Intro on this board. First time IVF and in the Czech Republic

susykat77

Hi Ladies! I am on Day 4 of my first stim cycle and in the Czech Republic - Prague. I thought I'd reach out for some cyber support. My husband and I moved here specifically for IVF treatment. We had a lot of testing done at Colorado Center for Reproductive Management and turned out my AMH was extremly low - 0.1. CCRM suggested a discounted banking package to ensure pregnancy for the mere sum of 50K. My husband and I would have to travel 4 hours to the clinic for treatment and were not sure how we were going to afford me missing work and putting 50K on credit cards so after some research we decided to uproot our lives and move to Prague for 6 months. I am receiving treatment treatment at Iscare and so far really trust the care that I am receiving. I am on 6 vials on Menopur once a day and then the last 2 days of stims I am also on Orgalutran. So far my only complaint is how much Menopur burns and the headaches. I look forward to getting to know some of you ladies. Cheers.

cinnamonbits

Hi Susykat77,

Though our paths aren't exactly parallel (I intro'ed on here this morning, too), we're IF family and I wanted to send you good thoughts from across the pond. What you and your husband have done is incredibly, stunningly brave. Heart clenched for good news soon!

WhiskyandWhiskers

@Susykat77, I think your mission to be pregnant is a brave one! Really, really cool that you've decided to travel to visit an RE, you'll never forget your traveling experiences. 

How did you decide to go to Czech for treatment? I'm all sorts of fascinated, and appreciate your sharing. The type of club we belong to no one wants to talk about, but it's important to share. 

susykat77

 @whiskyandwhiskers, We decided on Czech as it is one of the least expensive places to receive treatment and a modern country which has a lot of experience with "medical tourism". My acupuncturist mentioned that a client of hers came here and it peeked my interest. I started researching it and after contacting a few clinics, we decided to just go for it. Our thoughts were, we could go 50k into debt in Colorado traveling back and forth across mountain passes to our RE or we could go to Europe for 6 months and spend a lot less money. We figured that even if we went 50k in the hole quitting our jobs at least we would have an experience in Europe and have a baby vs working our tails off while having a baby for the same cost. We actually calculated it out and figured that we will go into less debt overall this way. A lot of women travel here for a much shorter time period but with my numbers, we expected it to take several months so we decided to plan to stay for 6 months. There is a really great forum on fertility friend UK that is dedicated to IVF in the Czech Republic. I am very happy with our decision. Best of luck to you!!!

kuposa17

DH and I are just now starting to look at intl ivf so i am really glad you brought this up. We just had our 2nd failed ivf and cannot afford to keep trying here in the US....at least not indefinitely. We're deciding between shared risk/guarantee DE here or regular DE abroad. Been looking at Greece and Spain but didn't know about Czech clinic, that is great to hear!

susykat77

@kuposa17 the Czech Republic is really inexpensive. I also looked into Greece and Switzerland. I was so scared to make the leap but once we got here everything fell into line! If you have any questions, please let me know. (For some reason I'm not getting notifications on my phone so I just saw these two responses)

Good Luck!!

lilmamapanther

Never considered ivf abroad

kuposa17

For people who love to travel, this is a great option because so many couples make a vacation out of it. If my DH enjoyed traveling as much as me, we would do intl ivf in a heartbeat but he wants to try local first. Obviously there are no guarantees and no clinic is perfect...but for those who wear out their passports on a regular basis anyway, it's a no-brainer (in my opinion).