The Thaos IVF Journey

Hi Family and Friends,

This has been a very difficult decision, one where we have gone back forth with. Today, we have decided we’d like to share our personal infertility story and ask for your support. As some of you may know, we have struggled with infertility over the last few years. We have been married for 13 years and after I completed pharmacy school we started trying for children of our own but were not successful.

Our fertility journey started in the fall of 2019 when we first began seeing a reproductive endocrinologist. Then COVID happened and our plans were put on hold and when we were ready to start again our family went through personal heartache with the loss of my brother and both grandfathers all within the same year.

If there was anything that those losses taught us, it was that life does not wait for us. Despite the continual curveballs, we knew we had to move forward with our plan for IVF. There were many unknowns that scared us into moving forward and we stalled to make excuses for ourselves. Our biggest obstacles were: 1) health risks involved, 2) the cost of IVF, 3) lastly, the fact that IVF is not guaranteed.

In May of this year, we finally got over our fears and started our first round of IVF. I did really well with stimulation and then at the very end, my body did not respond to the trigger medication I was given. What seemed like such a promising cycle ended poorly where I underwent 2 egg retrievals within 48 hours and yielded only 1 egg for fertilization. On day 4, our single egg that fertilized degraded. As reality sunk in, I couldn’t help but feel defeated and heartbroken since there were so many whys that we didn’t seem to have the answer for. We had spent about $25K (labs, monitoring, surgery, stimulation meds) out of pocket because our insurance does not cover IVF and there was nothing to show for it.

After the disappointment from that first round started to settle, we were able to discuss with our reproductive endocrinologist and strategize for our second cycle. We had to take out money from our 401K accounts to afford a second IVF cycle. Last month, we completed our second cycle and we have much to hope for. However, we still have more costs and meds to pay for in order to start our embryo transfer. We are graciously asking from the bottom of our hearts for your support and would welcome any donations as we work to build our family.

Love, Chuemee and Sue Thao