Cycle 26 Day 11

Well we had a nice weekend in Galveston. Since we're officially taking this month "off" from TTC, it's time for some serious R&R. We went and had massages done on Thursday night. That was a good start at relaxing. I found a massage school not far from our house that does them for $30 an hour - about half the going rate. We drove down to Galveston on Friday and stayed at the Inn at 1816 Postoffice. It was very nice. We had planned to stay somewhere cheaper, but all the hotels there seemed to be priced within $50 of each other - so why stay in an overpriced Motel 6 room when you can have a fancy B&B for only a little more?

Anyway, back to the world of infertility... we went to a "teaching visit" at the RE's office today. We had to watch a video on how to give shots of Repronex (kinda icky side note: Repronex is extracted from the urine of postmenopausal women. Ew). I have to have these shots intermuscularly - a shot in the butt - for something like 12 days. And it's a BIG needle. Very scary. The nurse said I was getting needles that are very skinny, but I'm looking at it thinking 'oh hell, that's a long ass needle' (pun intended).

So I have to purchase 20 vials of repronex at an astonishing price of $48/vial. That's the price in the US. But I did a little research and the same damn thing can be purchased in Europe for $12/vial. For a savings (after shipping costs) of roughly $700. What's the catch? Are these scary drugs? No. Are they cheap knock-offs? No. These are name-brand top quality drugs made by the same company under the same name.** The catch is that importing prescription drugs is not precisely legal. Remember the whole thing about seniors buying meds in Canada? Yup, if I buy this from Europe I'll be in the same boat with the outlaw grannies.

I think we're pretty set on doing IUI next month. It's not too much more $$ and it increases the chances of success. We can just do it once or we can do the procedure twice, two days in a row. I don't know how much that increases your chances. When you get two IUIs in one cycle, you get a discount on the second one... the "buy one, get the second hlf price" for a medical procedure is surreal and made me laugh.

So even though we're taking this month "off", it's not like we're not trying at all. I'm just trying not to think about it. I'm not on any sort of hormone altering medicine for the first time in seven months. I'm not peeing on OPKs - I don't even have any. But since this is the last chance for us to have a kid without repeatedly puncturing my butt with needles - we're still "trying". Perhaps fear of needles will provide my body with the proper incentives! But in the meantime, we're just having fun this month and trying not to think about it.

---

** correction! At $12/vial it is indeed a generic version. The name brand can be had for $24/vial, still a bargain at half the American rate.