Interisland Travel for Fertility Treatment

      Where do I even begin? Maybe one day I will write the whole 7+ year journey blog by blog but for now I need to keep it simple. Infertility sucks. It sucks so much. I would love to be more eloquent than that but I’m going to leave it at that. There are pluses and minuses to almost everything about living in Hawaii. A HUGE plus is that Hawaii recognizes infertility as a medical issue and insurance can cover costs related to treatment (major win!). I found this link very helpful in determining what, if any, coverage your state has Fertility Coverage by State. Here is my disclaimer now: what I am going to write was my experience at the time, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE check with your insurance provider before seeking or starting treatment so there are no unexpected costs. Ok, done. Now back to it. 

When I first started my fertility journey I had Kaiser, which is very popular in Hawaii. If you have Kaiser or want to know more about that experience then stay tuned for that. Long story short, Kaiser has a great team of doctors but it is not the most convenient for those on outer islands, such as me. The clinic near me was just primary care physicians so when a specialist was on island I would have to drive an hour to see them. Once I surpassed what that particular specialist could do then I was referred to their mothership on Oahu. Unfortunately, when you live on one of the other islands (any island other than Oahu), you have to travel to Oahu for most specialist unless they come to your island. IF the specialist comes to your island, it may be once a month but more likely it is once every 3 or 4 months. As you can imagine the appointments fill up for the one day they are on island, so you are usually booking appointments 6+ months in advance. Adding onto the difficulty with only having one day a specialist is on your island, is with fertility issues, that day is most likely not the day of your cycle that they want to see you. Needless to say, I was not able to take advantage of the island visits often. OCCASSIOANLLY it would miraculously line up but not often. I should have kept a tally of how many inter-island trips for fertility treatments I took to Oahu over the last 7+ years but I don’t know if that would make me feel better or worse.

It would literally take an entire day for a 5 minute appointment once you factor in driving to the airport (1 hour each way), travel time from the airport to the clinic, 5 minute appointment, travel time back to the airport, flight, then driving back home. Thankfully, our local airport is small, and since I didn’t need luggage, and I am TSA pre-check, I got my timing down to arriving to the airport 20 minutes before my flight was boarding. I am usually a nervous flyer, I want to be at my gate and waiting well before boarding, but after enough of these appointments I had a system and was very efficient. Unfortunately, I could not be as quick at Honolulu airport because it is much larger and it would have lines of travelers, so even being TSA pre checked, I had to make sure to arrive at least an hour before boarding to get through the lines. 

Another huge disadvantage of needing to fly for appointments was that I often traveled alone. If insurance covered the cost of a flight, it was only for me (the patient) so there was a financial component. Also, it meant we both would miss a whole day of work. Sure, most of the appointments were quick and not necessary to have a support person for, but there were often appointments that it would have been nice to have my spouse there with me, or even a close family member for support.

I imagine people in other places, like Alaska, have to fly for fertility treatment and I am thankful that I am not driving for 4+ hours each way. Actually, at the end of the day, I am just thankful that we have access and technology to be able to assist us reproductively challenged people.