Nothing to Report - Except Maybe my Taxes

I haven't written recently because I still have not gotten a single response back from my clinic - no returned phone call or reply to my e-mail. I even tried calling the other nurse who assists the nurse who oversees the donor program. I left a message for her, and I haven't heard a thing yet. The lack of response infuriates me more than anything, but I'm trying to be patient. I'm going to try to wait until Monday to call the main nurse back - by then, it will be two weeks since my last phone call. I'm starting to wonder if I should look into moving to another clinic - but then you have to transfer medical records etc. etc. I just don't know - maybe I just need to chill.

So, in the meantime, I was reading on another blog about how you can deduct medical expenses from your taxes if they exceed a certain percentage of your income. I decided that I needed to gather up all my receipts from the past year and look into this. So, I now have everything in a pile - all our receipts from our first IVF cycle that was unsuccessful, all the medications, testing and monitoring visits and then the receipts for the next cycle that ended up getting canceled half-way through and converted to IUI and then our last cycle where we made it to retrieval but then had nothing to transfer. It's a big stack, and I'm a little hesitant to add it all up. I know it's a lot of money - especially since my insurance did not cover anything except for maybe one or two office visits and possibly a test or two. I think seeing that number - the sum total of all our tries will just make me absolutely sick. Especially since we have NOTHING to show for it and then, to make matters worse, our financial situation has gone downhill with the current economic situation - we've both lost a ton of money in our 401Ks and and other investments, so it will be hard to actually see this final number. Not to mention, that we are getting ready to do one more round - this time with the donor eggs so it will be even more expensive - of course, if we end up with a child, it will be worth it, but if we don't....ughhh, I can't even stand to think about it.

If we can get a break on our taxes, that will be great - at least it will be something. But this is the one area that makes my husband go nuts. When we start focusing on all the money we've spent and will be spending in the future, he gets really stressed out, so I'm really hesitant to show him the one final sum. Before, we've only looked at the cost for each individual cycle. I think what I'll do is add it all up and then do the math to see if we'll even get a break or not. If it's the right percentage, then I'll share the number with him.