Shuss Family Infertility Treatments
Donation protected
Jacob Shuss and Melody Shuss will benefit from this campaign. We are a married couple who have been struggling with infertility for 4 and 1/2 years now. We are beyond ready to take the next BIG steps to grow our family!
Our Baby (not so) Making History: Phase 1.
We tried on our own for about a year without any success.
After a year, we decided it was time to seek medical help. Our doctor diagnosed Melody with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome or PCOS, a hormonal imbalance disorder that can affect many areas of life, including infertility. In our case, Melody suffers from anovulation, which is an essential reproductive process to get pregnant.
PCOS can be contolled with birth control pills. However, since we are trying to get pregnant, we did not go on birth control.
Another way to control PCOS is weight loss. Since Mels diagnosis, we have been working towards losing weight. Melody has lost 10 pounds to help with her infertility and hopes to improve. We like to take our dog on long walks, go hiking in the mountains, and just keep as active as possible while trying to eat well and be mindful of our wellness habits. We keep at it and we hope to lose more weight in hopes of increasing our chances of getting pregnant and delivering a healthy baby.
In addition to being mindful of our health, we also decided to take the next steps to growing our family.
First, we went on a few cycles of Clomid, a medicine used to induce ovulation. Every cycle on Clomid meant having a pelvic exam, oral medicine, charting Mels temperature every morning, using ovulation predictor kits, pelvic ultrasounds, completing several blood work tests, and follow-up doctor appointments. Luckily, we had an amazing doctor who always made us feel comfortable and answered all of our questions. Unfortu
nately though, ovulation was never successful on Clomid.
After that, we tried a few cycles of Letrozole which followed the same procedures as Clomid except the drug was different. Once again, ovulation was not successful.
At this point, the whole process had taken us about 2 years. Since infertility treatments are an emotional rollar coaster, we took breaks in between some cycles to keep from being burnt out from the stresses of failure, abnormal menstrual cycles (leaving Melody on bed rest from flooding and chronic fatigue) and limited financial resources, all the while keeping up with work, school, and family life.
After burning through Clomid and Letrozole with no success, we decided to check Melodys thyroid levels. To our astonishment, the results came back informing the doctor that Melody has Hashimoto's Disease. This means she has an underactive thyroid, or hypothryroidism.
Hashimoto's Disease is an autoimmune disorder that affects your body in many ways. It explained Melodys: hair loss, unexplained weight gain and/or inability to lose weight (despite eating well, exercising, good sleeping habits), chronic tiredness, depression, anxiety, dry skin, inability to focus, being sensitive to the cold, and more. But most importantly, an untreated thyroid can affect infertility! It was possible that Mel's undetected hypothyroidism was causing her unresponsiveness to the Clomid or the Letrozole treatments.
With this news, our doctor asked us to take a break from infertility treatments in order to correct Mel's thyroid for 6 weeks. So, that's when we put our dream aside for 2 months and focused on reversing the damage done by Mels underactive thyroid by taking a pill everyday an hour before breakfast.
After the 6 week period, if Mel's thyroid levels were back to normal, we could revisit Clomid and Letrozole again to see if she would be responsive after fixing the thyroid.
We felt hopeful when we learned that the hypothyroidism reversed itself, giving our doctor the go ahead to continue infertility treatments with the knowledge that Melody will be on thyroid medicine for the rest of her life. Although it was painful to stop trying for a baby for 2 months, our quality of life has dramatically improved as Melody felt like a new, powerful individual ready to tackle infertility with new strength.
Afterwards, we dove right back into a cycle of Clomid in February 2017 at its highest dose to see if we would respond to the treatment now that the thyroid has been fixed. We did not.
Since we were not successful, we tried another cycle of Letrozol at its highest dose to see if we would respond this time around. Miraculously, according to our BBT (basal body temperature) chart and blood tests, we achieved ovulation! After years of trying, we felt this overwhelming feeling of excitement and joy. This was one of the first times we truly felt like getting pregnant was a possibility. Unfortunately though, we did not get pregnant.
That was one of our last attempts with our wonderful doctor before Jacob graduated and we had to switch insurances and switch our doctor. We were sad to leave our family doctor but we were blessed to have questions answered, obtain some direction as to what we needed to do next, and walk away knowing that Melody did respond to something!
