm going to tell you how we did that.

We Got A Roommate (sort of)
We already had this in place because my big beardy twin brother, D, already lives with us, but when we decided to direct all the funds from his rent money into our savings account, it gave us a major boost in our savings plan. D's plan was to not be around when K was pregnant (I think hormones scare him, which makes sense being as he's a full grown man who will visibly cringe at the thought of the word "crowning") but since we found out we pretty much get to choose when we have the baby, it took some of the pressure off. We had obvious plans for his room once the baby came, but living with my big smelly twin brother isn't so bad. It gives me someone to talk to when K is working night shifts and its kind of a twin-win situation.

Got Another Job
I'm a very busy person, I've recently been forced to admit that I am too involved with too many things, but I found a little bit of time to make some extra cash on the side. I have all kinds of skills, most of them save me money, some cost me money, but only a couple of them have the potential to make me money. One of the money makers is being really good at writing resumes. I have been writing resumes for friends and family for years and have recently made the jump to writing them professionally. I don't charge an arm and a leg, I offer a reasonable rate (mainly because I have a moral issue with gouging people in a bad economy) and I offer a good service for those that don't have the experience to do it themselves. So I took that skill and turned it into baby making bank.

Dipped Into Our Emergency Fund
We were fortunate enough to be able to build up our savings a little bit after our wedding. It wasn't anywhere near the whole amount, but it gave us a head start on our saving plan. I'm no finance expert, but I'd rather dip into my savings a little bit than pay interest on a loan I'm going to have for years. Realistically, this isn't an emergency situation because we really do have the time to save up for IVF if we really wanted to, but when we've already been trying to conceive for 6 months with no success, before we ever even found out about our infertility, we really didn't want to wait.

Sold Some Shit
K and I agreed on a rule, we wouldn't sell anything we knew we would just have to buy again later on (I loved this rule because it saved me from selling any of my tools). K took it upon herself to rummage through our closet and find things she would be willing to part with. She was able to find some really nice dresses and shoes and posted them for sale on our local Facebook buy and sell page. I was actually really surprised at the number of people that will buy other people's used shoes. K suggested selling her wedding dress but I put a stop to that immediately, knowing she would heavily regret that decision. I sacrificed a pair of concert tickets I had purchased months prior. I admit, it had ended up I wasn't able to go anyway, but I got my money back on the tickets and dropped it into our baby bank.

Budgeting
We revamped our budget. We hadn't revisited our budget in a while and when our priorities changed it seemed like a really good time to do that. It was crazy the places we found money. K changed her phone plan and decided that since it was summer, she would rather exercise outside and cancelled her gym membership; boom $100 a month right there. We tightened our belts (both literally and figuratively) by not eating out so much, which saved us a ton of money and inches from our waistlines (I'm probably exaggerating here but let me have it). The biggest part of budgeting was keeping our priorities in mind. We just kept asking ourselves: How bad do we want that baby? What can we live without temporarily? Keeping these things in mind made it so much easier to find money we didn't even know we had.

Checked Our Health Benefits
We are lucky enough to live in Canada, so a lot of our costs were covered just by our government health insurance. In addition to that, K and myself are both lucky enough to be covered by employer extended health benefits. Although our health benefits don't cover IVF, they did cover the long list of medications K has to take for IVF. Our health spending accounts also covered a substantial portion of the costs. These benefits made a significant difference in helping us make our dream a reality. On top of that, we learned that health costs not covered by insurance plans, are eligible for a tax credit, so on next year's taxes we will be able to add that amount to our tax return.

If All Else Fails
Hopefully everything goes well in round one and we won't have to deal with round two, but in the situation where credit becomes the only viable option, at the end of it, we'll have a baby, which will eventually turn into a kid, and then an adult. Which means I'll have 18 years to get our money back from them, with interest! I picture myself saying "University?! You're not going to University!? You have to get a job and pay me back for making you!"