A Bill From the Past

About a month or so ago, I got a bill in the mail from Pacific In-Vitro totalling over $1000.00. What a surprise.

As some of you may recall, before we had kids, we tried everything to get pregnant. First we did the inseminations. Five of them to be exact. It didn't work. Then, we moved on to in-vitro. The first time, we got several eggs fertilized so we reinserted some and froze the rest. No luck the first time around. So, we did it again. This time with the frozen embryos. Failure once again.

The insemination procedures and the first in-vitro were paid for by our medical insurance. The second in-vitro however was paid out of pocket. We did that one 6 months after the first in part to save on the storage fees for freezing the embryos. You see, the first 12 months of storage are free. After that, you pay a monthly fee. Having used our embryo within the 12 months, we never paid for that service.

So, here we are 6 years later and we get this bill. Never mind the fact that we now live on a different island and never got anything from them for the last 5 years.

Huh? (scratch head) What? (still scratching head) Are there some frozen embryos that we didn't know about? Did they not put the rest in the second time like we told them to? Why only now are they telling us about this? Do I have to pay this if they haven't even told us about it in this long? So many questions.

My husband came home and the first thing I told him was..."guess what kind of bill we got today?" His response when I showed it to him, "You mean there are more that they didn't put in?" That was followed by, "We aren't having anymore."

Hubby ended up calling the clinic and getting it all cleared up. Meanwhile, there were a lot of emotions stirred up for him. Let's just say they were not happy feelings. Those days were difficult for both of us. Wanting children so badly and being told that you can't have any, especially after trying everything and failing, took its toll on us physically, emotionally, and financially. We survived it, but we never want to go through that again...EVER.