Skip to main content

Time for a rant

I am not really an angry person but this week I've been raging a bit.

After my first catheter experience I can say I was already a little on the unhappy side.

Then I got the somewhat good news - that this time we had 12 fertilised embryos. But I would not hear until day 5, Monday, what the plans were for freezing.

The cycle I did this time was supposed to be a "Freeze all" cycle. At the last minute I told the doctor I was a bit concerned to trust this since we have never had anything to freeze at all, so we changed the trigger injection to ovidrel incase we needed to do a fresh transfer.
Since egg collection,  I've been injecting myself with this horrible medication called Clexane which leaves bruises everywhere.
So we pencilled in a fresh transfer for Monday at 1:30pm, and I'm told "You will find out first thing Monday morning whether it's going ahead".
First thing Monday morning, no news.
I call the clinic.
Sorry, no one can talk to you about that now, they are busy with egg collections. Someone will call at around 11 or so to let you know.
Well I am at work until 12.30, and unable to answer phone calls in my work. So I left it in my partner's hands to deal with the clinic.
I get a text from my partner to say - none of the embryos are suitable for freezing, there have been no blastocysts, but some morulas that could be transferred.
So I go in to the clinic for this 1.30procedure.
I'm not sure if there was some lost in translation thing going on but they didn't seem to be ready for me.
I get there at 1pm, as I was told to, and I drink lots of water because you need to have a full bladder.
And then just end up waiting there.
The waiting room fills up with other people who get seen before me. and even more irritating to me at this point is that a few of these people have children of their own already.
I am not one for getting irritated generally, but I really was getting cross.
I desperately needed to pee....
 I'm feeling a bit sensitive about peeing after the catheter incident.
And I'm on prednisone too. It's getting me tetchy.
Then the doctor comes out to get another patient and says "I have a riddle for you, there's 30 cows and 28 chickens, how many are left?" ... the hilarious answer being 10, ---- (30 cows, and 20 ate chickens).  I don't know, it's cute or whatever?  I just don't have time for this.
And by the way, the waiting room was freezing, the air-conditioning pumped high.
Finally, I get in for the embryo transfer procedure (at 2.30pm) so I got an extra hour of sitting there in the cold with a full bladder, (waiting for my parking permit to run out)... and in the procedure room I find out at this point... of course, with my pants already down (oh and they didn't have a sheet to cover me up, one of the scientists did find a pillow slip??) , that maybe one of the embryos could have been frozen after all. But it's all prepared to go with assisted hatching just performed and embryo glue, so I don't think this is an option.
The thing is my body feels like it's been through a wringer and I don't see this fresh transfer working out... it was a plan B situation. I really would have preferred to freeze and wait.
Anyways, so I'm there getting ready and my doctor is a bit confused about what's going on and checking with me what kind of trigger medication I took and whether it was ok to be doing the transfer (since the original trigger medication that was prescribed would not have worked for fresh transfer).
I'm thinking - are you people on top of this at all?
The doctor then speaks away jovially to me and I make it clear that I'm not up for this style of bedside manner today, I said I'm feeling quite disappointed really. He makes light of it, "it aint over till the fat lady sings".
Later I think he tried to be a bit contrite about it... although even then he managed to irritate me with his arrogance when he said to my partner ... "You know, I have to get really good at picking up on people's emotions in this job, and I can tell you today that this woman is not happy and you need to take care of her"...
!!!!
oh his miraculous powers of perception!

Ok, rant done. Had to get that out of my system.

I'll continue to blacken up my belly with this clexane, and keep my cranky levels high on prednisone, for another 2 weeks...
and...
just
keep the fingers crossed.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

the stories that are out there

It seems to me that the happy-ending story that is so often "out there" about infertility is this: "Here is a couple who struggled and struggled to have kids, and then, finally, they had a baby. The end"... I think something about this story feels like a lack of honouring of the losses felt along the way for infertile couples. I know life goes on, and I know it does no one any good at all to get stuck in grief or pain. But surely there is some kind of transition for people to adjust from infertility to parenthood? Maybe there is a certain loss that is always felt? Transitioning to parenthood seems like it would be a hard process following infertility battles, and different somehow from a "normal fertility" transition to parenthood which I am sure would be hard enough (and I think is spoken about a lot). Something about the "...and then they had a baby" part of the story seems a bit dismissive about the infertility dramas, or gives a message of-...

belonging or be longing somewhere

I heard a great radio segment the other day on the importance of belonging.  Belonging is a pretty core and pretty basic human need I would say, and we certainly don't feel great, in fact we probably do things like turn to drugs and alcohol or other addictions or avoidant behaviours, when we don't have a strong sense of belonging somewhere in the world. These notions of belonging got me thinking about the infertility/trying to conceive journey. I guess getting online and reading and writing a blog has been all about gaining a better sense of belonging in this process. But even in this lovely online world there is a sad kind of aspect to it that... some people move on to the world of having kids and it doesn't feel like I "Belong" with them in the same sense. Some move on to have no kids, but as I am still trying to have kids, in a sense, don't "belong" there either. I can perhaps feel that I belong wholeheartedly with other people in my position, bu...

a few thoughts on where am I at

I'm getting over it. We have recently had the results of our 7th IVF round... which are... negative. sigh. I'm not surprised of course. It's starting to feel a bit ridiculous. Plan is to meet with a third doctor, who we have been waiting to see for months, to see what light he would shed. The thing I'm frustrated about is that IVF... it's not treating the problem at all, as far as I can see. I'm not a doctor but it seems to me that there's something up with the fact that our embryos are not hardy. IVF is just trying to maximise numbers, not helping to fix whatever is causing the problem with the embryos. But the thing is that the medical professionals don't actually know what the problem is for us... so IVF is all they've got to offer. I'm feeling a bit silly to continue with it, because who knows how long it could go on for, and who knows if for us, with whatever our problem is, whether it even could work. Well a few questions for the new do...