Our Baby (not so) Making History: Phase 2.
Upon Jake's graduation, insurance changes, and careful financial planning, we decided we could move on to a more specialized clinic. We researched clinics online, read reviews, talked to others going through infertility and what they have done, and picked a couple doctors we felt could be a good fit for us. We decided on one clinic which was praised for the work that they do.
After our consultation, we had a pelvic exam which exposed the "string of pearls" lining Mels ovaries. Our doctor was surprised to see just how many cysts were lining its walls but assured us pregancy is possible. We did some more blood work, Melody had a hysterosalpingogram (a painful test that squirts dyed water through the fallopian tubes to test for blockages) and decided on a "timed intercourse" (TI) treatment plan which included oral medicine, letrozole (since we knew Mel responded to that), injectables to grow follicles, several pelvic ultrasounds, injectables to induce or force the body to ovulate, timed intercourse, and vaginal medicines to create a thick uterine lining to help with implantation and pregnancy, and more bloodwork.
Initially we felt ecstatic with this clinic, doctor, and plan. However, we were sorely disappointed whenwe realized the clinic was not as compassionate as we had read, we could only see our doctor once every few months (she traveled to other clinics), the nursing staff did everything and were closed off to answering questions and listening to the needs of Mel's body, confused our treatment plan with another (making us question if they were doing/looking for what they were supposed to do/be looking for), were deceiving in their pricing with no accountability, had a very standoffish billing/scheduling staff which was bad enough to request we never be checked out with one
particular staff member, and could never be quite sure if what we were seeing in our pelvic ultrasounds were growing follicles or growing cysts. It wasn't all bad, the clinic was clean and lovely to be in, the doctor herself was very knowlegeable while we met with her, and the lab technicians were the kindest, most accurate in their craft that we've worked with, especially with Mels stubborn veins. Needless to say, we were very cautious of our treatments, never feeling completely confident in the clinic.
Our results:
First TI cycle: failed
Second TI cycle: failed
Third TI cycle: failed
Our takeaway:
We were very disheartened by our treatment. But, we learned a lot from our cycles like how Melody can respond to Letrozole, our fallopian tubes are clear, our follicles grow but at turtle slow speeds causing a need for follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) injectables, and that Mel can ovulate with the help of infertility drugs. So, although the treatments did not result in pregancy, there is still hope.
Out of Pocket Costs (Not covered by insurance (doesn't count toward deductible) & on top of health insurance premiums (about $540/month)):
Consultation: $115
Hysterosalpingogram: $500
TI Treatment Cycle (each): $525
TI Treatment Cycle Drugs (each): $800
Bloodwork (each): $50
Total Spent (after 3 cycles): $4,740+
Our Baby (not so) Making History: Phase 3.
After 3 failed cycles of TI at the fertility clinic and a couple of life changing events like our out of state move to PA, we are determined to continue to chase our dream of growing our family!
As of now, we have booked a consultation at a clinic near us, 3 months in advance, to get going on our journey once again. We will consult with the doctor, and will begin intrauterine insemination (IUI) cycles and then move on to in vitro fertilization (IVF) if IUI is not successful. We are hopeful!
Funding for Phase 3:
This is where we need your help! The cost of these other treatments are much more expensive than Clomid, Letrozole, and TI cycles. Here's what we anticipate it costing us:
IUI ~ $2,500 per treatment cycle + medicine costs
IVF ~ $15,000 + medicine costs
We can't do it by ourselves. That's why we've decided to reach out to our family and to our friends via this GoFundMe campaign.
Funds we recieve will go directly to our medical expenses to help with the costs of consultations, lab work diagnostics, IUI treatments (3), and IVF (2) as we work with a specialist. If we achieve pregnancy, any leftover funds will aid the costs of the pregnancy as we anticipate a complicated pregnancy due to the PCOS and the Hashtimoto's disease.
We plan on updating our GoFundMe page along the way of course! We want to keep you in the loop so you can rest assured that your contribution is getting put to good use, and that when we get pregnant you'll know you helped with the miracle of life!
