Sunday, May 11, 2008

Stages of Ick

I didn't realize how numb I felt yesterday until this morning when I woke up very sad. Feeling sad highlights the differences from feeling numb.

I'm also starting to flirt with feeling "angry." It appears that my progress through Kubler-Ross's stages of grief are not going linearly. I am particularly angry at the embryologist at our clinic for doing such a crap ass job. Clearly he did not research the best method to defrost our eggs. I have yet to see any number in the scientific that doesn't say that 70-80% of the eggs should survive defrost. It makes me very, very angry to think that his thaw rate was about the opposite of that.

The lesson I'm learning from this is that I should have trusted my gut. I have done a good deal of research into frozen donor eggs. I know that USC has an infertility program that has done extensive research with frozen donor eggs and deems it to be a viable alternative. I should have gotten over my fear of offending them and sent all the information I had to them to make sure they knew what I know. But if *I* know that, why didn't they? Wouldn't I look like a neurotic patient/client?

Well, I am a neurotic patient/clinic. And I'm not taking the blame here, but I'm mad at myself for not doing that. And more angry for them not to have done a little bit of research themselves.

In any case, I'm also feeling empty and sad. These were good eggs and they fucked them up. And now we have nothing.

I'm assuming they are going to credit us with some of the money we've paid up front but didn't receive for services. In addition, I assume that they are going to put us up front immediately on their fresh DE list. My problem remains with trust. They have a 65% success rate, whereas other places have a much higher rate. Why is their rate so much worse and should we continue to trust them? At this point, I'm only going to trust them if we get a proven donor with multiple successful donations.

Ok. So, considering the conversation I just had in my head, I am definitely in State 2 of the Kubler-Ross model of grief: Anger.

3 comments:

stacyb said...

i'm so sorry.

feeling angry at the clinic seems spot on to me.

Good question regarding the success rate -- and why you should trust them moving forward. totally agree with your instinct to go with a proven donor: from reading other DE blogs it seems that proven trumps young as an indicator of having healthy eggs.

on another note: i don't know how long the eggs were frozen but i have heard that success with frozen not fertilized eggs plummets after about 6mnths to a year. At least according to the docs at our clinic. If the eggs are fertilized it's fine to have them frozen for much longer.

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to say I'm sorry.

Bee Cee said...

This seems so unfair. Why are we made to feel like we are being manic when we ask them questions they should know? and why, after being through it a few times are we not surprised they don't also know as much as us.

I hope you get some trust back soon and your anger moves along the line.