Keeping score

Here's a story I never published from IVF 7, originally written on 1/2/18:

Tuesday morning I got a call from my nurse with "an update about your cells." As she was talking I hurried out of my office where I have better reception so I can hear what she said. By the time I got outside she'd already moved on to hysteroscopy dates and updates from doc regarding scheduling. When she was done I asked her to repeat the biopsy results because I wasn't sure I had heard correctly. Turns I had heard right the first time: they only sent out the cells for PGD testing that day. I thought she was calling with an update on the results, not to let me know that they had been chilling on ice for over a week. I know in the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal and it doesn't affect the outcome whatsoever but I was upset that I didn't know that they weren't sent out immediately.

She tried to make me feel better by saying, "Yeah sometimes they batch them with other patients so they can send one shipment" which is definitely the wrong thing to say. My fee includes shipping which means that you can't cut costs on my dime. It bothered that no one told me that the cells weren't getting shipped until after the new year started.

What probably happened was that the lab was closed for the holidays and possibly because of all the drama with the idiot nurse, this bit of info somehow fell through the cracks.

What can I do? Raise hell again? Talk to the office manager again? Complain to my doctor? At the end of the day it's a week delay. To them it's no big deal but to me it is. We're waiting every single day to hear results .

Too many things fall through the cracks with them. It's hard not to keep score. I'm seeing a pattern here -- December sucks because everyone's mind is one foot out the door for the holidays. Maybe this clinic sucks and I'm ready to move on.

Reading that back all the anxiety and stress of those months comes flooding back. During this delay I have a lot of time to think and one of the things I think about is how much the old clinic sucked. I had a hard time thinking about switching; not only because of all the retesting we'd have to do and the cost, but also because of the feeling of failure that comes along with moving. It felt like new clinic was a last resort I wasn't ready for, even though the reality was far from that.


Recently someone asked me for an RE recommendation and I gave my new doctor's info along with singing praises. When asked about why I left my old place I gave a general "not the right fit" because that's ultimately what it was -- I know that others have had success there. It got me thinking about specifics and I ended up with a pros and cons list.

OLD CLINIC:

Pros:
- Less expensive
- Reliable
- Known
- Professional
- Pharmacy discount
- Stand-alone fertility clinic so everything is in one place and only fertility related

Cons:
- Sterile environment.
- Very much "fertility farm" feel.
- Doctor not interested in our success

While they never harmed me medically and for that I'm grateful, there were so many errors. A few listed below:
- That one time the doc told us we had two embryos when really we had none because in his haste to get us info quickly he didn't completely read the PGD report (IVF 2, Dec 2015)
- That one time the financial counselor told us wrong info about insurance that screwed us for an entire year of coverage (Dec 2015)
- That time our nurse thought we were batching embryos with a future cycle and didn't send out the cells for PGD testing for over a week while our doc was on vaca and didn't bother asking us (IVF 2, Dec 2015)
- That time the nurse gave me an outdated embryo report and not answered her phone for a full day making me lose my mind from anxiety (IVF 7, Dec 2017)
- That time they forgot to tell me the PGD lab closes for winter break, delaying getting our results by nearly two weeks without giving us a heads up there will be a wait (IVF 7, Dec 2017)
- That time I was getting ready to go to the clinic for FET 6 and got an email from my nurse saying "Glad to hear the transfer went well!" and nearly giving me a heart attack. I hadn't even been at the clinic yet - was it transferred into someone else???? Turns out she was looking at the thaw report and emailed prematurely (FET 6, Feb 2018)
- That one time they tried to take payment for embryo storage when we had asked for those abnormal embryos to be thawed and disposed (Feb 2018)
- That time they sent a bill because they didn't apply our credit to the balance first (April 2018). Then kept sending a bill even after we called to let them know about the credit (May 2018). Then not sending a refund for unapplied funds even after the balance was paid because of "some holdup" with insurance (May-Sept 2018).


NEW CLINIC:

Granted, it's been less than a year. We only switched over officially in March. If I include the second opinion we got last summer, then a little over a year. 

Pros:
- Caring doctor. Professional yet warm, responds to email thoughtfully, open to new ideas.
- Friendly environment.
- Part of a hospital, so they care about the whole patient not just the fertility statistics
- Excellent phlebotomists - one stick wonders every time, even with what were previously deemed my "tricky" veins.

Cons:
- Teaching hospital. That means grad students and fellows at most appointments.
- Cost
- Not as modern setting, for example not newly renovated, not as high quality screens in monitoring rooms.
- Part of a hospital, so while it's more efficient, there are also drawbacks like OR appointment for a hysteroscopy being scheduled between a kidney repair and bone marrow surgery.
- Learning the systems of a new place. New. Scary. Unpredictable.


It's cathartic to get this off my mind. It's understandable to be disappointed with the results from the old clinic, but I don't need to carry around the baggage of the losses.  I can remember without harboring festering resentment to weigh me down. I realize how much less anxiety I have with new clinic even though we're not yet past the ttc phase -- it's just a matter of a different outlook and better care. We made the decisions we did with the information we had at the time so I hold no regrets, but I am glad we switched.