We hope that we've done something in our relationship with you to deserve any consideration of financial help from you, if you are in a position to do so.
And if you cannot, we hope you will find it in your heart to share this campaign with those you know for an even greater and far reaching impact to help us get pregnant and achieve our dream of growing our family!
A Little More About Us:
If you don't know us personally and you have found our campaign via a shared link or just by chance, we hope that by sharing a little bit about us can help your decision to help fund us.
We hope that the history we've shared sheds some light on how hopeful we are and how complicated infertility can be. We hope that by sharing our history you've been able to see that we are doing all that we can to make this happen as self-reliantly as possible with every intent to pay it forward when we see others in need.
Financially, we contribute about 10% of our personal income to faith-based donations that are used towards religious and humanitarian efforts around the world like the Helping Hands program, which helps devastated communities after disaster strikes, and the LDS church welfare program by fasting every month and giving the money we would have spent on food to the welfare program to feed hungry families. We've also participated in the O.U.R foundation in the past by donating money every month in efforts to help end human trafficking.
Aside from financial contributions, we try our best at helping the elderly and the widows around us, we offer compassion and kindness to the homeless and the abused by volunteering in different organizations at different times when we are able.
In fact one of our very first dates was volunteering at a women's shelter! We had the opportunity to play with the most adorable children while their mothers observed. The intent was that these mothers were able to learn how to interact and play with their children while recovering from abusive relationships, addictions, and afflictions.
We are not by any means perfect people but we hope you can see that we do try to be good people!
A Final Note:
It would mean the world to us, literally because the children whom we hope to raise will be our world, to have your support. We understand if you cannot donate and will not hold that against you. But for those who can and are willing, we would be so grateful. Support comes in many different forms but unfortunately, financial support is what usually makes things possible. Were it not for the hefty price tag, we would have taken this route a long time ago.
We are incredibly grateful that we have been able to spend all this time getting to know each other better, to strengthen our relationship, to graduate from college, and work. But, we know that our greatest desire is to expand our family and raise them in an empowering home full of good values and opportunity. Please help us accomplish this.
From the bottom of our hearts:
Thank You, Thank You, Thank you!
Melody & Jacob Shuss
& Honey (our dog).
Our Baby (not so) Making History: Phase 1.
We tried on our own for about a year without any success.
After a year, we decided it was time to seek medical help. Our doctor diagnosed Melody with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome or PCOS, a hormonal imbalance disorder that can affect many areas of life, including infertility. In our case, Melody suffers from anovulation, which is an essential reproductive process to get pregnant.
PCOS can be contolled with birth control pills. However, since we are trying to get pregnant, we did not go on birth control.
Another way to control PCOS is weight loss. Since Mels diagnosis, we have been working towards losing weight. Melody has lost 10 pounds to help with her infertility and hopes to improve. We like to take our dog on long walks, go hiking in the mountains, and just keep as active as possible while trying to eat well and be mindful of our wellness habits. We keep at it and we hope to lose more weight in hopes of increasing our chances of getting pregnant and delivering a healthy baby.
In addition to being mindful of our health, we also decided to take the next steps to growing our family.
First, we went on a few cycles of Clomid, a medicine used to induce ovulation. Every cycle on Clomid meant having a pelvic exam, oral medicine, charting Mels temperature every morning, using ovulation predictor kits, pelvic ultrasounds, completing several blood work tests, and follow-up doctor appointments. Luckily, we had an amazing doctor who always made us feel comfortable and answered all of our questions. Unfortu
nately though, ovulation was never successful on Clomid.
After that, we tried a few cycles of Letrozole which followed the same procedures as Clomid except the drug was different. Once again, ovulation was not successful.
At this point, the whole process had taken us about 2 years. Since infertility treatments are an emotional rollar coaster, we took breaks in between some cycles to keep from being burnt out from the stresses of failure, abnormal menstrual cycles (leaving Melody on bed rest from flooding and chronic fatigue) and limited financial resources, all the while keeping up with work, school, and family life.
After burning through Clomid and Letrozole with no success, we decided to check Melodys thyroid levels. To our astonishment, the results came back informing the doctor that Melody has Hashimoto's Disease. This means she has an underactive thyroid, or hypothryroidism.
