Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Before I start my post, let me just say a big "hi" to Summer! I am so happy you found your donor! And good luck to you and Mr. W.

I actually got some news the other day that I forgot to post about. But seeing how I know a few IPs visit on here, I thought it would be helpful, since what I know to be true is not necessary what they know to be true (for example the profiles, we have no access, some IPs may think we do, etc.) My last donation, the one that canceled days before the retrieval, well, it shouldn't have been--this I know now as a FACT. Apparently the monitoring information that was given to the clinic clearly showed 13-17 eggs in the desired size range. With a few additional ones that would have been ready on the day of the retrieval. So it would have been around the same performance I had previously. However, the doctor decided to cancel. Now, the only reason I know I had the quality and quantity of eggs was because apparently the IPs went to the agency and complained that I under performed and wanted compensation or a refund of some sort. Which cause the coordinator to request my records and see for themselves that I did not "under-perform" as speculated by the doctor. Unfortunately, my initial assumption of the doctor may have been right---she kept refusing donors and canceling donations, probably to make more money on this poor couple.

I hate to put this negative underbelly side of the process out there. However, Donors and IPs should be aware that just because your doctor recommends that you cancel you need to use your best judgment on whether its right for you or not. Had they gone through with it, they probably would be pregnant now, as were my first two IPs. Even if it was on the smaller quantity side, say there were only 13 that fertilized, they still would have gotten something. Instead of spending all that money to walk away empty handed. I do believe that medical advice should be heeded, however, if you see the stats and know the previous results you should have a little bit of faith for your donor as well. Just my opinion. It is not going to be true for 100% of the cases, however, in just this one instance, it was. Unfortunately, the couple wanted to know if they changed clinics if I would be willing to work with them again. At this time, I have already promised my 3rd with a 4th in the works. So that's not even a possibility. I do feel they got cheated. My heart goes out to them. I do hope that they move on and find another donor and actually go through a retrieval and hopefully get the results they were looking for.

1 comment:

Summer said...

Unfortunately, the truth is there are negatives to this process and there are those REs who are not really looking out for the best interest of either the IPs or the recipients. So, thanks for sharing your experiences and some shedding light on things.

The good news is that more often than not (at least from what I have seen around the blogosphere) there are more positives than negatives!