Least expensive source for Follistim?

May 29, 2011 10:13 AM

Where can I find Follistim at the lowest possible price?

I'm paying out of pocket for Follistim & Ganirelix for an egg retrieval cycle... frighteningly expensive, so I'm wondering if others could share their (reliable) sources for these fertility medications. The Follistim will be 300 IU pens and Ganirelix 250mcg.

Thanks so much for any advice! Also, if you were on this protocol and care to share any side effects or experiences you had, I'd be grateful.

posted by roxie110 to health & fitness (6 answers total)

Have you asked your doctor if they have any free samples of these medications? Our office always had extra from the drug companies that they were willing to give out to patients for free.
posted by ohohcyte at 12:30 PM on May 29, 2011

I've used Village Fertility, which is an online speciality pharmacy. Follistim is very expensive, regardless of where you get it. My best advice, especially if you're likely to be doing this long-term (and let's hope you're not!), is to consider moving to a mandated state like Massachusetts or Rhode Island, where fertility treatment meds are covered under insurance. If it's a short-term deal, then just suck it up and be glad you don't have to mortgage the house.

Side effects depend on dosage. If you're on 150 a day, then it might not be much more intense than what you've felt at your most hormonal state naturally. If you've been on any other fertility meds, then this might help: I thought Clomid was by far a worse experience than Follistim, even though Clomid is a med of first resort.

And the needles are no big deal really, even though it's scary to inject yourself the first time. Just rotate your injection sites and you'll be fine.
posted by mmmcmmm at 1:59 PM on May 29, 2011

Try IVF Meds. It will ship from Europe but the meds are fine. Shipping is like $39 if I remember correctly. You may want to buy multidosage pens of up to 900 units in order to save more. If you'd prefer to buy in the USA try Ascend pharmacy. Different specialty pharmacies will have best prices on different brands. You can call around to a bunch for price quotes; I found everyone I spoke with to be exceedingly nice.
posted by jay dee bee at 6:51 PM on May 29, 2011

Adding another vote for ivfmeds.com. I used them for several years, most recently in 2008. They were consistently and substantially cheaper than gettings meds domestically. They ship from England and are easy to deal with via phone or fax (may have email now). Their prices are (or were) posted on their website so it was easy to compare to other pharmacies. Good luck and I hope your time in the infertility trenches is very short.
posted by Ginesthoi at 5:55 AM on May 30, 2011

Thanks so much! I'll check out all these leads. IVFmeds looks quite cheap, just wondering if there are any issues with the transit time being longer, if that could affect efficacy? There'd be no way to know what temperatures the meds were exposed to...
posted by roxie110 at 11:00 PM on May 31, 2011

To follow up... the best US price I found by far was Alexander's Twin Pharmacy. Their Ganirelix price was competitive as well. The meds came on time, as well.
posted by roxie110 at 5:14 PM on July 17, 2011