Problems *update*

Well I spoke too soon. I cannot have my blood drawn today because no one will draw it and ship it. And on top of that, no one will draw it and turn it over to me to ship myself. I guess I took it for granted where I use to live because I just walked in the closest lab and handed them the order from PPVI and they shipped it. No questions asked. Apparently the Richmond, VA area does not ship blood or give your own blood to you.

So is this the end of my road? Without blood I can't do anything else. I guess my next step is looking for a lab in northern VA, NC, MD or maybe I'll just drive 8 hours to the lab in NY I had it drawn at last year! This is ridiculous. So no bloodwork this cycle. Another month to wait, another 30+ day postponement. I'm actually handling it well and my husband and sister both pointed that out. I'm just now beginning to get teary about it. And to top it all off I felt like the people at PPVI were getting annoyed at me calling all day. Maybe it was in my head. But, as my husband pointed out, shouldn't they be helping with this? I feel like it's so hard to navigate your healthcare these days. Being someone's patient doesn't even mean much. You still have to be ultra-proactive or nothing will get done!

Oh - here's the best part: I went into a lab this morning unknowingly, and told them what I needed. They said they don't do that. But the fascinating part is that I went there in November and they claimed they did do it, and I had it done and figured they shipped it. But then I got thinking, I never got a print-out from PPVI about my results and at my post-op appointment Dr. Hilgers never referred to that bloodwork. So I called PPVI and asked if they had a record of bloodwork from Nov. Big surprise, they did not! So this lab took my blood, later realized it needed to be shipped which they don't do, and instead of calling me they just forgot about it. But still charged me of course! How great is that? They just, what, threw my blood away?!

Okay, I'm going to forget about it. Nothing I can do now. Patience. Patience.

*Update - So finally a woman at a lab was nice enough to look into it for me instead of just telling me no. She called me back and said she found out it's against the law for a lab to draw blood for a dr. not liscensed in the state of VA. Against the law?! I called PPVI and they'd never heard of that and claimed they've had patients in VA have blood sent before. So now my next step is to find a physician who will take me as a patient and basically have them copy Dr. Hilger's order and get my blood drawn. But I'll actually be back to square one then because I still need to find a lab who will ship it or let me take it and ship it myself. Not to mention the doctors who are affiliated with PPVI are all about two hours away. And who knows if they are even accepting new patients.

To top it all off, the nice woman who told me it's against the law also told me there might be one place in Richmond that could do it for me (how, if it's against the law??) and it's called Richmond IVF or something. Does IVF stand for something else that has to do with blood?? Because that just takes the cake if I would have to go to an IVF clinic to have my blood drawn and shipped to PPVI. I'm not even going to call them.

This is a horrible day. It's my poor sister's last day here and she spent it watching me make calls all day. Then we decided to go shopping which I hoped would get my mind off of things, and I tried a million things on (which I hate) and when I went up to the register I whipped out a $100 gift card only to find out it was the wrong one, and had $9 on it! So I had to put everything back and it was just one of those times when I almost broke down. Not because of the clothes or the gift card, but because should I have expected anything less? This is how this day has been. Oh well, I guess it could be much worse.