But once bitten, twice shy and all that. We said yes to the agency, we signed paperwork, we paid sums of money for treatment, but I felt very detached from it all. I just didn’t really engage with it. It was all taking ages, there were tests for her, tests for me, tests for B – the tests went on and on, the weeks and months went by. The process of getting our donor to the point where she could actually donate, that we’d been told would take three months, dragged on and on — if this were a film or TV programme, this is the point at which you’d see the leaves on the trees changing colour from autumn to winter to spring to denote the passing of time.
Continue readingTag Archives: clinic
I ran away…
I ran away in January. To a place that I didn’t associate with trying and not succeeding. Somewhere I drank wine and stopped worrying about whether I was eating enough vegetables. (I wasn’t.) Somewhere I stopped caring if food was packaged in plastic (it was), or whether the tomatoes were organic (they weren’t). Somewhere my life wasn’t measured out in blood tests and supplements and scans and injections. Where I rudely
Continue readingThe final transfer…
Well that’s what it felt like at least. I’d done the three cycles I’d signed up for, this is the last — well the only — frozen embryo in storage. I’d already mentally decided that if this one didn’t work, it was time for a rethink. That although I didn’t feel done, I had to look at other options beyond my clinic. Seek second and third opinions, work out where I went from here. So in a way, whether or not it worked this time, it slightly felt like the end of an era.
So the results of the blood tests came Continue reading
A catch up…
For various reasons I’ve not seen my pet consultant in a while — she’s been on holiday, she’s been in theatre, she’s been ill — and so the cycle that was cancelled I didn’t see her at all, and so far this cycle I haven’t seen her either. The clinic doesn’t make any guarantees about this, after all it’s a 7-day-a-week operation, you can’t ever guarantee to see the same person each time. But because I have up until now, it’s been a bit weird for me.
I sort of feel dumped and cut adrift even though I know Continue reading
Conversations with my clinic…
Me, to my consultant: What’s the most significant determinant of success for embryo transfer?
Her: What do you mean?
Me: Well obviously I eat healthily, I don’t smoke, I’m not drinking but is there anything else… Continue reading
Permission to procrastinate…
So I wrote about the fact that I was going back to the clinic on a bit of a fact-finding mission. And that’s exactly what I did. I’d made a point of booking to see the consultant that I’d really liked when I was freezing my eggs. I didn’t just trust her from a medical perspective, but from an emotional one. (She’s the one that I cried on in all of my first three consultations.) I felt like she totally understood my reasons for freezing my eggs, and she was really positive about what I was doing.
And, when I saw her, I felt totally vindicated Continue reading
A little more conversation…
Today I cried at the clinic. Nothing had gone drastically wrong, I wasn’t hurt, nobody had been horrible to me, nobody had been unbearably kind to me. Maybe it was the hormones finally kicking in which resulted in a disproportionately emotional response, but basically I cried because I was treated like an idiot, and treated like a number, and treated like a cash cow, rather than a person.
And I’m pretty sure that the person who made me feel like that didn’t mean to make me feel like that, but it did make me think Continue reading
Egged On 