Liz & Terry Taylor's IVF Fund
Donation protected
Looking for a life change Terry moved to Lawrence, Ks in 2003, shortly thereafter he met Liz and it was love at first sight! 6 years later we were married and 11 years later we were finally ready to start our family. Our choices in life have always been very thought out. That is why we waited so long to get married and even longer to start a family. We knew to have an emotionally and financially stable family we needed to make sure that Liz finished nursing school and that Terry was well on his way to finishing respiratory therapy school. Unfortunately waiting this long did not work in our favor biologically.
We started trying to get pregnant in Sept 2014 and in Nov Liz went in for a checkup. What was supposed to be a routine gyno visit which included some blood work showed that Liz had some imbalanced hormone levels and should see a specialist. Little did we know this routine appointment would be the start of something that would end up turning our world upside down. We went to KU Med center with the assumption that all that was needed was some medication to balance out her hormone levels. It was obvious during the conversations with the specialist that we were all on different pages as to what was going on. The specialist was brutally honest in letting us know the reality of our situation. This is when we found out that we were not able to conceive children naturally due to Liz finding out that she has pre-mature ovarian failure. For us this was devastating. We had been concentrating so hard on getting Liz through nursing school and then Terry through respiratory therapy school that the thought of us not being able to conceive had never crossed our minds. When you constantly hear ‘You’re young, you have plenty of time’, you begin to believe it. The next few weeks we both felt like we were walking through a fog. Once the reality of the situation set in, we knew we had to start looking at all our possibilities. We met with a reproductive endocrinologist to explore our options. She said our best, and really only option, to have a child naturally would be IVF (in vitro fertilization). IVF consists of taking a frozen egg (from an egg bank) and fertilizing it with Terry’s sperm. After 5 days of growing the fertilized egg outside the body, it is then implanted in Liz.
We have done further testing such as sonograms to show that Liz is in good reproductive health and the only thing holding us back is her lack of eggs due to the pre-mature ovarian failure. Our specialist said that our chances of successful implantation are in our favor.
We have thought about adoption and that is still a very good option for us but sometimes adoption can take a long time (sometimes years) and can cost as much as IVF. For our first child, if we can, we want to be able to experience the joy of giving birth and also with IVF we would still be able to have Terry’s genes in our child. Liz has always dreamed of what motherhood would be like. Having issues with infertility is never how any little girl imagines their happily-ever after would be. By taking our chances on IVF, we feel that we can come as close to having the family we always wanted.
We have already begun to rack up medical bills with all the tests and doctor visits to get us to this point. IVF is not a medical expense that is covered by insurance, and all costs come completely out of pocket. Both of our parents have helped us tremendously in getting us both through school to be in our perspective careers. So now we have to start looking to others for help. The total cost for our procedure and eggs will come to about $30,000. When we talked to a financial specialist about the total cost, Terry made her repeat that number about three times, just to make sure he heard her correctly. The cost for the frozen eggs comes to about $17,500. We pay this directly to an egg bank and in return we get 6 viable eggs that are fertilized in hopes that we end up with at least 2-3 potentially implantable embryos. With the bank we are using (www.fairfaxeggbank.com), we are insured that if we end up with less than 2 embryos, we have the ability to get a new batch of eggs sent without any additional cost. Then once we have our embryos, the additional cost of $11,850 is for the procedure to do the implantation. IVF commonly takes more than one try. If we have to do a second round (which we are being cautious and expecting to need it) it will cost an additional $2500.
We can’t possibly expect our family and friends to fund this procedure in its entirety, but we are hopeful that through the kindness of others we can reach our goal to afford the cost of the eggs.
(update)
Now that we have tried three rounds of IVF with no luck, we are moving on to adoption. Unfortunately with adoption also comes another huge round of expenses that amount to just as much as our IVF trials. The money we raised from our initial gofundme was used towards the $40,000 we spent on our IVF trials. We have continued our campaign to help with the adoption expenses.
We want to thank everyone for taking the time to read our story.
We set up a blog to keep everyone informed on our journey: http://terryandlizivfjourney.blogspot.com/
We started trying to get pregnant in Sept 2014 and in Nov Liz went in for a checkup. What was supposed to be a routine gyno visit which included some blood work showed that Liz had some imbalanced hormone levels and should see a specialist. Little did we know this routine appointment would be the start of something that would end up turning our world upside down. We went to KU Med center with the assumption that all that was needed was some medication to balance out her hormone levels. It was obvious during the conversations with the specialist that we were all on different pages as to what was going on. The specialist was brutally honest in letting us know the reality of our situation. This is when we found out that we were not able to conceive children naturally due to Liz finding out that she has pre-mature ovarian failure. For us this was devastating. We had been concentrating so hard on getting Liz through nursing school and then Terry through respiratory therapy school that the thought of us not being able to conceive had never crossed our minds. When you constantly hear ‘You’re young, you have plenty of time’, you begin to believe it. The next few weeks we both felt like we were walking through a fog. Once the reality of the situation set in, we knew we had to start looking at all our possibilities. We met with a reproductive endocrinologist to explore our options. She said our best, and really only option, to have a child naturally would be IVF (in vitro fertilization). IVF consists of taking a frozen egg (from an egg bank) and fertilizing it with Terry’s sperm. After 5 days of growing the fertilized egg outside the body, it is then implanted in Liz.
We have done further testing such as sonograms to show that Liz is in good reproductive health and the only thing holding us back is her lack of eggs due to the pre-mature ovarian failure. Our specialist said that our chances of successful implantation are in our favor.
We have thought about adoption and that is still a very good option for us but sometimes adoption can take a long time (sometimes years) and can cost as much as IVF. For our first child, if we can, we want to be able to experience the joy of giving birth and also with IVF we would still be able to have Terry’s genes in our child. Liz has always dreamed of what motherhood would be like. Having issues with infertility is never how any little girl imagines their happily-ever after would be. By taking our chances on IVF, we feel that we can come as close to having the family we always wanted.
We have already begun to rack up medical bills with all the tests and doctor visits to get us to this point. IVF is not a medical expense that is covered by insurance, and all costs come completely out of pocket. Both of our parents have helped us tremendously in getting us both through school to be in our perspective careers. So now we have to start looking to others for help. The total cost for our procedure and eggs will come to about $30,000. When we talked to a financial specialist about the total cost, Terry made her repeat that number about three times, just to make sure he heard her correctly. The cost for the frozen eggs comes to about $17,500. We pay this directly to an egg bank and in return we get 6 viable eggs that are fertilized in hopes that we end up with at least 2-3 potentially implantable embryos. With the bank we are using (www.fairfaxeggbank.com), we are insured that if we end up with less than 2 embryos, we have the ability to get a new batch of eggs sent without any additional cost. Then once we have our embryos, the additional cost of $11,850 is for the procedure to do the implantation. IVF commonly takes more than one try. If we have to do a second round (which we are being cautious and expecting to need it) it will cost an additional $2500.
We can’t possibly expect our family and friends to fund this procedure in its entirety, but we are hopeful that through the kindness of others we can reach our goal to afford the cost of the eggs.
(update)
Now that we have tried three rounds of IVF with no luck, we are moving on to adoption. Unfortunately with adoption also comes another huge round of expenses that amount to just as much as our IVF trials. The money we raised from our initial gofundme was used towards the $40,000 we spent on our IVF trials. We have continued our campaign to help with the adoption expenses.
We want to thank everyone for taking the time to read our story.
We set up a blog to keep everyone informed on our journey: http://terryandlizivfjourney.blogspot.com/
Organizer
Terry Taylor
Organizer
Lawrence, KS