Hashimoto's Disease is an autoimmune disorder that affects your body in many ways. It explained Melodys: hair loss, unexplained weight gain and/or inability to lose weight (despite eating well, exercising, good sleeping habits), chronic tiredness, depression, anxiety, dry skin, inability to focus, being sensitive to the cold, and more. But most importantly, an untreated thyroid can affect infertility! It was possible that Mel's undetected hypothyroidism was causing her unresponsiveness to the Clomid or the Letrozole treatments.
With this news, our doctor asked us to take a break from infertility treatments in order to correct Mel's thyroid for 6 weeks. So, that's when we put our dream aside for 2 months and focused on reversing the damage done by Mels underactive thyroid by taking a pill everyday an hour before breakfast.
After the 6 week period, if Mel's thyroid levels were back to normal, we could revisit Clomid and Letrozole again to see if she would be responsive after fixing the thyroid.
We felt hopeful when we learned that the hypothyroidism reversed itself, giving our doctor the go ahead to continue infertility treatments with the knowledge that Melody will be on thyroid medicine for the rest of her life. Although it was painful to stop trying for a baby for 2 months, our quality of life has dramatically improved as Melody felt like a new, powerful individual ready to tackle infertility with new strength.
Afterwards, we dove right back into a cycle of Clomid in February 2017 at its highest dose to see if we would respond to the treatment now that the thyroid has been fixed. We did not.
Since we were not successful, we tried another cycle of Letrozol at its highest dose to see if we would respond this time around. Miraculously, according to our BBT (basal body temperature) chart and blood tests, we achieved ovulation! After years of trying, we felt this overwhelming feeling of excitement and joy. This was one of the first times we truly felt like getting pregnant was a possibility. Unfortunately though, we did not get pregnant.
That was one of our last attempts with our wonderful doctor before Jacob graduated and we had to switch insurances and switch our doctor. We were sad to leave our family doctor but we were blessed to have questions answered, obtain some direction as to what we needed to do next, and walk away knowing that Melody did respond to something!
Our Baby (not so) Making History: Phase 2.
Upon Jake's graduation, insurance changes, and careful financial planning, we decided we could move on to a more specialized clinic. We researched clinics online, read reviews, talked to others going through infertility and what they have done, and picked a couple doctors we felt could be a good fit for us. We decided on one clinic which was praised for the work that they do.
After our consultation, we had a pelvic exam which exposed the "string of pearls" lining Mels ovaries. Our doctor was surprised to see just how many cysts were lining its walls but assured us pregancy is possible. We did some more blood work, Melody had a hysterosalpingogram (a painful test that squirts dyed water through the fallopian tubes to test for blockages) and decided on a "timed intercourse" (TI) treatment plan which included oral medicine, letrozole (since we knew Mel responded to that), injectables to grow follicles, several pelvic ultrasounds, injectables to induce or force the body to ovulate, timed intercourse, and vaginal medicines to create a thick uterine lining to help with implantation and pregnancy, and more bloodwork.
Initially we felt ecstatic with this clinic, doctor, and plan. However, we were sorely disappointed whenwe realized the clinic was not as compassionate as we had read, we could only see our doctor once every few months (she traveled to other clinics), the nursing staff did everything and were closed off to answering questions and listening to the needs of Mel's body, confused our treatment plan with another (making us question if they were doing/looking for what they were supposed to do/be looking for), were deceiving in their pricing with no accountability, had a very standoffish billing/scheduling staff which was bad enough to request we never be checked out with one
particular staff member, and could never be quite sure if what we were seeing in our pelvic ultrasounds were growing follicles or growing cysts. It wasn't all bad, the clinic was clean and lovely to be in, the doctor herself was very knowlegeable while we met with her, and the lab technicians were the kindest, most accurate in their craft that we've worked with, especially with Mels stubborn veins. Needless to say, we were very cautious of our treatments, never feeling completely confident in the clinic.
Our results:
First TI cycle: failed
Second TI cycle: failed
Third TI cycle: failed
Our takeaway:
We were very disheartened by our treatment. But, we learned a lot from our cycles like how Melody can respond to Letrozole, our fallopian tubes are clear, our follicles grow but at turtle slow speeds causing a need for follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) injectables, and that Mel can ovulate with the help of infertility drugs. So, although the treatments did not result in pregancy, there is still hope.
