Old School

I've been doing my homework with the pharmacy. It's a good thing too -- nobody else would have managed to find out in time that some of the meds I need can't come from the mail-order pharmacy, and then arranging for them to be sent to a local pharmacy instead. And why, oh why does the insurance cover expensive fertility meds, but not progesterone in oil? It's a mystery to me!

The other mystery is why my RE ordered Repronex instead of Menopur, and Novarel instead of Ovidrel. Last time I used Menopur and Ovidrel with complete success, so I am a little dismayed at this.  In case you aren't as entrenched in this as I am, I'll tell you why.

Twenty years ago, when they were just starting into ART, doctors and scientists needed to make new drugs with human hormones in them. They figured out they could get these hormones form the urine of post-meonpausal women. They purified as well as they could and put them into an injection. These injections weren't ultra-pure, and because of that and other factors I don't totally understand, these injections have to be given intramuscularly (IM). With an IM injection, there's no easy pinching of your tummy to stick in a tiny needle. Instead, it means getting that gluteus maximus out, and getting someone else to help you stick a Hi-C straw into it, making for a bruised, sore glut.

Thankfully, ART has come a long way over the past 20 years. Part of the progress has been to create a process to either make these same drugs in an ultra-purified state or a synthetic (but still effective) state which can be injected subcutaneously (tiny needle in a pinch of skin with just a small bruise if anything).

So why does my RE use the old-school method? Is this insurance-driven? Is the clinic just old school? You better bet I'll be asking these questions when I meet with him this week.

Meanwhile, the Repronex and Novarel will be arriving shortly.

I wonder, can I twist myself far enough while relaxing my gluteus well enough to give myself IM injections? Last time Scott did the IM injections of progesterone for me, but this time I may have to do the progesterone as well as the Repronex and Novarel injections on my own with S's work schedule. All I can say to that is yikes!