Some doctors are so stupid

Some doctors are so stupid.
Want to know why I, as a Registered
Nurse, feel that way?

I was 36, had severe endometriosis and
wanted another child.
My OB-GYN had me do inseminations.
Six of them.
They are less invasive than IVF.

I thought I would never do IVF.
There's that "Never say Never."
If I knew then, what I know now...
I would have gone straight to IVF.
In fact, doctors should never
encourage patients 36 years old
and above to bother with inseminations.

All you do is waste precious time.
A woman's fertility takes a
nosedive after 35 or 36.
I didn't know it then.

My nursing specialty was ER, not
infertility.
The doctor should have known it.
He should have told me to RUN to
IVF.
He didn't.

By the time I started IVF,
I was forty. Meaning "old"
Meaning a less than 10% chance of
conceiving.

I ignored that statistic.
Statistics don't mean anything
if you're on the right side of them.

I just knew that I was going
to get my little baby girl.
I knew her name.
I had dreams about her.
I knew exactly what she looked like.
I knitted her a pink blanket and
I bought her toys.
A baby that never came.

I did IVF.
I went to retrieval.
There were no eggs to retrieve.

I woke up in the Recovery Room
and my first question was
"How many eggs did they get?"
The nurse said, "Let me go
get your husband and he'll
talk to you."
Big Chicken, she was.

I knew it was bad. In spite
of my drugged state, I knew it
was bad.
I cried so much, even though
my husband kept saying it was OK.
How could he say that?
He had no children.
And he wasn't going to get any
from me.

The doctor offered donor eggs.
We said no.
We said "At least we know we did
everything we could."
It didn't help.
I went home and curled
up in a fetal position in bed.
I didn't want to talk to anyone.

Of course EVERYONE knew I was going
to retrieval.
They all wanted to know how it went.
I couldn't speak.
My husband handled all the calls.
Some days, I'm still not over it.
I still grieve.

But that experience helps me to
help others.
I left the Emergency Department.
I now work in an IVF clinic.
I know how it feels to be in
the patient's shoes.
I help them go through their
cycle and conceive.
I also help them when their bodies
fail them too. When they must
live with the knowledge that
their hopes and dreams of having
a baby are gone.

Will their experience, their
failure, help them later in life?
Mine did.
But what a price.