If you live anywhere near Baltimore or Washington, you've heard the commercials for Shady Grove Fertility. I've been hearing them for years. In 2003 and 2004, a woman in my grad school carpool went through fertility treatments. I remember the SGFC commercials starting around then because fertility treatments were something I heard about on a regular basis. It appears that they are spreading, because when the doctor gave me their card, she directed to me to a branch of their office very near to our hometown. So now, after meeting on eHarmony, we get to have a baby with the help of another radio commercial. It would appear that advertising works on us???? :)
Fertility seems to be a go-to topic for long running TV shows these days. I do remember "Mad About You" having a season about wanting to get pregnant, and others have followed suit - "Friends" and "Rules of Engagement" being 2 I can think of off the top of my head. I guess it took the place of adopting or fostering a kid to spice up the show. When I have watched those storylines, I have always told myself that such a small part of the population deals with that situation and that it's just made for TV. Now we "get" to live at least a small part of that reality!
Anyway, the phone call. The girl who answered was very perky and positive and very different than any random receptionist that picks up the phone at a regular doctors office. In fact, after our 25 minute phone call, she sent me an email so that I'd have both her email address and a direct line to get a hold of her if we had any questions. She's our personal patient representative. Of course she's in a completely different branch than we will be visiting, so she won't be there in person, but I guess then you don't have to start your story from scratch every time you call. Pretty smart. I wish my regular Gyn office had something like that! They don't even answer the phone - rather, you have to leave a voice mail and get a call back even to make a regular checkup appointment.
Anyway, SG did need quite a lot of information just to get the appointment made. Lots of insurance questions because this is a big bucks medical specialty I guess. I wasn't thinking about my husband's side of this when I called. I guess I've always assumed that if there was ever a problem, it'd be me. Recently, my work made a cost cutting measure that made us take our spouses off our health insurance if they had the option to get it through their own work. This means that we're no longer on the same policy and his isn't quite the "Cadillac plan" that mine is. I honestly didn't think about him needing to have tests and stuff done too. I need to call her and give her hubby's details but I did check with his insurance and he should be well covered for the testing phase at least. If it goes much further than basic testing on his end, it could wind up costing us big bucks.
The whole time I was on the phone I kept thinking, seriously? I'm having this conversation? All of a sudden the fact that our having a baby is going to be at least part science project became a strong reality. Nobody dreams of that! Our initial consultation is 90 minutes - 2 hours and involves both of us and a bunch of questionnaires that are coming in the mail. I can hardly wait to see what they're going to ask us...
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