Tag: Fertility clinic waiting rooms

My Full Story

Infertility Honesty

As the recent piece in Marie Claire ended up presenting a severely stunted form of my TTC story, Pamela from Silent Sorority opted to piggy back it with the full version on her important platform, reprotechtruths.org.

So hold onto your hats folks, you can read a much more robust account of my fertility industry journey HERE.  For years I wasn’t able to speak or write about it in its entirely all that coherently.  The amount there was to process seemed endless and unfathomable.  It’s only recently (about 4.5 years out of treatments) that a quasi rear view mirror of sorts has emerged through which to view and assimilate things.

People come to childlessness via many different paths.  I feel it’s important for the entire CNBC community to have a reasonable level of awareness regarding the perpetual trauma from which many of us are emerging or have emerged.

Reprotechtruths.org is dedicated to #unmaskingIVF and to helping “future generations understand the associated risks and costs”.  Thanks to Pamela for creating and curating this crucial site.

For those who have direct experiences with the fertility industry, your stories are important, especially in light of the current lack of patient tracking.  If you too are interested in sharing your story on reprotechtruths.org, click here.

Be back in a couple of weeks with some writing, finally, just for this blog:-)

 

 

 

Childless Voices Resound on IVF’s 40th Anniversary

Infertility Honesty

The experience of not being able to have children when you wanted them will always be life altering.  And it has the capacity to inflict a level of grief that is, among other things, transformative.

The experience of wanting children and not being able to have them does not always have to be so inhumane, however.

What do we do when evolution is so clearly needed?  When we are driven by the common thread of leaving this experience more truthful and less pulverizing than we found it?  One doesn’t need to have their own children to have a vested interest in improving things for the next generation, that’s for sure.

We start talking. Read more →

Summer Reading

Infertility Honesty

The most illuminating book for my process so far

I’m recalling those days of summer reading. From the dank public library basement children’s section in northern Massachusetts to propping myself up with a book in my bed, in a tree, or on the back porch. The focus was different back then, needless to say. I read stories and about history and historical figures. I was Laura Ingalls Wilder obsessed and had an innate interest in physical handicaps, reading whatever I could that would take me into the worlds of those who had to struggle where I didn’t.

Today it’s different. I have a reading list for the first time in my adult life, spurred by my experiences with infertility and involuntary childlessness. This list is mostly filled with stories of those who have gone through some kind of life altering traumatic loss or plight. Seems I’m propelled to read whatever I can to take me into the worlds of those who have been forced to struggle in ways similar to those in which I have. Read more →

#Listen Up: The Difference In Doctors

Infertility Honesty

Insights on Infertility Medicine’s Failings

For National Infertility Awareness Week April, 2017

“Something is wrong. The holidays are over, yet my physical symptoms are still present”.

I was sitting, practically slumped over on my primary care physician’s table. I had originally thought the debilitating and sudden onset symptoms I was experiencing might have been spurred by holiday grief. I had just been riding a fairly good, transformational spell but had become open, in the past three years, to the fact that grief can do funny things.

“I feel just like I felt two weeks ago when I went to the ER” I informed him, my heart bouncing around in my chest as unprovoked waves of nausea and panic swept through me while the room spun.

Fortunately, he listened to me and took me seriously. He showed concern. And he acknowledged right away that his puzzlement over why a healthier than average almost 45 year old was in such a state of disarray warranted further investigation. Investigation he knew required the help of others, so he funneled me to the right specialists. On my way to a diagnosis I was, unaware of the relative medical paradise I was about to enter.

Read more →

#StartAsking Reproductive Medicine to Prioritize Patient Care

Infertility Honesty

Dear Reproductive Medicine,

I’m one of your patients.

I went through five IUI’s (all done with injectables), one hysteroscopy/laparoscopy surgery for stage 3 endometriosis, four fresh IVF cycles and one frozen.

I also, during my four year trying to conceive trek, unexpectedly dealt with PTSD that went undiagnosed for quite some time and entailed panic attacks, many of which took place in your waiting rooms.

My husband and I have now embarked on the third year of grieving and mourning the loss of our children, notably all by ourselves.  And no, we don’t consider our departure from reproductive medicine and the pursuit of a family with children a “choice” upon which our grief can be blamed.  It was, rather, the only sane and responsible action to take under the circumstances.

Yes, I’m one of your patients.  A patient who, two years and three months out of her final treatment is disturbed by many aspects of the care she got….and didn’t get…..while in the care of reproductive medicine.  Prompted by this year’s National Infertility Awareness Week theme, it’s time to #StartAsking. Read more →

Was That Really Me?

Infertility Honesty

Evolvement in the midst of crap, trauma, and toddlers in fertility clinic waiting rooms

Below is a repost (with some new thoughts added on at the end) from this past fall from my old space on Blogspot.

I was in the middle of my fourth round of IVF in nine months and not feeling it at all. Every procedure, drug delivery, drug side effect, and doctor’s visit was a total slog. “I can’t stand this anymore. I really don’t want to be doing this. I cannot stand this stupid stupid fucking shit. I just want it to end. I just want it over. This is horrible. I CAN’T believe I’m still here. I would not wish this on my WORST enemy” was the soundtrack that played over and over and over in my mind. When you have had a total of 14 embryos transferred, 11 of them grade a, that have amounted to nothing, the notion that you might be working towards getting pregnant fades real fast. I was at the “I need to do everything I need to do to confirm we CAN’T get pregnant so that we can move on” point.

During this time I was sitting in my doctor’s waiting room anticipating yet another glorious vaginal sonogram. Having already started Lupron I was in the desirable mood of someone who had been forced to transition into menopause over the course of about 10 minutes. And as my luck would have it, it was also during this time that another patient in the waiting room had chosen to bring her little brat child along with her to her fertility doctor appointment. Read more →