The FET Lottery

Over the years, I have come to find that patients at the Calgary Regional Fertility Clinic are really just numbers. There is no holistic or personalized care, and they only used standardized protocols with minimal, if any, deviation. I would guess that the reason for this is efficiency - with the rise in the number of couples and individuals (because there are single women out there who decide to use a donor to become mothers on their own), the clinic is becoming more busy, therefore standardization tends to move things through more quickly.

The unfortunate side effect is that there are hundreds (thousands?) of CRFC patients playing the waiting game each cycle. Here's how it works if you are waiting for a frozen embryo transfer (which is similar for IVF):

• Day one of your period you call in to the 'period hotline', leaving your name, chart number, and phone number.
• You spend about a week to ten days hoping that you get a call back. You make sure you have your phone by you at all times and answer all calls, leaving meetings, interrupting conversations, answering when you're in the bathroom taking care of business (I'm serious). You constantly check for messages. And sometimes they just never call.

Not getting the call sucks. You've looked at the calendar and calculated when your transfer might be (it's about 6 or 7 weeks between cycle day one and the FET transfer on the typical CRFC medicated protocol) and start to get excited. However, your hopes, once again, are crushed. And the waiting game continues on.

Last month I didn't get the call. In about a week, I will call in again, and wait to see if I win the FET lottery this time. I hate being a number.