Yesterday was a historic day, a fantastic day that may bring about a shift in the entire world. I’m so grateful that yesterday happened in my lifetime, and so hopeful that the change yesterday represents, to so many in America and around the world, will actually come to fruition and make the world a better place for everyone.
So I’m happy, really I am.
But yesterday was also a spectacularly shit day. My spotting turned to bleeding, which has continued to get heavier into today, crushing all hope that this was late implantation. I have a brutal headache that won’t go away. And yesterday morning, after getting to work late because we had a morning meeting with our mortgage specialist, I picked up the phone to call my clinic to report CD 1, and was told unceremoniously that Dr. Rational has suspended fertility treatments at this time because the ultrasound tech is very ill and in hospital, and their backup for u/s can’t accomodate everyone and of course pregnant women get priority over those trying to get pregnant. And that while the u/s tech is likely to be off for 6 weeks or so, that brings us into Christmas when the clinic “slows down” so basically no treatment until after Christmas.
After I bleated out a stunned protest that it might have been good if someone had thought to give me a call so I didn’t have to hear this way, which was met with what sounded to me to be a mild rebuke that “it’s been hard on everyone”, I hung up the phone. And then I laid my head on my desk and sobbed. I sobbed until the anger returned and made me pull it together. Then I realized that not only would I not be at the telling stage by Christmas, there was basically no way that I would be pregnant by Christmas. Then I sobbed some more.
My boss, bless him, asked no questions, just hugged me, told me it would be ok, and sent me home.
Where I stewed about how shitty my clinic is, how little they actually care about what I or any other patient there is going through, how reliant the system is a single individual, how those of us who are struggling to get pregnant are treated so poorly in the system, how we are always last in line, how we are reminded, by the head nurse in my clinic during a follow up call, that fertility treatment is elective and therefore we don’t rate highly enough to tax the system even more than it already is right now. And I stewed also about the fact that my clinic didn’t see fit to make phone calls to people in the middle of a cycle (although they must have phoned people with u/s appointments booked) but instead sent a letter out that I should be getting sometime, and when I challenged them about this they said there were too many patients to call.
Right. Cause leaving a voicemail for the people who are in the middle of treatment right now is too much for the full-time social worker, the 2 receptionists, the head nurse, and the half-dozen or so other people that work in the office there. Not even counting the doctors. Or the entire health region administration, for that matter.
I know it would have been above and beyond, I know everyone would have had to pitch in. But seriously? They couldn’t each have spared a half hour to let people know?
If I can’t get compassion from my clinic, can’t I at least get a phone call so I don’t have to hear that I won’t get another try until the new year on the day that I am calling to report that this cycle is another negative?
Fuckers.
So I’m sad, I’m mad, I’m overwhelmed. I’m glad the world I woke up in this morning is a different place than it was yesterday, but at the moment, my attention is elsewhere. Back in my solipsistic IF hell.
