October 2007: I Am One Cheap Bitch

So I had the HSG scheduled. This is a test in which they insert a catheter into your cervix, shoot you up with dye, and then take X-rays to make sure that the dye pours into your fallopian tubes. If it does, it means your tubes are open. The “catheter in your cervix” part was kind of a warning sign, given what we'd learned the month before. So Dr. J had me take a drug called Cytotec. The packaging said it was for ulcers or abortion, and it made me feel sick, but I guess it also makes your cervix open, which is exactly what I needed.

I could feel my resolve not to "pollute" my body with Western medicines slowly ebb away, which is probably good because I needed to get real about infertility—I needed Western medicine and intervention. Of course, it still made me a little nervous. I almost called Dr. J, just to make sure she didn't get the perscriptions mixed up with someone who was actually having an abortion. I guess I could have asked the pharmacist, that's what they're there for, but who wants to stand at the Walgreen's counter with five people tapping their feet impatiently behind you and say, "Excuse me, this says its for abortions which I don't need, what I really need is something to open my cervix?" No thanks, I'll take my chances.

So DH and I went to the hospital the next day, checked in, and then got called in by a billing person. She explained that because this test was for infertility, it was only partially covered by insurance, and that we’d be responsible for the remainder. The test itself was about $500, and then we’d have to pay half the radiologist’s fee on top of that. She didn’t know how much that was, or what the total bill would be. This is something I still do not understand. Unlike every other medical treatment I've ever had, where I pay my $15 copay each visit, I never know how much I'm going to pay for this fertility stuff. Sometimes it costs $4, sometimes it costs $400. It seems like there's no rhyme or reason to it, and I can't believe no one in the hospital seems able to explain it. If there's a guy there who can remove a brain tumor, or a woman there who can restart a heart that's stopped beating, you'd think there'd be someone there who could tell me the price of an HSG.

In retrospect, I kind of laugh that DH and I balked at paying $500, which is about what we’re guessing it would be (no thanks to Miss Billing Department, of course). But at the time, we felt like it was just a stupid waste of money. I mean, we had no reason to believe my tubes weren’t open, but we had a couple of independent reasons we suspected were keeping us from getting pregnant. We didn’t know that infertility treatment is full of tests and payments that feel like a stupid waste of money, but that it’s part of checking things off the list, covering all the bases. In any case, I had received my abnormal progesterone test after Dr. J had told me to get the HSG. So I thought maybe I didn’t need the HSG anymore. It's not my tubes, it's my progesterone. And we were too cheap to spend the money. So we didn’t.

Instead, we went to see Dr. J to see what to do next. I told the medical assistant I hadn’t had the HSG because I wasn’t sure I needed it. I heard her relay this to Dr. J just outside the door of the exam room. She said, “She wasn’t sure if she still needed the HSG.” Dr. J said, “Yes!” like she was honestly surprised there was someone dumb enough to think otherwise. (I may be clueless, lady, but I'm not deaf, hello! I can hear you out there...) She came into the room and said this: I needed to have the HSG. Then I should think about having surgery, to see if I had any cysts. Or we could go right to insemination if we wanted to.

DH and I hadn’t really talked about this and so I’m impressed that we were able to sort out a plan then and there, in front of the doctor. You don't really realize how hard it is to decide which course to pursue. I remember other people telling me that they spent years in treatment before moving to the next thing, and until I was doing it, I didn't understand it. Time gets eaten up, little by little. And you're not always ready to move on, even when your body says it's time.


So this time, for the first time, the answer was “no.” I’d been so anxious to have every test done, to keep things moving, to get pregnant tomorrow. But surgery seemed too radical. And I wanted to give acupuncture a few more months. And the truth was, I just wasn’t ready to be infertile. So we said, “No, thanks. We’ll wait.”

And then I went home, and cried a lot.