My primary care trust won't pay for me to have IVF because I already have a child. The weight issue was a problem, but I can always lose weight; I can't lose my child though.
It's so very unfair. My husband is not entitled to have a child of his own without paying thousands of pounds for it. And what was his crime? Falling in love with someone with 'baggage'. Taking on the responsibility of someone else's child. Well, that and having dodgy sperm, which is not exactly his fault.
Unfortunately, I got the email informing me of this while I was at work. I was already feeling emotional because my period had just come on, four days late. Four days! I knew it was very unlikely to mean I was pregnant, but after four days, I had started to let a few positive thoughts come into my head about beating the odds and our bodies overcoming adversity. After all, it's not beyond the realms of possibility, just extremely unlikely. But along came Aunty Flo, bringing with her a whole host of misery.
I came back to my desk after a particularly stressful meeting, feeling a bit gloomy and vulnerable and opened up my email to find the news that I'd been dreading. I tried so very hard to keep from crying. A colleague asked me to look at something she'd been working on. I thought that burying myself in work would help, so I gladly agreed, only to find that is was about child labour. Of course, my mind jumped straight to 'it's not fair, these people have children and mistreat them and I'm a good parent and can't have any more' mode and the tears started finding their way out of my eyes and onto my cheeks.
I sent a hurried email to my friend and told her. She immediately offered to take me to the cafe for a coffee and a cry, which I accepted. I couldn't even leave my desk before my face was beetroot red and very wet. I told her all about it and sobbed and felt sorry for myself and then gave myself time for the swollen eyes to go down a bit. I felt like a fool crying at work and that made me even more angry about the situation.
Now we have to ask my mother-in-law to lend us the money to pay for a cycle. We checked out the prices. ICSI costs £3200, but when you add on the cost of appointments with specialists and the drugs you need for the procedure, it starts getting closer to £5000. Of course, that's only one treatment. One very expensive 1 in 3 chance of having the longed for product of our love. What if it doesn't work? Do we pay again? Do we give up? What if she won't/can't lend us the money? These questions were always going to be there, but I was hoping they wouldn't arise just yet. I thought we'd get at least one free go.
The next step is to take a trip to visit our home town to have the very awkward conversation that I imagine going something like "Hi mum. You know how you always wanted more grandchildren? Well, you're going to have to pay for them." or perhaps "Hey mum, I haven't been able to knock up the missus despite lots of trying, so we got a doc to look at a jar of my jizz, it turns out my swimmers aren't all that, so lend us a few grand will you?". How do you even bring a conversation like that up?
However, this is me, so there is a positive side to all of this. If we are able to secure the finances, we'll go the the patient information evening early next month. There, we will be given an appointment to see a doctor (I'm imagine in the next couple of weeks, this being private). After seeing the doc, we are told to call on the first day of my next period for treatment to begin. By my calculations, that should be at around the time I have booked off work for the summer - perfect timing. All being well, I should be able to make an announcement at Christmas about a forthcoming arrival (or two).
Fingers crossed!
No comments:
Post a Comment