One of the chapters that didn’t make the cut with my literary agent involved the night we were supposed to start our stim drugs for our cycle in New Jersey.
After assuring us the phone call would come before 5pm, we found ourselves twiddling our thumbs in the Extended Stay room on a beautiful fall day.
It was okay.
We had the emergency after hours number.
So after having no luck reaching everyone before 5pm, I tried it.
Hmm. Weird. Not St. Barnabas.
Some neurology department of another hospital.
I must have misdialed.
I dialed again.
I asked the person who answered to repeat the number back to me.
Right number. Wrong place.
A twinge of panic hit me.
The stim drugs were an absolute necessity and we’d been told we’d know the dose of stims to start with based on the day’s blood work.
I began calling every number I could find.
None of them led back to St. Barnabas reproductive medicine.
Lisa launched a paper and pen across the room in anger, and immediately hopped on the laptop to start emailing on the infertility boards.
I didn’t know what the hell to do.
How could we have the wrong number on every single reference to the after hours number?
Lisa was cursing under her breath as she typed away furiously.
As precious time ticked away, I considered just driving to Barnabas and staging a sit in.
We had not come this many miles to have this cycle canceled because we didn’t start the stims on time.
Or to have a bad follicle count because we didn’t start on time.
I was beyond seething.
This was supposed to be different. This was one of the top five clinics in the country.
This shit wasn’t supposed to happen at a place like this!
Breathe. I tried to listen to the sound of my breath to soften the violent urges filling my head.
Then the phone rang.
A former infertility patient form New York City was on the phone with Lisa.
She had seen Lisa’s frantic postings about what was going on, and called the number Lisa had given out to anyone who could help.
“Ok. I’m gonna cross a line I shouldn’t. But I gotta help my infertility sisters when the shit hits the fan. I’m gonna call someone up and make sure this gets taken care of. Just sit tight. You are not gonna get f***ed because someone a**hole didn’t put the right phone number on your treatment plan.”
Lisa laughed as this self described New York b**** went on an Eddie Murphy cursing tirade while she dialed the numbers of some people she ‘knew’.
Long story short: turns out our New York friend knew a Mrs. Cohen, who knew the director of our clinic.
Digging a little deeper, it turns out Mrs. Cohen was married to a Jacques Cohen, who you might recognize as a pretty influential member of the infertility medical world!
About fifteen minutes later, the director of our clinic was calling our hotel room, and letting us know that we’d be getting so much extra attention and service we’d be sick of them.
Turns out a typo on the treatment plan was leading us astray.
But some massive action when it all hit the fan, kept our cycle from going astray.