“Gina, You're Too Tired To Get Pregnant. That Will Be $470 Now Please...”

“Gina, You’re Too Tired To Get Pregnant. That Will Be $470 Now Please…”

Jun 05th 2010

Last month I decided to switch our family to a naturopathic doctor. I’ve grown sick of the standard medpros pushing prescriptions for everything I have a question about. The kids needed their yearly visit anyway, and after a few months of not getting pregnant, I wanted to see someone more holistic for my well-woman care in hopes that she could help me figure out why I’m not getting pregnant as easily as I once did.

In February I had a horrible experience with an endocrinologist who scolded me multiple times during my visit over the fact that I’m still breastfeeding my younger son (don’t even get me started on that whack job.) I went to her because I used to have hypothyroidism, and thought that might be interrupting fertility this time. As it turns out, my thyroid function is fine, but others suggested that only a naturopathic doctor could test for things that mainstream docs never bother with – like vitamin deficiencies, liver function, and such. Since I know a naturopath wouldn’t scold me for extended breastfeeding, I thought that would be a perfect fit.

The naturopath spent an hour with me asking me ten million questions about my diet and my poop. I was expecting a physical exam – just as most doctors give during a well-woman visit – but she never touched me other than to check my ears, nose, and throat.

After 60 minutes she announced that I had “adrenaline fatigue” (which I can believe) and that poor digestion was the cause of all the world’s problems. She put me on a “blood type diet” and gave me a list of all the things I could and couldn’t eat.

Here’s the short list – the things in bold are my absolute favorite foods that I normally eat on a daily, if not weekly, basis:

	Food Allowed	Food NOT Allowed
Meat	Wild fish	Chicken, Beef, Shellfish
Nuts	Peanuts, walnuts	Poppy seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds
Dairy	Goats milk products	Cow’s milk products
Vegetables	Broccoli, Beets, Cauliflower, Celery, Green Leafy Vegs, Cucumber, Eggplant, Garlic, Sweet potatoes	Artichoke, Avocado, All types of Corns, Lima Beans, Black Olives, All kind of Bell Peppers
Fruits	All kinds of Grapes and Plums, Berries, Cherries, Pineapple	Mangoes, Guava, Coconuts, Bananas, Oranges
Spices	Kelp, Miso, Curry, Garlic, Horseradish, Parsley	Vinegar, Pepper
Beverages	Coffee, Green Tea	Distilled Liquor, Sodas, Black Tea

Essentially, everything on the “Not Allowed” list was the food I live on, and according to this doctor, my body couldn’t handle any of it. Seriously – BANANAS are no good for me? Black beans too? How can this be? All of this leads me to wonder how in the world people are supposed to live healthy diets if even healthy food – like vegetables, beans, and nuts – are supposedly slowly killing them? Growing up poor, I know how impossible it is to eat healthy with no money, and I thought I was doing a really good job with my family’s diet lately. If I’m killing myself with freaking bell peppers, what hope do impoverished families have of ever being healthy given that most poor people don’t even have access to fresh fruit? This whole game seems so elitist and priviledged, and having come from desperate poverty myself, it all really pisses me off.

Well, after I got my blood work back, it turns out that the only deficiency I had was a Vitamin D deficiency, which I probably could have diagnosed myself given the very obvious mood and fatigue symptoms I cart around. She also said my white blood cell count is “shockingly” low – so low that an MD would diagnose me with an immune disorder. According to her, the low white blood cell count indicates that my body is working so hard to digest food that it’s drawing resources from my immune system to get the job done. Apparently a simple digestive enzyme supplement will fix that right up.

After all of that, I said to her “So doc, do ANY of these lab results explain why we’re not conceiving?” And she said “My opinion is that you’re just too tired to get pregnant.”

A week later I got a bill in the mail for $470.

Gee. Thanks. After my panic attack, I called the office, then the insurance company, trying to figure out why in the world I’m being charged $470 out of pocket for a simple office visit, especially when I knew that every dollar of the lab work was covered by insurance. As it turns out, the office visit actually cost a whopping $535, but insurance picked up $65 of that because I had a few bucks left in my “Health Care Account.” The rest – as bad luck would have it – was NOT covered as a well-woman visit the way I thought it was going to be, and the office never told me they charge half a month’s rent just to walk in the door.

So now what? I don’t know any more about my situation than I did a month ago, except that my insurance isn’t going to pay for me to try to figure any of it out. I’d like to try acupuncture for fertility, but insurance won’t cover the $60 weekly visits. They WILL cover $10,000 IVF treatments though! Someone explain that backwards nonsense to me. We’re nowhere near that point, but I’m starting to wonder if I’ll still be blogging about fertility issues this time next year, in which case, IVF is exactly what we’d be looking at.

This is all getting so depressing, I just can’t even stand to think about it any more. And we’ve only been trying since January. The problem is, it’s now consuming most of my waking thoughts. I don’t know how others, who’ve been trying for YEARS, can handle this. The frustration, and the uncertainty, is eating me alive.

My readers seem pretty smart – what do you think of the doctor’s “diagnosis?”

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FYI: I am 15 DPO, no AF yet, but temp dropped Thursday and all tests are negative. It’s imminent.

UPDATE: AF arrived at 11:30 pm tonight. I knew she was on her way. I welcome the start of a new cycle.