Most frustrating day to date.....
The mass of information sent by IVF Wales confused, rather than enlightened, us. It contained directions to two different bits of Cardiff University Hospital but we failed to notice this and blithely headed for the wrong one. We left plenty of time, got there about 40 minutes early. Someone asked when our appointment was and, after we said 10am, left us in the waiting room.
A few people came and went. Eventually, a doctor called for someone else and noticed us. He checked our names and informed us we weren't expected. We proffered our appointment letter and discovered we were in the wrong place. By now we had ten minutes before our appointment time.
Frantically, getting lost once or twice, we got to where we were meant to be. Pretty wound up by now.
After we identified ourselves and waited for a while, I was called through to the consultant. A student was in the room with us. Dr X, how shall I put it.... Well, she had very little bedside manner. She told us our referral letter had been lost. Quite a blow when the GP was so careful about everything. She told us we needed to have the tests done again that we had already gone through and was derogatory about the reliability of the existing results (which, thankfully, we had with us.)
She refused to answer our concerns about waiting lists. She batted away our questions requesting clarity on what would happen next (she didn't explain anything very clearly) and seemed in a big rush to get us out of there. She rolled her eyes when asked to explain what ICSI was. The things promised in our information pack (offer of counselling, for example) were not mentioned.
The thing is, when someone is so unreasonable, you don't want to be demanding in case it affects your status on the waiting lists. We left feeling much more unsettled than we had done before. It was only by a stroke of luck that we managed to do the correct thing at reception (book another sperm analysis appointment for Jon) because Dr X had left us confused about whether she would do that, or we needed to.
Am taking the rest of the day off work.
infertility
