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By FertilityChick, Guest Author for ITNB
When I was younger I avoided doctor’s offices as much as possible. Basically unless it was annual physical time (and even those I tended to, ahem, “miss” – bad I know), or I was really, really, REALLY sick, I stayed as far away as possible. As a recovering needle-phob, I knew a doctor’s office was the very last place I wanted to be. In most cases the visit resulted in a blood test or an immunization. Man, if only I knew!
Sadly, my foray into the cruel world of infertility started with a lot of avoidance. We weren’t really ready at the time for a family. I was dealing with school and then the start of a career. However, in the back of my head, I had a sense something was wrong and wasn’t ready to face it. I knew multiple doctor visits were on the horizon and wasn’t ready to spend my life sitting in those cracked, vinyl chairs of the waiting room. Not to mention the influx of invasive tests (and needles!) that I knew awaited me.
The time came when my courage increased and I was ready to deal. However, that didn’t prepare me for the amount of waiting time I would endure! The grand tour of waiting rooms: visits with my family doctor, then the OB/GYN, later at the fertility clinic, the ultrasound lab, and the RE’s office. Now I even wait at the Naturopathic doctor’s office. (Yes, now I’m actually paying for someone to stick needles into me!) In fact, when doing a monitored cycle, I spend more time sitting in a waiting room than I do in my own living room!
Time in the waiting room has become a metaphor of infertility for me. It’s about waiting. Waiting to see the next doctor or technician. Waiting for the next blood test, the next ultrasound, the next round of acupuncture. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting for follicles to grow big enough to trigger. Waiting for the right time to do the next IUI. And then of course the hardest wait of all: the two week wait. In essence, the wait to see if all of this waiting is finally over so that hopefully a new kind of waiting begins.
I’m still at the beginning of my infertility journey and now that I’ve decided to take the summer months off, I’m doing a different kind of waiting. Funny, there are moments that I loathe the waiting rooms; the despair, the desperation. Other times, I’m oddly comforted by others who are also playing the waiting game. The ones who smile knowingly and understand what I’m feeling.
This definitely isn’t what I signed up for. I’ve probably seen more doctors in the past year and a half than some people will see in their lifetimes. My only request is this: can we get more comfortable chairs and better magazines in these damn waiting rooms? Seriously folks, we’re basically here on a regular and first name basis!
For more articles by FertilityChick, please visit her blog What If? and follow her on Twitter @fertilitychick.
