Limited Access

As I posted here, I live in smalltown, USA.  I love the “country life,” but it definitely has its disadvantages—especially where infertility is concerned.  For starters, the fast moving pace of the gossip train has forced most of us to be closet infertiles.  Sure, some of us know about each other, but for the most part we discovered one another’s secret by accident. 
Not only do we live in a state that does not mandate IF insurance coverage, but in order to visit an RE, we had to choose between traveling to the northern part of the state to one of the largest cities (with a time zone change and about a 2 to 3 hour drive one way) or cross the state line and head to Nash.ville, which is about an hour and a half away and in the same time zone (the time zone factor is only really important when considering early morning appointments).  Either way, we were looking at traveling 175 miles or more each round trip.  

Having a family is not supposed to be this complicated.  My high school health teacher had us all scared to even touch each other for fear of an unwanted teenage pregnancy being the result.  (Okay, she didn’t scare us all, but I always was the naïve one.  Joke’s on me, huh?)  I grew up in the 80’s—when children innocently taunted one another on the playground at the prospect of new “romance” with :

(Girl) and (Boy) sitting in a tree. 
K-I-S-S-I-N-G. 
First comes love
Next comes marriage.
Here comes (boy) with a baby carriage.

Nowhere in the chant does it mention shots, or tears, or emotional distraught over losses.  Would my husband and I have pursued treatment sooner had we been fortunate enough to have insurance coverage?  Maybe.  I don’t know if that would have squashed my fears or bout with denial, but it certainly would have helped ease my anxieties about spending that much money on something that was not certain to produce the desired results. 

How about if we could receive treatment closer to home?  While I can’t definitively answer that question as I wasn’t faced with the situation, I can certainly guess that I might not have been so hesitant to seek help earlier had our choices not been so far away.  But at the same time, I have to keep in mind that while all of these factors might have led me to my ultimate decisions sooner, they likely would not have changed the outcome.  So, for that, I have no regrets.  We would still have most likely experienced losses.  We’d still be facing the same diagnoses.  The only difference is we might have known it sooner and have moved past it by now. 

 Sure, I’d love to be on the other side of statistics, and I’d certainly like to have had my trials covered by insurance (even just partially would have helped) to ease some of the financial burden.  It would have been nice to only have to drive as far as my family doctor, the grocery store, or the beauty salon to pursue fertility treatments.  But as hard as those things have been, I’m still thankful for the opportunity to try everything I possibly can to become a mother.  All of these stumbling blocks will just make it that much more special to me.

Hugs and love,