We went into his office full of anxiety and fear. I was looking for answers to questions that hadn’t fully been asked. I expected the textbook response of “we did everything we could”. I sat down expecting a plan, some notion of what comes next, something other than what I got. There was a medical student in his office, observing. In my opinion, asking whether or not she can stay in front of the the patient puts them on the spot and makes them say yes when they might otherwise have said no.

There was no softening of the blow. No “I’m sorry it didn’t work” no “everything looked so good for this to succeed”. Just a rush of redundant information followed by a rejection. Most of the questions I had spent the past 3 weeks thinking up no longer applied, so the meeting was painfully short. I assume his view was that it’s better to rip the band-aid off quickly.

He feels I stimmed too long, and that the egg quality with 21 eggs isn’t as great as one would guess. That our eggs and embryos weren’t as great as we were “led to believe.” Funny, since all reports on their quality came from him. He said that trying again would be useless. He “decided” there would be no next cycle. It’s a sperm problem, it’s an egg problem, it’s a uterine problem. We could work on his sperm, we could try a third party route. With our issues and medical histories and genetic considerations we should learn to be happy with our lives and move on.

End of meeting, thank you, nice knowing you.

He tried to shake my husband’s hand, but he missed it as my husband was already heading towards the door. Which, as you might guess, is brave for a blind man to do in an unfamiliar office.

My problem is that all the things he explained as possible reasons for why this didn’t work all existed before. He says now that he wasn’t optimistic. I can only think about the pre-IVF consult I never got, and how THAT was the time to tell me these things. I believe if he felt that way that it was irresponsible to let us proceed. We did not need to get our hopes up, I did not need to beg, borrow and steal to finance this cycle, I did not need to go through 3-4 months of hell, just for you to tell me these things NOW.

I know many of you would suggest immediately dropping his ass and writing a nasty letter. That’s my husband’s opinion as well. Obviously we’re not going back, yet that isn’t totally our decision, seeing as we were dropped like a hot potato. However, going elsewhere isn’t so easy. There’s only one other RE in the area, he is completely self pay, too old, not informed of the current advances; and in my book, somewhat incompetent. The next RE is 4 hours away, and is out of network as well.

I don’t know what comes next. Everyone said during the cycle that things were going fabulous, that there was no reason it wouldn’t be successful, that I was young, and on and on. I firmly believe that the horrible ER experience had something to do with it, yet, when I asked, I was immediately shut down. My pain was minimized and my concerns trivialized. Not that I thought there would be an admission of wrong doing, but after I asked that, his tone became darker and the conversation changed. I could go into how I feel hopeless, and how I can no longer imagine anything getting us to where we want to be, but that’s implied and too long for this already convoluted post.