The more and more I think about my phone consult with Dr. RE yesterday, the more irritated I am.
I honestly felt like absolutely nothing was accomplished.
I felt like she was just blowing smoke up my… hoo-ha.
The running theme of the entire conversation was “I’m confident that if you just keep trying, you will eventually get pregnant.”
Well wait a minute lady… how much more do you expect me to put into this based solely on your confidence? You were confident that my age was in my favor. You were confident that I only needed to implant one embryo. You were confident that this round would work.
Call me crazy, but I'm gonna need more than your confidence to go on now.
I had 3 basic concerns that had been plaguing my mind about why this may not have worked. Concerns that I actually thought had some merit. Concerns that I thought deserved some consideration.
Concerns that were abruptly wiped away as nothing to worry about.
One of these concerns was my uterine lining. Prior to my cycle, you may remember that I had to have a period because my lining was considered “too thick”.
Well, at the point of my transfer; my lining was just as thick.
During one of my first ultrasounds I actually asked what the ideal lining was, and the range I was told was a great deal less than the measurement I had the day of transfer. In the back of my mind I was actually worried about this at the time (thinking my cycle would be canceled) but no one said anything about it to me so I just assumed it must not be as big a deal as I thought it was.
Until the moment when I found out it didn’t work. Then I started to worry.
And how could I not? Isn’t that a fair concern to have?
The doctor didn’t think so though. She told me that studies have been done that show that the uterine lining doesn't effect the outcome.
Why exactly did I have to have a period pre-cycle then?
My other big question was about testing now. I have heard about women who have clotting or antibody issues that prevent embryos from implanting without a little extra help. I asked if I should have any of that testing done before another round – just in case.
Again though, this concern was brushed off as nothing to worry about. Again she quoted studies that “proved” it wasn’t an issue.
Finally, I was worried about my progesterone levels on Monday morning. I only had a level of 4, which is pretty low. My nurse told me the levels were consistent with my bleeding, but considering the fact that I was doing 200mg suppositories twice a day, I would assume that I never even should have started bleeding at all; pregnant or not. I just can’t wrap my head around such low levels, given the fact that I was inserting those capsules on a pretty regular basis.
So, I asked what the possibility was that I wasn’t absorbing the progesterone correctly through the vaginal suppositories. I’ve heard of women this has happened to – women who have to do shots throughout their pregnancy as a result. I know it is a possibility.
But you guessed it; Dr. RE brushed this off as something I didn’t need to worry about either.
For the record, I do get that sometimes this just doesn’t work. I get that sometimes, for no explicable reason, the embryo just stops growing or never chooses to implant. I get that I could have a completely successful next round without ever getting any explanations for the past.
What I don’t get is the refusal to even acknowledge that there could be something else wrong. The refusal to run tests and make sure, before asking me to put more money and heart on the table.
I will say that the cost for doing a frozen transfer is less than I thought it would be; only a little over $2,000. I don’t mean to say “only” as though that's an easy amount of money to part with, but it is less than I originally thought, and it is something I think I'll be able to come up with on my own. Plus, for a transfer I only need to be in Seattle for one day. I can use miles to get my airfare, and I won’t spend nearly as much on the stay itself. This is all actually quite workable.
But I’m so uneasy about the whole thing right now that I can’t even think about moving forward.
The conversation didn’t get any better from there either. At one point she said to me, “I really don’t think any of this is going to be a problem. You had regular periods before, right?”
What?!? I haven’t had regular periods at all in over 2 years. I went 3 months without a period at one point. And then I spotted for almost 2 months!
The only reason I was regular before that was because I was on the pill.
Dr. RE clearly had very little recollection of me or my case as she spoke to me on the phone though, and it was at that point I realized that I have never even met this woman. She has handled all of my phone consults, but I had a different doctor for every single appointment at Seattle Reproductive Medicine. Not once did I even see the same person twice, and not once did she and I come face to face.
I felt very much so like another number on the board at that point. And I felt like I was getting the standard party line, rather than information specific to my case.
Which really has been my issue with Western Medicine from the start, but I won’t get into that here beyond saying that applying a one size fits all protocol to patients just doesn’t seem like the best option to me. People are different. Illnesses manifest differently. We don’t all fit into pretty little boxes with a bow, and we don’t all respond to the same treatments in the same ways.
The only thing I felt like she was real with me about was when she told me that my fresh cycle had a 60% chance of working, but my frozen cycle has only a 30% chance. As a result, she is recommending that I transfer both embryos when the time is right.
Well duh. That wasn’t even a question in my mind. I knew I was going to transfer both embryos when I froze them in the first place. That was the whole point.
But 30%? Only 30%? And you want me to go into that 30% still having questions in my mind about why this round with a 60% chance didn’t work?
I just can’t figure out how (or why) I’m supposed to do that.
The problem is that I have already decided that I am not going to do this for the rest of my life. I have already decided that this is the only IVF cycle I will ever do. I have already decided that I just can't spend the next however many years "trying" and facing disappointment after disappointment, while also digging myself into bankruptcy and becoming the cold and bitter woman I am so afraid of becoming.
I have already decided this, months ago. So knowing that those two frozen embryos are my last hope of carrying a child, I really need more than smoke right now. I need to at least feel like my concerns are being taken seriously. I need to feel like I am being treated as a woman who has actually done some research and who is putting everything on the line.
I need to feel like something other than a paycheck.
The conversation ended when she said “Overall, I really think you don’t have anything to worry about here. I’m actually very encouraged by your results!”
I couldn’t even find the words here, so I politely (really – I swear) hung up. But in my mind all I could think was “Really?!? What exactly is encouraging here? My extremely low fertilization rate? My ‘fair’ quality eggs that were graded ‘excellent’ just two years ago? The fact that this didn’t work? Where is the encouragement? Am I missing it?”
It was in that moment that I realized that RE’s are not paid to tell people the cold hard truth. They aren’t paid to tell someone there may not be any hope, or that there may be other problems. No. They are paid to build up that hope. To get you riding on it. To get you to believe that if you put enough money and time into this endeavor, you will take home a baby.
They’re paid to tell you:
“If you just keep trying, you will eventually get pregnant.”
My problem is that now my faith is rocked, and I’m just not sure I believe it.
And no amount of smoke is going to fix that.
ADSPACE
