ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT TO VOTE!
Almost A Father has been nominated for the Hope Award for Best Blog! Check out the great nominees here http://www.resolve.org/vote and vote for your favorite!
One thing that doesn’t appear to have changed that much in the infertility world is intermittent communication problems.
I am being diplomatic here, for sure, because sometimes the stories I read and hear about to this day are infuriating and extend beyond a lack of communication right into flat out rudeness.
Lisa has always been pretty tough when it comes to rude people, but the blood draws, ultrasounds, and hormone drugs reduced the amount of fight she had in her. She was saving her energy to focus on a positive outcome.
Or she needed that extra energy to come back from the devastation of a failure.
When I finally manned up and got involved in the whole process of educating myself about infertility, one role I enjoyed playing was the sit in protestor.
There is nothing worse than being in the middle of a cycle, freaked out about all the money you are spending for in many cases less than a 50/50 chance of having a procedure work, and having the lines of communication black out.
Knowing that Lisa didn’t have the strength to get the lines back up and running, I found lunch breaks were a great opportunity to stage an infertility clinic sit in.
The truth is, I never actually had to enter the office.
I just had to stay on hold for the office manager. The billing clerk. The nurse.
And not get off.
Speakerphones are a wonderful thing. You can stay on hold for a LONG TIME and kindly say “no I don’t want to leave a voicemail.”
Or you can play the game where you keep getting sent to a voicemail, and you press 0 and say “I’d like to speak to the human version of so-and-so.”
Amazingly, so and so suddenly becomes available, and wouldn’t you know it, has transformed into a very informative and communicative helpy helperton!
Don’t be afraid to take on these assertive tactics.
Be respectful, but be firm, and persistent.
You are paying a lot of money and expending so much physical, spiritual and financial energy for the best odds of bringing your little bundle of joy into this universe.
You deserve an open line of communication at every step of the process.