Out of Pocket Costs (Not covered by insurance (doesn't count toward deductible) & on top of health insurance premiums (about $540/month)):
Consultation: $115
Hysterosalpingogram: $500
TI Treatment Cycle (each): $525
TI Treatment Cycle Drugs (each): $800
Bloodwork (each): $50
Total Spent (after 3 cycles): $4,740+
Our Baby (not so) Making History: Phase 3.
After 3 failed cycles of TI at the fertility clinic and a couple of life changing events like our out of state move to PA, we are determined to continue to chase our dream of growing our family!
As of now, we have booked a consultation at a clinic near us, 3 months in advance, to get going on our journey once again. We will consult with the doctor, and will begin intrauterine insemination (IUI) cycles and then move on to in vitro fertilization (IVF) if IUI is not successful. We are hopeful!
Funding for Phase 3:
This is where we need your help! The cost of these other treatments are much more expensive than Clomid, Letrozole, and TI cycles. Here's what we anticipate it costing us:
IUI ~ $2,500 per treatment cycle + medicine costs
IVF ~ $15,000 + medicine costs
We can't do it by ourselves. That's why we've decided to reach out to our family and to our friends via this GoFundMe campaign.
Funds we recieve will go directly to our medical expenses to help with the costs of consultations, lab work diagnostics, IUI treatments (3), and IVF (2) as we work with a specialist. If we achieve pregnancy, any leftover funds will aid the costs of the pregnancy as we anticipate a complicated pregnancy due to the PCOS and the Hashtimoto's disease.
We plan on updating our GoFundMe page along the way of course! We want to keep you in the loop so you can rest assured that your contribution is getting put to good use, and that when we get pregnant you'll know you helped with the miracle of life!
We hope that we've done something in our relationship with you to deserve any consideration of financial help from you, if you are in a position to do so.
And if you cannot, we hope you will find it in your heart to share this campaign with those you know for an even greater and far reaching impact to help us get pregnant and achieve our dream of growing our family!
A Little More About Us:
If you don't know us personally and you have found our campaign via a shared link or just by chance, we hope that by sharing a little bit about us can help your decision to help fund us.
We hope that the history we've shared sheds some light on how hopeful we are and how complicated infertility can be. We hope that by sharing our history you've been able to see that we are doing all that we can to make this happen as self-reliantly as possible with every intent to pay it forward when we see others in need.
Financially, we contribute about 10% of our personal income to faith-based donations that are used towards religious and humanitarian efforts around the world like the Helping Hands program, which helps devastated communities after disaster strikes, and the LDS church welfare program by fasting every month and giving the money we would have spent on food to the welfare program to feed hungry families. We've also participated in the O.U.R foundation in the past by donating money every month in efforts to help end human trafficking.
Aside from financial contributions, we try our best at helping the elderly and the widows around us, we offer compassion and kindness to the homeless and the abused by volunteering in different organizations at different times when we are able.
In fact one of our very first dates was volunteering at a women's shelter! We had the opportunity to play with the most adorable children while their mothers observed. The intent was that these mothers were able to learn how to interact and play with their children while recovering from abusive relationships, addictions, and afflictions.
We are not by any means perfect people but we hope you can see that we do try to be good people!
A Final Note:
It would mean the world to us, literally because the children whom we hope to raise will be our world, to have your support. We understand if you cannot donate and will not hold that against you. But for those who can and are willing, we would be so grateful. Support comes in many different forms but unfortunately, financial support is what usually makes things possible. Were it not for the hefty price tag, we would have taken this route a long time ago.
We are incredibly grateful that we have been able to spend all this time getting to know each other better, to strengthen our relationship, to graduate from college, and work. But, we know that our greatest desire is to expand our family and raise them in an empowering home full of good values and opportunity. Please help us accomplish this.
From the bottom of our hearts:
Thank You, Thank You, Thank you!
Melody & Jacob Shuss
& Honey (our dog).
Organizer
Melody Shuss
Organizer
Albrightsville, PA