Doctor's Appointment

It was hard not to break out in a smile. In fact, I almost shed a tear. As Erin and I stood at the check-out counter at the office of a reproductive Doctor, Daniel Stewart, I felt a little hope for the first time in a long time.

I'm going to get tested again next week. If I can improve my scores from the test last June, we're going to try artificial insemination at $300 a pop. If I score the same, which is likely, we're going to pursue Invetro Fertilization. With IVF, I don't need the normal count of 10 million boys, they just need to be able to find as many boys as eggs harvested from my wife, likely less than 10.

We were a bit freaked out when the Doctor told us the total cost of IVF is 14,000. But the lady at the front desk checked with Erin's insurance and found that we'd need to pay only $9,600. That's a lot of money but we're still taking it as good news. Our insurance company covers half of the potential drug cost of $5,o00 but we may be able to get the entire cost covered, which would save us $2,500, knocking the price down to $7,100! Again, that's not cheap but what else do we have to spend our money on, we don't have any rugrats?


When I was in school and we had 1 1/2 full-time incomes we kept saying, "we need to save becaue there's no money in church planting." But God blessed us and I've got a full-time salary. But when we started trying we were thinking, "we need to save money because we want Erin to stay home when we have kids soon." But that time hasn't come yet. Now we keep thinking, "we need to save money because it's going to cost a lot for IVF or adoption."


I may not be able to impregnate my wife, but I thank God my parents taught me how to stick to a savings plan.